Techmeme
May 12, 2020, 2:50 PM

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's made an offer to acquire Grubhub, with a deal possible as soon as this month, sending Grubhub's stock up 35%+; Uber's stock is up 5%+  —  Uber Technologies Inc. has made an offer to acquire food-delivery startup Grubhub Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reports.
Robert Stevens / Decrypt:
Chat app Telegram says it's abandoning its TON blockchain project, after the SEC challenged the legality of its $1.7B ICO and delayed the network's launch  —  Telegram, the operator of the 400 million strong messenger app, today announced that it has given up on its upcoming blockchain network …
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.
Joe Tidy / BBC:
Hackers say they have breached a law firm used by Lady Gaga, Drake, and others, obtaining 756GB of data, including contracts; firm confirms an attack occurred  —  A law firm used by A-list stars including Rod Stewart, Lil Nas X and Robert De Niro has been hacked.
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 …
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.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Facebook says it took action on 9.6M pieces of hate speech content in Q1, up by 3.6M, and AI now proactively detects 88.8% of it, up from 80.2% last quarter  —  Facebook sheds light on its new AI-powered moderation  —  Facebook on Monday released a new report detailing how it uses a combination …
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 …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
UpKeep, which builds mobile-first tools for maintenance and operations teams, raises $36M Series B led by Insight Partners  —  UpKeep, a mobile-first platform for maintenance and operations collaboration, has today announced the close of a $36 million Series B financing round.
More: PRWeb
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
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 …
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).
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.
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  —  The country has the highest penetration of any automated contact tracing app in the world, but one senior figure says it “wasn't a game changer.”
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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