Techmeme
June 25, 2020, 2:25 PM

Top News

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Google announces a licensing program to pay publishers for content for a new news product, launching later this year, as part of the Google News Initiative  —  In a major departure from its long-standing practice of not paying publishers directly to distribute their work …
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Google Photos gets a big redesign with a new Places view, Recent Highlights feature in Memories, a Things feature with photos related to users' interests, more  —  Plus, more features designed to help you rediscover your old photos  —  After five years as the dominant solution …
New York Times:
Sources say the DOJ has made the antitrust inquiry into Google its top priority and the case is moving swiftly, spurred by the personal interest of AG Barr  —  Attorney General William Barr's attention to the Justice Department investigation shows the high stakes for the agency and for him.
Douglas Busvine / Reuters:
Wirecard collapses and files for insolvency, facing an almost complete wipeout; source says creditors are owed nearly $4B  —  Douglas Busvine, Jörn Poltz, Arno Schuetze  —  BERLIN/MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German payments company Wirecard collapsed on Thursday after disclosing …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
HEY opens its email service to everyone and says Apple has approved its update with proposed changes to meet App Store guidelines  —  The $99-per-year email app no longer needs an invite to be used  —  Hey — the new email service from Basecamp that's been the subject of the latest fight …
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Michael Hawley, whose work at MIT Media Lab helped lay the groundwork for IoT, and who helped Steve Jobs and Larry Page write commencement speeches, dies at 58  —  A man of manifold interests, his achievements ranged from developing ideas behind the so-called Internet of Things to publishing the world's biggest book.
Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg:
SoftBank's Masayoshi Son steps down from Alibaba's board, a post he had held since 2005  —  - Son steps down as Alibaba director, a post he held since 2005  — Jack Ma is also leaving SoftBank's board after 13 years  —  SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son ended …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Apple confirms it is not planning to support Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs, and says “purely virtualization is the route”  —  Virtualization is the route forward  —  Apple will start switching its Macs to its own ARM-based processors later this year, but you won't be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on them.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it is globally rolling out a notification screen warning users if they try to share content that's more than 90 days old  —  Facebook announced Thursday that it would introduce a notification screen warning users if they try to share content that's more than 90 days old.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Apple will provide an extension converter tool to make it easier for developers to port Firefox or Google Chrome extensions to Safari  —  Apple unveiled macOS 11 Big Sur earlier this week and talked about some of the improvements for Safari.  In addition to native extensions, Apple is adding support for web extensions.
Justin Sherman / Wired:
DOJ has objected to Facebook and Google's 8,000-mile cable to Hong Kong, claiming it offers “unprecedented opportunities” for Chinese government espionage  —  The DOJ's opposition to Facebook and Google's 8,000-mile cable to Hong Kong highlights how physical infrastructure is as contentious as the virtual world.
Joe Fedewa / XDA Developers:
Google makes its ARCore Depth API available for developers on Android and Unity to build AR experiences  —  ARCore is Google's SDK for creating augmented reality experiences on Android and iOS.  On Android devices, it's delivered as part of the Google Play Services for AR app.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok launches a new site, TikTok for Business, as a home for marketing products and resources and launches a new AR ad format to rival Snapchat  —  TikTok is announcing to advertisers that it's open for business.  The company is today officially introducing a new brand and platform called …
Kate Clark / The Information:
PitchBook: the median valuation for Series C and later stage funding increased to a new high of $120M in the first half of 2020, from $80M for 2019  —  When coronavirus fears sent stocks tumbling this spring, venture capitalists expected startup valuations to follow.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Google says it will auto-delete location and search data by default for new users after 18 months, as part of a broader expansion of its privacy options  —  A compromise between privacy and ad-targeting data  —  On Wednesday, Google announced broad changes in its default data practices for new users …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
AWS announces Honeycode, a cloud-based tool that it hopes will help non-coders build apps  —  - Amazon already leads the cloud infrastructure market, and now it's expanding its cloud product lineup with a tool for people who don't code.  — The Honeycode service will compete with offerings …
Dan Primack / Axios:
Valence, a LinkedIn-type social network, launches to connect Black founders with VCs, including Accel, Sequoia, GGV, USV, Greylock, and CapitalG  —  A new platform launches today to make connections between Black founders and a select group of top-tier venture capitalists …
More: TechCrunch
Bloomberg:
France, UK, Italy, and Spain offer to limit the scope of a proposed global digital tax, in a letter to US Treasury Secretary, following US threat of tariffs  —  - Bloomberg obtains June 17 letter sent to U.S.'s Mnuchin  — The devil is in the detail of what a ‘phased approch’ entails
Alfred Ng / CNET:
Boston passes an ordinance to ban government use of facial recognition, with minor caveats, joining cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and Cambridge  —  Boston joined cities like San Francisco, Oakland, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday in passing a vote to ban facial recognition technology for municipal use.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:

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Earlier Picks

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Zachary Basu / Axios:
Kate Irby / The Fresno Bee:
John Koetsier / Forbes:
Khari Johnson / VentureBeat: