Techmeme: After a flurry of tweets from Elon Musk in recent weeks, dogecoin, which launched in 2013 as a joke, has jumped in price from half a cent on Jan. 1 to ~8 cents (Wall Street Journal)

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February 8, 2021, 8:40 AM

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Steve Kovach / CNBC:

Filing: Tesla has bought $1.5B worth of bitcoin and says it will start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products in the future — - Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. — The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products.

More: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, Reuters, CoinDesk, Decrypt, Forbes, The Next Web, The Verge, The Economic Times, The Block, Electrek, Cointelegraph, Mashable, and CryptoSlate

Tweets: @business, @csuwildcat, @megancgraham, @jyarow, and @timsteno

Wall Street Journal:

After a flurry of tweets from Elon Musk in recent weeks, dogecoin, which launched in 2013 as a joke, has jumped in price from half a cent on Jan. 1 to ~8 cents — Cryptocurrency that started in 2013 as a joke is suddenly worth a total of more than $6 billion

More: CNET, Gizmodo, InsideBitcoins.com, CNBC, Bloomberg, Firstpost Tech, Cointelegraph, cryptodaily.co.uk, TechCrunch, Decrypt, and Forbes

Tweets: @elonmusk, @elonmusk, @wsj, @haralabob, @haralabob, @elonmusk, @nategeraci, @elonmusk, @adamugarba, @elonmusk, @dansmithholla, @peterschiff, @crescatkevin, and @jordanuhl

Bloomberg:

Hyundai and its affiliate Kia say they are not in talks with Apple to develop an autonomous vehicle; Hyundai shares fell ~8.4% in Seoul, while Kia dropped 14%. — - Apple's plans for own-branded EV are being intensely watched — Hyundai's new EV platform can charge cars to 80% in 18 minutes

Thomas Brewster / Forbes:

Review: in 200+ charging docs filed in relation to the Capitol siege, 73 reference Facebook, 24 reference YouTube, 20 mention Instagram, and 8 mention Parler — Just after the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook chief operating officer admitted the company's ability to enforce its own rules was “never perfect.”

Charles Fitzgerald / Platformonomics:

Analysis: in 2020, Amazon's capital expenditure grew 69% YoY to $54B, Microsoft's grew 14% YoY to $20.6B, and Google's declined over 5% YoY to $22.3B — It is time for our annual bulletin to CAPEX obsessives (previous updates from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 as well as earlier installments).

Tweets: @justincormack, @jordannovet, @fatrat, and @kensan42

TechCrunch:

Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period during which it was rapidly gathering steam — Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:

Sources: Twitter is building subscription products to ease its dependence on ads, including “tipping” for exclusive content and charging for TweetDeck — - Internal groups are researching options users might pay for — Social network says ‘revenue durability’ is now top priority

Tweets: @theromit and @unclewilco

Julia Chan / Sensor Tower Blog:

Sensor Tower data on top apps worldwide: Telegram led with 63M downloads in Jan. 2021, as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger downloads fell from Dec. 2020 — Telegram was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide for January 2021 with more than 63 million installs, 3.8 times its downloads in January 2020.

More: Notebookcheck.net, TechRadar, Deccan Herald, PCMag, Firstpost Tech, Gizchina, BGR India, and Entrackr. Tweets: @sensortower

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Nexthink, which lets businesses monitor software performance on employee devices, raises $180M Series D led by Permira at a $1.1B valuation — Nexthink, a platform used by businesses to monitor software performance on their employees' devices, has raised $180 million in a series D round of funding led by Permira.

More: SiliconANGLE, Tech.eu, Silicon Republic, TechCrunch, Nexthink, and Business Wire

Bloomberg:

Japan's Renesas Electronics says it has agreed to acquire UK-based Dialog Semiconductor, whose clients include Apple and Samsung, for ~$5.9B — - Transaction marks latest takeover of a U.K. technology firm — Semiconductor M&A more than doubled to $144 billion last year

More: 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, VentureBeat, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, MarketWatch, coinspeaker.com, Fortune, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Renesas Electronics …, and iTnews

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Pony.ai raises $100M extension to its Series C round at a post-money valuation of $5.3B, up from $3B in Feb. 2020, bringing its total raised to $1B+ — Self-driving car startup Pony.ai today announced that it raised $100 million in an extension of its series C round.

More: PYMNTS.com

Vikas SN / The Economic Times:

VerSe Innovation, parent of news aggregator Dailyhunt and short video app Josh, raises $100M+ Series H led by Qatar Investment Authority — VerSe Innovation, the parent company of news aggregator Dailyhunt and short-video platform Josh, has raised more than $100 million in a Series H funding round led …

More: Tech in Asia, KrASIA, Entrackr, and TechCrunch. Thanks:@tsuvik

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From Mediagazer

Gene Maddaus / Variety:

In a Truth Social post, Trump endorses a US tax incentive for film and TV production; the MPA has worked with Jon Voight to push for a 20% credit on labor costs

Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times:

California lawmakers approved a bill to create tax credits for local news organizations based on journalist headcount, sending it to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk

Katherine Sayre / Wall Street Journal:

A group of musicians led by Jason Isbell files a proposed class action against Suno, alleging Suno lets users generate copycat songs based on artists' names

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More News

Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg:

SoftBank's Vision Fund posts a record $8B profit in Q3, but SoftBank's derivatives trading unit posts a $2.7B loss leading to an overall loss of $1.07B

More: The Economic Times and Wall Street Journal

Kevin / kwokchain:

How Figma, which bet on collaborative product design, and Canva, which focuses on helping non-designers excel in marketing design, are succeeding against Adobe

Tweets: @gavinsbaker, @jalajboy, and @sachinrekhi

Michael Vizard / VentureBeat:

Vendia, which offers a serverless SaaS product to share data and associated code across multicloud environments, raises $15.5M Series A led by Canvas Ventures

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:

Commsor, which gives companies insights about employees using data from tools like Slack and GitHub, raises $16M Series A at a valuation “well north of $100M”

Tweets: @justiacom

Reuters:

China issues new anti-monopoly rules putting more pressure on its local tech giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com

More: BBC and AppleInsider

Carolina Milanesi / Fast Company:

Interview with Samsung VP Jaeyeon Jung on the new Galaxy SmartTag and how it fits into the SmartThings ecosystem, which as of December had 66M active users

Frank Bajak / Associated Press:

Some experts raise concerns about the US Election Assistance Commission's proposed security standards that would allow voting machines with wireless hardware

Tweets: @rad_atl

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:

Analysis: Vision Fund, which posted a record annual loss last March, returned ~$18B to investors by the end of 2020, up from $13.4B it reported in Q3 2020

Tweets: @arashmassoudi

Julian Chokkattu / Wired:

A look at Metalenz, which aims to replace multiple lens elements in smartphone cameras with a single lens system that utilizes optical metasurfaces technology

More: IEEE Spectrum and Forbes

Tweets: @mattk, @vscpr, @dez_blanchfield, @ohmdee, and @crunchbasenews. Thanks:@ericrandall

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:

Andy Jassy is said to be “warmer and fuzzier” than Bezos, but as Amazon's next CEO, he faces many hurdles if he wants its tech to manage workers more humanely

More: ccn.com, BBC, and Associated Press

Tweets: @wsj, @shashib, @jensmithwsj, @profgalloway, @mims, @smulpuru, @mims, @mims, and @mims

Will Oremus / OneZero :

Unlike established social media platforms, Clubhouse is built to replicate real world social structures, norms, and status hierarchies rather than collapse them

More: Forbes and The Startup

Tweets: @willoremus, @jai__malik, @jordosh, @lunamoth, @robmay, @jeanyvesgonin, @davechensky, @willoremus, @mattyglesias, @carnage4life, @joonian, @rafat, @niviachanta, @terrygtnguyen, and @sabrinamaddeaux

Washington Post:

Jody Williams, the owner of TheDonald's domain name, explains why he pulled the plug on the pro-Trump forum that became a staging ground for the Capitol attack

Tweets: @nuclearfootie, @brianstelter, @marissa_jae, @tracyjan, and @washpostpr

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:

Study of 130+ facial recognition data sets compiled over 43 years: driven by ML's data needs, researchers gradually abandoned asking for people's consent

More: Mashable. Tweets: @_karenhao, @phoebemoore, @dorotheabaur, @cristiancanton, @proftomcrick, @bohyunkim, @frankpasquale, @rajiinio, @hypervisible, @_katiesaurus_, @forteller, @histoftech, @ultrasaurus, @techreview, @fabiochiusi, @iethics, and @iethics

Adam Ciralsky / Vanity Fair:

Profile of BitMEX cofounder Arthur Hayes, who remains at large after the CFTC filed a suit against BitMEX for allegedly running an unregistered trading platform

More: HODINKEE. Tweets: @jude_mugabi, @denvern3, @oluyomiojo, @chrischameleon, @solidusmax, @vanityfair, and @btcschellingpt