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April 15, 2020, 11:15 AM
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| Miles Kruppa / Financial Times: |
Sources: Airbnb raises another $1B in debt from investors including Apollo Global and Silver Lake, after raising a similar $1B funding round last week — New debt finance deal comes a week after an equal-sized funding round to help weather crisis — Airbnb is raising $1bn of senior debt …
More:
Bloomberg, Airbnb Newsroom, TechCrunch, CNBC, The Verge, Reuters, The Next Web, Axios, South China Morning Post, Silicon Republic, and Business Insider
Tweets: @gilliantan, @lisaabramowicz1, @dee_bosa, @bullyesq, @mdudas, and @johnmiddlekauff
| Monica Nickelsburg / GeekWire: |
Washington AG Bob Ferguson sues Facebook, saying the company violated its commitment to not sell political ads in the state — Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a new lawsuit against Facebook claiming the social network continues to violate state laws governing political ad disclosures.
More:
Washington State, Axios, The Seattle Times, The Hill, TechCrunch, The Stranger, The Olympian, One America News Network, r/announcements, and MediaNama
Tweets: @wagop and @seattletimes
| Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: |
Houseparty has seen 50M signups in the past month and has been the most downloaded social networking app in the US App Store every day since March 20 — Sima Sistani has been getting through the coronavirus outbreak's shelter-in-place order the past month in many of the same ways others have … | Dieter Bohn / The Verge: |
Apple announces a new iPhone SE with a 4.7" display, A13, Touch ID, 12MP camera with portrait mode, 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB storage from $399, shipping April 24 — It looks like an iPhone 8, but it has more modern specs — Apple has officially announced the new iPhone SE …
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TechCrunch, Apple, VentureBeat, MacRumors, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, 9to5Mac, Gizmodo, ZDNet, Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed News, Business Insider, Engadget, and Axios
Tweets: @joannastern, @benthompson, @dcseifert, @neilcybart, @lanceulanoff, @dcseifert, @jaypeters, @panzer, and @panzer
| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
Amazon will cut commission rates for its affiliate program starting April 21; amount of drop dependent on category, rates for grocery products dropping 5% to 1% — - Amazon on Tuesday told members of its affiliates program that it will cut commission rates beginning April 21.
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The Verge, Engadget, PYMNTS.com, The Digital Reader, and Variety
| Ben Thompson / Stratechery: |
The coronavirus crisis underscores the power and dominance of big tech companies, and that novel legislative approaches are required to regulate them — Apple and Google, who last Friday jointly | announced new capabilities for contact tracing coronavirus carriers at scale …
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STAT, Yahoo Finance, Forrester, AdExchanger, Telecoms.com, Silicon Canals, Fast Company, OneZero , and SC Media
Tweets: @carnage4life, @njodal, @sethjberman, @ahmed, and @stratechery
| Zoe Schiffer / The Verge: |
Medium's opaque moderation of user-created content related to COVID-19 has allowed misinfo to spread, making it harder to tell fact from fiction on the platform — The platform empowers voices — and misinformation — On March 20th, an article about the novel coronavirus started to spread.
Tweets: @zoeschiffer, @reckless, @niemanlab, and @knguyen
| Bryan Menegus / Gizmodo: |
Amazon says a manager at a facility in California died of COVID-19 on March 31, its first warehouse worker death; Amazon claims worker contracted virus offsite — A worker at an Amazon facility in California has died after contracting covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
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CNBC, Business Insider, GeekWire, Ars Technica, The Guardian, Business Insider, The Guardian, Adweek, SiliconANGLE, Reuters, and GameSpot
Tweets: @kateconger, @naomiaklein, @sensanders, @jptormey, @richardtrumka, @kateconger, @joshdzieza, @buzzfeednews, and @davidgross_man
| Ryne Hager / Android Police: |
Nest will temporarily reduce the recording quality of its security cameras by default to reduce bandwidth impact amid COVID-19, users can easily revert change — Google is temporarily dropping Nest camera recording quality and bandwidth over the next few days in an attempt to reduce strain on ISPs and the internet in general.
More:
TechCrunch, Android Authority, 9to5Google, The Verge, MacRumors, Cult of Mac, Engadget, Mashable, and CNET
Tweets: @richdemuro and @caseynewton
| Monica Chin / The Verge: |
Dell XPS 13 (2020) review: beautiful design, standout keyboard and touchpad, more than adequate for gaming, but bad webcam and limited port selection — Dell improves upon an already winning formula — Every time a new XPS 13 comes out, the question is always the same: is it still the best Windows thin-and-light laptop?| Nat Friedman / The GitHub Blog: |
GitHub announces private repositories with unlimited collaborators are now free and reduces the price of the existing paid Team plan from $9 to $4 per month — All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone. 🎉 — Until now, if your organization wanted to use GitHub …
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The Register, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Ars Technica, BetaNews, Engadget, DEVCLASS, ZDNet, Corey, the newlsetter, The Verge, XDA Developers, Silicon Republic, CNX Software, Android Police, GitLab, TechRadar.com, OnMSFT.com, Kähler VC.X, Thurrott, Digital Trends, VentureBeat, SiliconANGLE, and IT Management
Tweets: @github, @codinghorror, @vinayakh, and @ow
| Kanishka Singh / Reuters: |
Self-driving car startup Zoox agrees to settle lawsuit with Tesla over misappropriation of trade secrets, requiring it to pay an undisclosed amount — (Reuters) - Zoox Inc said on Tuesday it had settled a lawsuit with Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) after admitting that some new hires from the electric carmaker …
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Engadget
| Mathew Di Salvo / Decrypt: |
G20 watchdog says stablecoins could undermine financial stability and that major world economies must implement a regulatory framework to confront the risk — Stablecoins could undermine financial stability and major world economies must confront this risk by implementing a suitable regulatory framework …
More:
Reuters, Crypto Briefing, The Block, and CoinDesk
Tweets: @diaryofamademan, @ryansadams, @anndylian, @bitcoingeorge, @bneiluj, and @ganeshhiremath
| Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: |
Onfido, which provides a two-step online identity verification service, raises $100M led by TPG Growth, bringing its total raised to $200M — Contactless transactions have become a major priority at a time when people all around the world are minimising their contact with others outside …
More:
SiliconANGLE, Axios, ZDNet, Crunchbase News, VentureBeat, and Enterprise Times
| Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: |
Awake Security, which analyzes network traffic to identify and assess internal and external threats, raises $36M Series C led by Evolution Equity Partners — Awake Security, a cybersecurity platform that analyzes network traffic to identify and assess internal and external threats …
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FinSMEs
| Bloomberg: |
US DOD inspector general finds the Pentagon's controversial decision to award $10B JEDI contract to Microsoft was “consistent” with acquisition standards — - Inquiry didn't find evidence that Trump swayed the decision — Inspector general added that White House limited cooperation
More:
CNBC and Wall Street Journal
| Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: |
Slite, which lets employees collect and organize documentation, share documents, and create a shared company handbook, raises $11M Series A led by Spark Capital — French startup Slite has raised an $11 million Series A round led by Spark Capital with existing investors also participating.
More:
Tech.eu, VentureBeat, and Silicon Canals
| Bloomberg: |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released on March 20 for Switch after a delay, is the big hit of the lockdown, with 3M+ domestic US sales, not including digital — In the past three weeks, millions of people locked up at home and tired of scanning coronavirus headlines have sought solace …
More:
The Atlantic, Numlock News, The Verge, and VICE
Tweets: @quicktake, @aaronvalue, and @cartridgegames
| Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: |
Apple says the Magic Keyboard with trackpad for iPad Pro is available to order and will arrive next week, ahead of the original May launch date — Apple has announced that the Magic Keyboard with trackpad for iPad Pro will be available to order today and begin arriving to customers next week.| CNBC: |
Apple launches a tool that shows how well people are social distancing, using anonymized data from Apple Maps, similar to efforts from Google — - Apple on Tuesday launched a new tool that shows how well people are following social distancing guidelines. — It gathers anonymous data …
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Apple, ZDNet, Washington Post, The Interface, O'Grady's PowerPage, Neowin, Ubergizmo, Pocket-lint, Tech Xplore, Silicon Republic, Inc42 Media, MACお宝 …, MacRumors, Firstpost Tech, Forbes, Macworld, Mercury News, Input, The Hill, SlashGear, Wccftech, Engadget, The Mac Observer, Computerworld, AppleInsider, The Verge, iPhone in Canada Blog, CNET, Yahoo Finance, and Patently Apple
Tweets: @tim_cook, @geoffreyfowler, @mattrosoff, @buckeyecapsfan, @bonnaud_dowell, @plaidsir, @benwood, @stroughtonsmith, @neilcybart, @rustybrick, @reneritchie, and @megancgraham. Thanks:@mattrosoff
| Wolfie Zhao / CoinDesk: |
China is ready to launch its first domestic blockchain platform, Blockchain Service Network, for application development; platform hints at global expansion — China is about to launch its national blockchain platform, part of the country's grand strategy to lead the digital transformation of the world economy.
Tweets: @coindesk and @androidsaint
| FinSMEs: |
Push Technology, which provides real-time data streaming and messaging services, raises £10M Series A led by Maven Capital Partners — Push Technology, a Los Gatos, CA- and Belfast, Northern Ireland-based provider of real-time data streaming and messaging solutions, completed a £10m Series A round of financing.| Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: |
Biocatch, which provides an AI-backed behavioral biometrics service to protect digital identities, raises $145M Series C led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities — Behavioral biometrics startup BioCatch today announced it has raised $145 million, bringing its total raised to $175 million.
More:
TechCrunch, Business Insider, and Barron's Online
| Jon Porter / The Verge: |
OnePlus 8 review: has great battery life and solid performance with a 90Hz display, but camera could be better and it lacks wireless charging and an IP rating — The traditional strengths, plus the traditional omissions — Video by Alix Diaconis and Vjeran Pavic
More:
Input, The Verge, XDA Developers, South China Morning Post, Android Police, TechRepublic, CNET, 9to5Google, Android Authority, Android Authority, Mashable, IGN, Gotta Be Mobile, Ars Technica, Engadget, The Verge, Android Police, and Gizmodo
Tweets: @evanrodgers, @inputmag, @joshuatopolsky, @techradar, @mattswider, and @backlon
| Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech: |
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