Techmeme
December 13, 2018, 12:25 PM

Top News

Ina Fried / Axios:
Apple announces a $1B Austin campus initially for 5,000 workers, new offices in Seattle, San Diego, and Culver City, and expansions in several other US cities  —  Apple plans to build a new $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas, adding thousands of jobs, while also setting up new large offices in Seattle …
Corbin Davenport / Android Police:
Amazon starts selling the Chromecast Ultra and third-gen Chromecast, nearly a year after it promised to sell Chromecast devices again  —  Amazon pulled the Chromecast from its online store in 2015, after it instated a new rule that only streaming devices that supported Prime Video could be sold.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Robinhood launches checking and savings accounts in the US with a 3% interest rate and no minimum balance or fees for overdrafts or foreign transactions  —  Robinhood is undercutting the big banks by forgoing brick-and-mortar branches with its new zero-fee checking and savings account features.
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Sources: stablecoin project Basis, backed by Bain Capital, GV, and a16z, is closing due to regulatory issues and returning most of the $133M capital raised  —  Basis, one of the most well-known stablecoin projects, is shutting down and returning nearly all capital raised to investors.
J. David Goodman / New York Times:
How Amazon is trying to quell opposition to its new NYC offices by hiring well-connected lobbyists and taking to the streets to hear residents' concerns  —  Amazon is trying to quell rising opposition to its plan for offices in New York, hiring well-connected lobbyists to make its case …
Amy Gesenhues / Marketing Land:
Facebook says it is rolling out Watch globally on desktop and Facebook Lite and expands availability of Ad Breaks, 15-second in-stream ads, to 14 more markets  —  Says more than 75 million daily Watch visitors spend, on average, more than 20 minutes on the video platform.
Joshua Goldman / CNET:
Samsung upgrades its two-in-one Notebook 9 Pen with a new 15-inch option, updated S Pen, and a promise of 15 hours of battery life, coming in 2019  —  With its updated Notebook 9 Pen two-in-one laptop, Samsung is targeting creative professionals who want the flexibility of both a laptop …
Gillian Brockell / Washington Post:
Tech companies should automatically turn off irrelevant ads based on info users share, such as ads for baby gear when a pregnant person has a stillborn child  —  Dear Tech Companies:  —  I know you knew I was pregnant.  It's my fault, I just couldn't resist those Instagram hashtags — #30weekspregnant, #babybump.
Holly Brockwell / Gizmodo UK:
Arielle Pardes / Wired:
Postmates announces Serve, an autonomous rover launching soon in LA, and says it now averages 4M deliveries per month in 550+ cities  —  HANGING ON THE wall of Postmates' stealth R&D laboratory, there's a framed photo of an iconic scene from Star Wars, Luke Skywalker bent down beside R2D2.
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Finalcad, a mobile platform that allows the construction industry to digitize its processes, raises $40M Series C led by London-based Draper Esprit  —  Finalcad, a mobile platform that enables the construction industry to digitize much of its processes, has closed $40 million in Series C funding.
More: VentureBeat.  Thanks:@sohear
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
How making products easier to use can steer users toward unhealthy behaviors, like viewing overly extreme content that autoplays, or lead to security breaches  —  Seven years ago, a younger and more carefree Mark Zuckerberg went onstage at Facebook's annual developer conference and announced …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
SEC settles with the former CEO and COO of AriseBank, which it sued in January for alleged fraud and issuing unregistered securities during an ICO, for $2.7M+  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has settled charges with two former executives of AriseBank, which was hit with a token sale fraud lawsuit in early 2018.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
YouTube's annual Rewind video received 10M dislikes in about eight days, overtaking Justin Bieber's Baby to be the most disliked video  —  Creators help explain why  —  To say that this year's YouTube Rewind didn't go over well with the YouTube community would be quite an understatement.
Peter Bright / Ars Technica:
Intel unveils 10nm Sunny Cove architecture, built to execute more instructions in parallel with lower latency, better cryptography support, and more  —  Finally, a move away from just bundling more cores together.  —  In 2019, Intel will release Core and Xeon chips built around a new architecture …
Brian Barrett / Wired:

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Earlier Picks

Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Colin Lecher / The Verge:
Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed: