Techmeme
June 12, 2018, 11:55 PM

Top News

Sara Salinas / CNBC:
Judge rules that AT&T can complete its $85B merger with Time Warner, did not impose conditions on the approval  —  - The Justice Department sued last year to block the merger, citing concerns that AT&T, owner of satellite television provider DirecTV, could charge rival distributors …
Bloomberg:
Apple changed App Store rules last week to ban iOS developers from making databases of users' address book info and limit what can be shared with third parties  —  - iPhone maker bans developers building address book databases  — Facebook scandal shows risk of sharing data on users' friends
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Gordon Mah Ung / PCWorld:
Intel has confirmed that its first discrete GPUs are coming as soon as 2020 for data center and gaming PCs  —  Intel wants to compete with AMD's Radeon and Nvidia's GeForce products  —  Intel has officially confirmed that its first discrete graphics chip will land as soon as 2020.
Dan Primack / Axios:
Sources: e-scooter company Bird is seeking to raise ~$200M in new funding at a $2B valuation; just three months ago the startup raised at a $300M valuation  —  E-scooter company Bird is seeking to raise around $200 million in new funding at a $2 billion valuation, according to multiple sources.
Andrew Wong / CNBC:
Toyota says it will invest $1B in Southeast Asian ride-hailing service Grab, and a Toyota executive will be appointed to Grab's board of directors  —  Japan's Toyota Motor will invest $1 billion into Southeast Asian ride-sharing app Grab, the Singapore-based company said Wednesday.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google Translate expands offline translation support to 59 languages including Italian, Greek, Norwegian, and Swahili  —  Currently, when the Google Translate apps for iOS and Android has access to the internet, its translations are far superior to those it produces when it's offline.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Instagram adds shopping tags directly into Stories, so now users can tap a shopping bag icon to learn more about buying a particular item  —  Instagram's shoppable tags are about to pop up in Stories.  The company first started testing the feature back in 2016 with a limited set of 20 partners.
Erin Griffith / Wired:
Within the crowded crypto industry's deafening hype and bubbly scams, an economy of promoters is thriving, assisting with PR, marketing, moderation, and more  —  IT TOOK ONLY a few months for Sally, an executive assistant living in British Columbia, to become Crypto Sally …
Bryan Menegus / Gizmodo:
Seattle's city council votes 7-2 to repeal its “head tax” law, less than a month after unanimously passing the contentious tax on big business  —  Less than a month after unanimously passing a contentious tax on big business, Seattle's city council has voted to repeal the so-called “head tax.”
Siobhan Hughes / Wall Street Journal:
Bipartisan group of senators move to stop Trump's deal to give ZTE a lifeline amid US export ban, by adding ZTE export ban as amendment to defense spending bill  —  White House sent top official to Capitol Hill to lobby against bipartisan effort to reverse pact to revive the Chinese telecommunications company
Khadeeja Safdar / Wall Street Journal:
Facebook says it's rolling out a feature to let users rate e-commerce businesses and may ban or reduce ads for those with poor feedback  —  New feature lets shoppers share their experiences; negative feedback could lead to bans  —  Facebook Inc. FB 1.29% is cracking down on e-commerce businesses …
Brad Sams / Thurrott.com:
Internal document: Microsoft is planning for the next Xbox console release to arrive in 2020  —  While Microsoft may have been founded as being a software company, there is no question about it that they are a hardware company too.  With the Surface family, the Xbox, and peripherals …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
French startup Exotec Solutions raised a $17.7M Series B led by Iris Capital for its automated warehouse robots  —  French startup Exotec Solutions raised a $17.7 million funding round (€15 million) from Iris Capital with existing investors 360 Capital Partners and Breega also participating.
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Josh Constine / TechCrunch: