Techmeme
August 16, 2018, 11:55 PM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it's ending legacy API support, used by third-party apps like Tweetbot, due to “technical and business constraints”  —  It's hard to be a fan of Twitter right now.  The company is sticking up for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, when nearly all other platforms …
New York Times:
Sources: about 1,000 Google employees have signed a letter demanding more transparency following reports of Google developing a censored search engine for China  —  Hundreds of Google employees, upset at the company's decision to secretly build a censored version of its search engine for China …
Ryan Nakashima / Associated Press:
Google revises help page that describes how its “Location History” setting works, clarifying that it still tracks location even if the setting is turned off  —  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has revised a help page that erroneously described how its “Location History” setting works …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Nvidia reports Q2 revenues of $3.12B, up 40% YoY, vs. $3.1B est., net income of $1.1B, gaming business revenue of $1.81B, and data center revenue of $760M  —  Nvidia stock fell by 6 percent on Thursday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and lower-than-expected revenue guidance.
Erin Pearson / The Age:
Unnamed Melbourne-based 16-year-old pleads guilty to repeatedly breaching Apple's systems and downloading 90GB of sensitive files  —  A Melbourne private schoolboy who repeatedly broke into Apple's secure computer systems is facing criminal charges after the technology giant called in the FBI.
Dan Primack / Axios:
DoorDash raises $250M at a $4B valuation, says it met or exceeded most of metrics set during its March Series D and had 250% YoY growth in delivery volume  —  Food delivery startup DoorDash on Thursday said it has raised $250 million in new venture capital funding at a $4 billion post-money valuation.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it's begun removing content violating its drug policies and has blocked hundreds of search terms and search suggestions associated with drug sales  —  Facebook's role in the opioid crisis could become another scandal following yesterday's release of harrowing new statistics from the Center for Disease Control.
Zach Dorfman / Foreign Policy:
Current and former US officials say CIA's communication system used for sources in China was compromised, leading to China executing ~30 US spies from 2010-2012  —  The number of informants executed in the debacle is higher than initially thought.  —  It was considered one of the CIA's worst failures …
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Sony says it has sold 3M PlayStation VR headsets since their fall 2016 launch, up from 2M at the end of 2017  —  Sony announced that it has sold 3 million PlayStation VR (PSVR) headsets as of the end of July, showing that its popularity has declined little since the fall 2016 launch.
Marguerite Reardon / CNET:
In Senate hearing, Ajit Pai says he doubted claims FCC's comment system was taken down by an attack, but says IG asked him to keep quiet until the full report  —  FCC chairman Ajit Pai was on the defense Thursday during a Senate oversight hearing when he was questioned about why he didn't correct …
Allison Schiff / AdExchanger:
RevJet, which helps marketers test and manage digital advertising, offers ad-serving features like DoubleClick's, raises $21M Series A led by Nautic Partners  —  RevJet wants to be an operating system for the customer experience, and it's using a $21 million Series A round to get there.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Credit Karma acquires mortgage platform Approved for an undisclosed sum, says it's a natural next step to get into the mortgage business  —  Credit Karma, the service best known for providing free credit score monitoring and other financial advice (mostly to millennials), is getting into the mortgage business.
More: PYMNTS.com
Nikkei:
Sources: Google prepares to launch its own smart speaker with display for the holiday season, 3M units planned for first batch  —  Taiwan suppliers told to prepare for hardware blitz to challenge Amazon  —  TAIPEI — Google is preparing to release a smart speaker equipped with a display …
More: 9to5Google
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: President Trump has reversed classified Obama-era rules governing use of cyberweapons in an effort to loosen restrictions on such operations  —  It isn't clear what rules the president is adopting to replace the existing ones  —  President Trump has reversed an Obama-era memorandum governing …
Jack Ellis / Tech in Asia:
Vietnamese online marketplace Sendo raises $51M Series B led by SBI Group, with participation from SoftBank and others, and says it has 300K sellers  —  Major investment players like SoftBank and SBI Group are betting big on Vietnam's burgeoning ecommerce market with their latest investment.

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More News

David Gorman / The Irish Times:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Issie Lapowsky / Wired:
John Herrman / New York Times:
Arjun Panchadar / Reuters: