Techmeme
July 31, 2015, 11:20 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Uber closed round of nearly $1B with Microsoft participating, valuing the company at over $50B and bringing total funding to more than $5B  —  Uber Valued at More Than $50 Billion  —  Ride-sharing app, which just closed a funding round, reaches mark faster than Facebook
Dina Bass / Bloomberg Business:
Microsoft Said to Invest About $100 Million in Startup Uber  —  Microsoft Corp. has agreed to invest about $100 million in Uber Technologies Inc. at a valuation of approximately $50 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said.  —  The deal was finalized earlier on Friday …
Dan Seifert / The Verge:
YotaPhone cancels US launch of YotaPhone 2 despite successful Indiegogo campaign, citing complications with its manufacturing partners  —  YotaPhone 2 won't be coming to the US  —  Yota Devices revealed today that it is canceling its plans to launch the YotaPhone 2 in the US, citing complications with its manufacturing partners.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Yahoo Will Acquire Fashion Startup Polyvore  —  Yahoo just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire style-focused community Polyvore.  —  In a blog post about the deal, Yahoo's senior vice president of publisher products Simon Khalaf highlighted “Polyvore's expertise …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
4th Amendment Lives: Court Tells US Government Get A Warrant If It Wants Mobile Phone Location Info  —  A potentially big ruling came out of the courtroom of Judge Lucy Koh yesterday, in which she affirmed a magistrate judge's decision to tell the government to get a warrant if it wants …
More: ZDNet
Biz Carson / Business Insider:
Frontback announces they will not shut down, after signing an agreement with a new partner  —  Frontback, the once-hot startup that rejected a $40 million Twitter acquisition, is back from the dead  —  The selfie app Frontback has found a new partner and narrowly avoided shutting down.
Thanks:@bizcarson
Peter Kafka / Re/code:
LinkedIn asks its top 500 “Influencers” for blanket permission to syndicate posts, with no money changing hands  —  LinkedIn Starts Building a Syndicated Content Network  —  LinkedIn has gotten a lot of mileage out of the free content that famous people like Richard Branson write for the social network.
Matthew Lynley / TechCrunch:
Early Apple Designer Susan Kare Joins Pinterest's Creative Team  —  Susan Kare, an early Apple designer behind some of the company's early typefaces and icons, has joined Pinterest.  —  She'll be part of Pinterest's creative team as a product design lead, according to the company.
Ian Paul / Greenbot:
88,000 Nvidia Shield tablets recalled due to heat risk  —  Put that slate down, Nvidia Shield Tablet users.  No, seriously—put it down.  It's being recalled.  —  Nvidia announced on Friday that Nvidia Shield tablets sold between July 2014 and July 2015 need to be sent back to the manufacturer.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Dropbox Arrives On Roku With An App For Viewing Your Personal Photos And Movies  —  Dropbox has launched on the Roku, with an app that allows you to view the photos and videos you have stored in your account directly on your TV by way of Roku's streaming media player.
Kana Inagaki / Financial Times:
Japan's Sharp to stop making TVs for the North American market after worse-than-expected quarterly loss of $274m  —  Japan's Sharp to quit North America TV market  —  Sharp is to pull out of the North American television market and will consider spinning off its display business as a slowdown …

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
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Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Basis's Matt Harpe: Why AI Won't Replace Accountants — It'll Make Them Richer
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lucas Shaw on Warner Bros' Limbo, Netflix's Anxiety, and Hollywood's Sort-of Comeback
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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