Techmeme
February 14, 2019, 11:15 PM

Top News

J. David Goodman / New York Times:
Amazon says it has canceled plans to build HQ2 in New York City, focusing instead on Northern Virginia and Nashville, following backlash  —  Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers …
More: The Amazon Blog, The Verge, GeekWire, CNN, GeekWire, Recode, Bloomberg, Reuters, Business Insider, Gizmodo, Financial Times, SiliconANGLE, The Atlantic, Recode, eWeek, Thurrott, CNBC, Reuters, Business Insider, CNN, Axios, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Ringer, Wall Street Journal, Tangentialism is David Yee, VentureBeat, The Daily Beast, Bloomberg, CNET, New York Daily News, Bloomberg, The Register, Bloomberg, Mashable, TechCrunch, Gothamist, TechCo, Fox News, USA Today, GeekWire, Wired, Telegraph, Bloomberg, Investor's Business Daily, Xconomy, WKYC-TV, ZDNet, lohud.com, Business Insider, The Wrap, Variety, CityLab, Vox, Boing Boing, Bloomberg, The Hill, Neowin, PYMNTS.com, Light Reading, CBS New York, Motherboard, Fortune, Quartz, Ars Technica, and Curbed NY
Natt Garun / The Verge:
Amazon dropping its NYC HQ plans was a win for activists, but some local tech leaders believe it sends a poor message to other companies wanting to invest in NY  —  “A self-own by the entire NYC ecosystem”  —  Amazon's decision to drop plans for a New York City headquarters was so abrupt …
Bloomberg:
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Sources: the FTC and Facebook are negotiating a record multi-billion dollar fine to settle the agency's investigation into the company's privacy practices  —  The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are negotiating over a multi-billion dollar fine that would settle the agency's investigation …
James Vincent / The Verge:
OpenAI says it won't release the dataset behind GPT-2, its new text generator algorithm that can write, translate, and summarize text, due to fears of misuse  —  OpenAI's researchers knew they were on to something when their language modeling program wrote a convincing essay on a topic they disagreed with.
Hugh Son / CNBC:
JP Morgan has created JPM Coin, a digital token tied to the US dollar that will be used to instantly settle transactions; trials set to start in a few months  —  - Engineers at the lender have created the “JPM Coin,” a digital token that will be used to instantly settle transactions between clients of its wholesale payments business.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sources: Facebook keeps a “lookout” list of ex-employees and users who made threats against the company, and sometimes uses its products to track their location  —  - Facebook maintains a list of individuals that its security guards must “be on lookout” for that is comprised …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Apple says it will resume selling banned iPhone 7 and 8 models in Germany using only chips from Qualcomm, after it had “no choice” but to stop using Intel chips  —  (Reuters) - Apple Inc said Thursday that it will resume selling older iPhone models in its stores in Germany …
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
JibJab, one of the first companies that let people insert selfies into videos, GIFs and e-cards, has been acquired by Catapult Capital for an undisclosed sum  —  JibJab, one of the first companies that let people insert selfies into videos, gifs, and e-cards, has been acquired by Catapult Capital.
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
Facebook says it is exploring ways to address anti-vaccine misinformation including reducing or removing it from recommendations and demotion in search results  —  Facebook Inc., under pressure to reduce harmful, misleading and fake content, said it is exploring removing anti-vaccine information …
Tim Peterson / Digiday:
Sources: Snap is offering $40K to $50K per episode for original series that premiere on Snapchat, wants 10-12 episodes per series, each up to seven minutes long  —  DIGIDAY+ MEMBER ARTICLE  —  Snap is willing to pay for original shows, and it's enough to pique entertainment executives' interest …
TechCrunch:
Alibaba's Ant Financial buys London-based payments company WorldFirst in a deal that sources say is valued at around $700M  —  Ant Financial, the financial services giant affiliated with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has made its first big move into Europe.
Marco Chown Oved / Toronto Star:
Internal docs show Google's Sidewalk Labs plans expansion in Toronto's Port Lands, seeks share of property taxes, development fees in return  —  Google's futuristic development on the eastern waterfront, Quayside, is only the first step in an expansive and ambitious plan to build new neighbourhoods …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Pinpoint, which is building a data analytics platform for software engineering, raises $13.5M Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners  —  For those without the technical know-how, software development — which more often than not involves a tangled web of commits, reviews, bug testing …
More: FinSMEs and TechCrunch

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James Vincent / The Verge: