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May 12, 2020, 2:00 PM
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Top News

Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed News:
Jack Dorsey tells Twitter staff they can work from home indefinitely even after the pandemic passes; policy won't apply to some jobs requiring physical presence  —  Some Twitter employees will never return to their office.  —  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey emailed employees on Tuesday telling …
Ed Hammond / Bloomberg:
Sources: Uber has made an offer to acquire Grubhub, with an agreement possible as soon as this month, sending the food delivery company's stock up 24%+  —  Uber Technologies Inc. has made an offer to acquire food-delivery startup Grubhub Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reports.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Sources: Facebook is quietly helping to launch American Edge, a political advocacy group in Washington, to battle regulators trying to rein in the tech industry  —  The organization, called American Edge, arrives at a time when the industry is facing withering antitrust scrutiny in Washington.
Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: JPMorgan Chase has extended banking services to two bitcoin exchanges, Coinbase and Gemini Trust, the first time it has accepted crypto clients  —  JPMorgan Chase has taken on two well-known bitcoin exchanges, Coinbase and Gemini Trust, as banking customers, say people familiar with the matter …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Profile and behind-the-scenes story of Marcus “MalwareTech” Hutchins, who helped stop the WannaCry attack and pled guilty to selling the Kronos banking malware  —  At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen.  Then he was arrested by the FBI.
Apple:
Apple unveils an update to Logic Pro X with Live Loops, a redesigned sampling workflow, and new beat-making tools  —  New Creative Tools for Electronic Music Production Make Logic Pro X 10.5 a Breakthrough Release for Musicians and Producers  —  Cupertino, California …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify begins rolling out a new feature called Group Session, which lets multiple Premium users control a listening session
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Sources: Apple's over-ear headphones, called “AirPods Studio”, will feature head and neck detection sensors, automated audio channel routing, and more  —  We've been hearing about Apple's upcoming over-ear headphones for some time, with evidence from multiple sources pointing to the official launch later this year.
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Twitter says it will add labels and warning messages to tweets about COVID-19 with misleading or disputed content and plans to expand the labels to other topics  —  (Reuters) - Twitter Inc will add labels and warning messages on some tweets with disputed or misleading information about COVID-19 …
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Sleeper, a social and fantasy sports site that's expanding into esports, raises $20M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total raised to $27.3M  —  Sleeper, which has developed a social and gaming platform for sports, has raised a $20 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
Jeffrey Katzenberg blames COVID-19 for Quibi's paltry downloads as execs lower projections from 7M users and $250M subscriber revenue estimated for first year  —  Downloads of the $1.8 billion short-form streaming app, meant for phones, are paltry.  “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Mr. Katzenberg said.
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Secondary shares marketplace Forge agrees to acquire rival Sharespost in a $160M cash-and-stock deal; Forge has raised $109M to date, Sharespost has raised $38M  —  Even amid a pandemic, there's a race on to create a powerful, global private securities marketplace where private shares …
Joann Muller / Axios:
Waymo says it's raised another ~$750M, expanding the size of its first external investment round to $3B  —  Waymo said Tuesday that it has raised another roughly $750 million for its self-driving technology, expanding the size of its first external investment round to $3 billion.
Tweets: @axios
Reuters:
Sources: Dingdong Maicai raises $300M led by General Atlantic in a round that values the Shanghai-based online grocer at $2B  —  Yingzhi Yang, Kane Wu  —  * Dingdong Maicai raises $300 million in fresh funding -sources  —  * Dingdong's monthly active users up 14% in Jan amid outbreak
Franklin Foer / The Atlantic:
US election security responses against Russian interference in 2016 remain inadequate as Russian tactics continue to evolve in the run up to the 2020 election  —  Jack Cable sat down at the desk in his cramped dorm room to become an adult in the eyes of democracy.
Elise Favis / Washington Post:
A look at Nookazon, a fan-made online retailer for trading Animal Crossing in-game items that claims 270K DAUs, over 9M listings, and 7M page views per day  —  Daniel Luu, a 25-year-old software engineer from Maryland, woke up one morning to find hundreds of thousands of people scouring his newly launched website Nookazon.
Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:
Equity management platform Carta is planning to launch CartaX, a private share trading platform to rival Nasdaq, this summer for companies worth $1B+  —  Silicon Valley start-up poised to launch exchange as tech companies delay IPOs  —  The Silicon Valley start-up Carta is planning to launch …
Alexander Behrens / Decrypt:
TD Ameritrade-backed ErisX launches the first Ethereum futures trading platform in the US authorized by regulators  —  Ethereum has taken another big step into the regulated financial world.  —  ErisX, a US-based digital asset trading platform backed by TD Ameritrade, today launched trading for Ethereum …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:00 PM ET, May 12, 2020.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

April Roach / CNBC:
Bill Ackman's Pershing Square proposes to acquire Amsterdam-listed Universal Music Group for €56B in cash and stock, form a merged company, and list on the NYSE

George Grylls / The Times:
A profile of Aaron Rupar, who manages a social media news operation monitoring Trump across 12 TV channels simultaneously, supported by a $50/year Substack

New York Times:
Journalist Shelly Kittleson, abducted in Iraq by an Iranian-aligned militia, has been freed after a week in captivity, per the militia and two Iraqi officials

More News

Sarah Emerson / OneZero :
Tech labor leaders are organizing using Facebook Groups and sites like Coworker.org to prevent labor movements from being suppressed and surveilled by companies

Earlier Picks

Bobbie Johnson / MIT Technology Review:
Iceland's contract tracing app has ~38% adoption, the highest in the world, among its population of 364,000, but its impact on containing COVID-19 seems small
Wolfie Zhao / CoinDesk:
Bitcoin's third “halving”, the programmed event where mining rewards drop, has occurred, lowering the payout to 6.25 BTC per block; the last halving was in 2016
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