Techmeme: Figure, which uses blockchain tech to provide home equity loans, raises $65M; founded over a year ago by ex-SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, Figure has raised $120M total (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

FTC settles with Musical.ly, now TikTok, for $5.7M, over the app's violation of US child privacy laws; TikTok's app updates with a new UX for users 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 …

Roland Li / San Francisco Chronicle:

In a letter to the CA government, 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.

More: Business Insider, AppleInsider, Mashable, Firstpost, SiliconANGLE, Cult of Mac, iPhone Hacks, SlashGear, Engadget, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, CNET, iDownloadBlog.com, MAC blog, and Boing Boing

Tweets: @neilcybart, @sfchronicle, @karlhodge, and @chrissyfarr

Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:

Figure, which uses blockchain tech to provide home equity loans, raises $65M; founded over a year ago by ex-SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, Figure has raised $120M total — Figure, a 13-month-old, San Francisco-based company that says it uses blockchain technology to provide home equity loans online …

More: PR Newswire, CoinDesk, American Banker, PYMNTS.com, Barron's Online, The Block, SiliconANGLE, Cointelegraph, FinSMEs, and PE Hub Blog. Tweets: @ekp

The Seattle Times:

Though Seattle repealed its “head tax”, Amazon says it won't use the 722K sq. ft. in Rainier Square tower it had leased, which would have housed up to 5K staff — The lease was one of the biggest in Seattle history — enough space to hold at least 3,500 employees and perhaps up to 5,000.

More: GeekWire, Curbed Seattle, The Real Deal New York, Financial Times, Fox Business, Splinter, KING-TV, Gizmodo, MyNorthwest.com, Fortune, Business Insider, and CNBC

Tweets: @jasonrantz, @cmkshama, @byrosenberg, and @cruickshank

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud survey of enterprises and SMBs: 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 …

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

Tweets: @mdymondyyz, @lawrencehecht, @lawrencehecht, and @lawrencehecht

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, PYMNTS.com, Bitcoinist.com, ZDNet, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Investor's Business Daily, and Cointelegraph

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

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, The Merkle Hash, NewsBTC, Security Boulevard, SiliconANGLE, Cointelegraph, and BleepingComputer

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

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:

Dow Jones' watchlist of 2.4M high-risk individuals, including current and former politicians, criminals, and terrorists, was exposed on an unsecured AWS server — A watchlist of risky individuals and corporate entities owned by Dow Jones has been exposed, after a company with access …

More: Security Discovery, SiliconANGLE, Engadget, and CNET. Tweets: @techcrunch

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:

BlackBerry sues Twitter for allegedly infringing six messaging patents; BlackBerry sued Facebook and Snap in 2018, also alleging messaging patent infringement — (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd on Wednesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit accusing Twitter Inc of illegally using technology …

More: Engadget and TechCrunch. Tweets: @sub8u

Roger Cheng / CNET:

Source: Motorola plans to launch its foldable smartphone, likely a revival of the Razr brand, this summer — Motorola is jumping into foldable phones. And it's likely doing it with one of the most iconic names in the business. — Motorola, a unit of Chinese consumer electronics giant Lenovo …

More: Engadget, 9to5Google, Android Authority, MSPoweruser, Gizmochina, Pocket-lint, ExtremeTech, Business Insider, XDA Developers, Android Police, TechSpot, SlashGear, Fortune, Droid Life, The Verge, and Fast Company. Tweets: @chrisvelazco. Thanks:@rogerwcheng

Thomas Brewster / Forbes:

Equipment from Cellebrite, popular with law enforcement for hacking into iOS/Android devices, is selling for $100-$1,000 on eBay; new units usually cost $6,000 — When eBay merchant Mr. Balaj was looking through a pile of hi-fi junk at an auction in the U.K., he came across an odd-looking device.

More: Softpedia News, Mashable, and AppleInsider

Tweets: @iblametom and @forbes

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: The Guardian, NBC News, and Boing Boing

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

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 24%+ 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, Box, Inc., and TechCrunch. Tweets: @sallyshin

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 14%+ 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, Fitbit, Inc., and CNBC

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

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

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, Social Media Today, Firstpost, CNET, TechNode, Mashable, Adweek, and FutureSin. Tweets: @owenc

Maya Kosoff / OneZero:

While Amazon's board has become more diverse, as of January, 44 of 48 execs in Amazon's upper ranks were reportedly men and zero VPs were African-American — Beyond social justice, experts call it a business liability — or all the advances Amazon has made, it still can't seem to figure out diversity.

Tweets: @jeremykonyndyk and @mvzelenks

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Ionic Security, which helps companies secure sensitive data stored on enterprise clouds and devices, raises $40M Series E, bringing total raised to $162.4M — Atlanta, Georgia-based Ionic Security (formerly Social Fortress) has raised $40 million in series E financing led by JPMorgan Chase …

More: FinSMEs, Atlanta Business Journal, PR Newswire, and Hypepotamus. Tweets: @gvteam

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

Study of VC-backed deals over the last five years finds that 77.1% of VC-backed founders were white, 1% were black, and 9.2% of startup founders were female — Maybe the VC community is tired of hearing about it; certainly, there are plenty of people who are tired of dealing with it.

More: RateMyInvestor and DiversityVC

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