Techmeme: Sensor Tower: TikTok passed 1B downloads on Android and iOS, excluding Android installs in China; 663M downloads came in 2018, beating Instagram's 444M (Isobel Asher Hamilton/Business Insider)

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

FTC settles with TikTok's Musical.ly for $5.7M over the app's violation of US child privacy laws; TikTok's app updates today with a new UX for those under 13 — A significant FTC ruling issued today will see video app TikTok fined $5.7 million for violating U.S. children's privacy laws …

More: Federal Trade Commission, TikTok Newsroom, Washington Post, The Verge, Axios, USA Today, The Verge, The Hill, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed News, Wired, Engadget, Mashable, Fortune, CNET, Digital Music News, PYMNTS.com, The Wrap, Variety, Tubefilter, Boing Boing, and epic.org

Tweets: @tlordan, @shiraovide, @profcarroll, @joshconstine, @joshconstine, @mrdylancollins, and @stokel

See also Mediagazer

Roland Li / San Francisco Chronicle:

Filing: Apple confirms that 190 employees, including 124 engineers, will be laid off from its self-driving car division on April 16 — Apple will lay off 190 employees in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale in its self-driving car division, the company said. — The layoffs were disclosed …

More: Business Insider, Engadget, MacRumors, CNET, 9to5Mac, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, SlashGear, iDownloadBlog.com, MAC blog, and Boing Boing. Tweets: @sfchronicle

Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:

Crowdtangle data: a small number of Facebook Pages created 46% of the top 10,000 posts for or against vaccines, with 20% generated by seven anti-vax Pages — Squelching vaccine misinformation might be easier than the platform makes it seem. — Look up vaccinations on Facebook …

More: NBC News and Boing Boing

Tweets: @doritmi, @triketora, @theatlantic, @alexismadrigal, and @zeyneparsel

Isobel Asher Hamilton / Business Insider:

Sensor Tower: TikTok passed 1B downloads on Android and iOS, excluding Android installs in China; 663M downloads came in 2018, beating Instagram's 444M — - Chinese short-form video app TikTok has been downloaded 1 billion times across Android and iOS, according to Sensor Tower figures.

More: Sensor Tower Blog, USA Today, CNET, TechNode, Mashable, and FutureSin. Tweets: @owenc

Mariella Moon / Engadget:

Samsung begins mass production of 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 chips for smartphones, with speeds of up to 2,100 MB/s — Samsung's future phones, including the Galaxy Fold, will have read and write speeds comparable with snappy ultra-fast laptops.

More: Samsung Global Newsroom, BGR, Gizchina, TechSpot, 9to5Google, Android Authority, Neowin, and SlashGear

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud report: Azure adoption grew from 45% to 52%, reaching 85% of AWS adoption, up from 70% last year — The RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera highlights how enterprises are spending more on cloud computing, but are getting concerned about optimizing their spending.

More: Flexera, Forbes, TechRepublic, CRN, InfoWorld, diginomica, TechRepublic, BetaNews, and Security Boulevard

Kate Rooney / CNBC:

Square reports Q4 adjusted revenue of $464M, up 64% YoY, 15M Cash App MAUs in Dec. 2018, up from 7M YoY, issues weak Q1 guidance; stock down 6%+ after hours — - Payment company Square reported fourth-quarter results that beat analysts' expectations for earnings and revenue on Wednesday.

More: Square Investor Relations, ZDNet, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, and Investor's Business Daily

Tweets: @selina_y_wang, @delrey, @lamonicabuzz, @dee_bosa, and @jonerlichman

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Review of Shadow Ghost, a $140 streaming game console made by French startup Blade, which runs a $35/month cloud gaming service that now has ~65,000 subscribers — French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is launching a new set-top box to access its cloud gaming service — the Shadow Ghost.

More: Engadget, CNN, MMORPG.com, shadow.tech, Tom's Guide, CNET, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, IGN, and VentureBeat

Tweets: @shadow_usa, @mikel_triny, @im_ebg, and @shadow_usa

Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:

An in-depth analysis of social media platforms through the lens of social capital theory and why we should think of them as “Status as a Service” businesses — Editor's Note 1: I have no editor. — Editor's Note 2: I would like to assure new subscribers to this blog that most my posts are not as long as this one.

Tweets: @eugenewei, @naval, @carnage4life, @asemota, @ingridlunden, @carnage4life, @carnage4life, @dkthomp, @besvinick, @sriramk, and @kevinakwok

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:

Coinhive, an in-browser Monero miner known for cryptojacking, says it will shut down on March 8, citing the crypto crash and a recent Monero hard fork — Coinhive wanted to be an alternative to classic banner ads but it became malware after constant abuse.

More: Coinhive, BleepingComputer, Cointelegraph, and The Block

Tweets: @campuscodi, @campuscodi, and @zackwhittaker. Thanks:@campuscodi

James Vincent / The Verge:

FedEx begins trialling SameDay Bot, an autonomous robot that can travel at 10 MPH, for same-day deliveries in Memphis, with plans to expand elsewhere — Trials of the robot, which has a top speed of 10 mph, will begin later this year — Startups do it. Amazon does it.

More: Engadget, ZDNet, CNBC, Digital Trends, Neowin, iPhone Hacks, Socialnomics, and Mashable

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Russian court hands former Russian cybersecurity chief and a Kaspersky Lab executive lengthy prison sentences after being convicted on treason charges — A Russian court has handed down lengthy prison terms for two men convicted on treason charges for allegedly sharing information …

More: NBC News, WinBuzzer, New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Dark Reading

The Keyword:

Google and DeepMind are using AI to predict the power output of wind farms 36 hours ahead of actual generation, boosting economic value of wind energy by ~20% — Carbon-free technologies like renewable energy help combat climate change, but many of them have not reached their full potential.

More: EnterpriseTech, SlashGear, TechSpot, MIT Technology Review, The Register, Fortune, Forbes, The Verge, VentureBeat, Engadget, and 9to5Google

The Verge:

After Project Veritas posts internal Facebook documents, Facebook says it fired a contractor a year ago who worked with the right-wing sting group on a “stunt” — Project Veritas published Facebook moderation conversations — Facebook says it fired a contractor who worked …

More: YouTube. Tweets: @russellbrandom and @mikeisaac

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:

Box misses Q4 expectations with $163.7M revenue, up 20% YoY and compared to $164.2M estimated, and issues weak Q1 guidance; stock drops 23%+ after hours — - Shares of Box fell as much as 23 percent in after hours trading Wednesday after the company reported its Q4 2019 earnings.

More: ZDNet, TechCrunch, and Box, Inc.. Tweets: @sallyshin

Ian Allison / CoinDesk:

Nivaura, which aims to use blockchains to automate the lifecycle for the issuance of financial instruments, raises $20M led by the London Stock Exchange — Capital markets blockchain startup Nivaura has raised a total of $20 million with the closing of its second seed extension round led by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

More: Reuters, Bitcoinist.com, Finextra Research Headlines, FinSMEs, Tech.eu, and The Block

Tweets: @prestonjbyrne and @travisscher

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Fitbit reports Q4 net income of $15.4M on revenue of $571.2M and says it sold 13.9M wearables in 2018, down 9% YoY; stock down 11%+ after hours — James Park, CEO of Fitbit, said “we expect our Fitbit Health Solutions revenue growth to accelerate to approximately $100 million and to grow non-device consumer revenue.”

More: MarketWatch, CNBC, and Fitbit, Inc.

New York Times:

How Chinese tech companies are hurriedly rolling out facial and voice recognition tech for pigs, many of which are dying from a deadly swine disease — As a devastating disease afflicts the country's swine, companies are scrambling to roll out facial and voice recognition and other unproven ways to save them.

More: Boing Boing and TechNode

Tweets: @joshtetrick and @billschrier

Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:

Sendoso, which sends customized gifts to current and prospective clients at scale for a monthly fee, raises $10.7M Series A led by David Sacks' Craft Ventures — In today's noisy, fast-paced world, finding a way to let clients and potential customers know that they are top of mind can be a major challenge for companies.

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Boston-based job-seeking platform Jobcase raises $100M in growth equity funding led by Providence Strategic Growth, bringing total raised to $118.9M — Jobcase, a self-described open access platform for jobs seekers and employers, today announced that it has secured $100 million …

More: FinSMEs, GlobeNewswire News Room, and Xconomy

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