Techmeme
March 28, 2019, 10:15 PM

Top News

Russell Brandom / The Verge:
US Department of Housing and Urban Development files charges against Facebook, saying the company's ad targeting tools enable violations of Fair Housing Act  —  'Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,' says HUD secretary
Washington Post:
CNBC:
Lyft prices IPO at $72 per share, which would value the company at over $20B and hit the top of its expected range  —  - Ride-hailing platform Lyft was funded early on by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Mayfield, K9 Ventures, Floodgate and others.  — Lyft is one of several aging start-ups expected …
Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac:
Twitter expands dark mode options for iOS users with a pure black Lights Out mode and an Automatic Dark Mode  —  Twitter has announced today that it is expanding its dark mode options for iOS users.  Adding to the blue/gray dark mode theme that the platform has offered for a while …
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
UK's review of Huawei's telecommunications equipment finds “significant” security problems but does not call for an outright ban  —  LONDON — A British review of Huawei found “significant” security problems with the Chinese company's telecommunications equipment …
Joel Spolsky / Stack Overflow Blog:
Joel Spolsky announces he will step down as CEO of Stack Overflow and become chairman of the board, says the company booked $70M in revenue last year  —  Big news!  We're looking for a new CEO for Stack Overflow.  I'm stepping out of the day-to-day and up to the role of Chairman of the Board.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Verizon rolls out a free version of Call Filter, its $3/month spam and robocall protection service  —  Now you don't have to pay extra money to battle against spam and robocalls  —  Verizon is taking new steps to combat the unrelenting nuisance of spam calls.
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
More Apple Card details, including that a user can generate virtual card numbers for online non-Apple Pay purchases at any time by tapping a button  —  One of the most buzzy announcements on Apple's stage this week was Apple Card, its in-house credit card powered by Goldman Sachs and Mastercard.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook launches new Ad Library that now makes all active ads and inactive political ads searchable, opens Ad Library API to all Facebook-verified developers  —  Now you can search Facebook for how much Trump has spent on ads in the past year, which Pages' ads reference immigration, or what a Page's previous names were.
Jake Kanter / Business Insider:
Leaked Facebook emails reveal intense discussion over an anti-Semitic Instagram post by Alex Jones before it was taken down  —  - Business Insider has seen a lengthy Facebook email chain in which executives discuss Alex Jones' future on Instagram and removing an inflammatory post.
Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal:
FTC has secured $1.5B worth of fines from robocallers through court judgments since 2004 and has collected $121M or 8% of that amount  —  America's telecommunications watchdogs have levied hefty financial penalties against illegal robocallers and demanded that bad actors repay millions to their victims.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Spotify is testing Premium Duo, a discounted subscription for two for €12.49 a month, that includes a playlist based on both users' listening habits  —  Includes a new playlist based on both your listening habits  —  Spotify is testing a new subscription called Premium Duo that offers …
Zoë Bernard / The Information:
Source: Carta, formerly eShares, is close to completing a $300M funding round led by a16z at a ~$1.8B valuation; Carta raised $80M in December  —  Carta, a startup that helps investors manage their equity stakes in private companies, is close to having a new set of investors of its own.
Tweets: @teddyschleifer
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Study: 5.5% of the top 10K HTTPS websites have exploitable TLS flaws subtle enough that the green SSL certificate padlock still appears in up-to-date browsers  —  WIDESPREAD ADOPTION OF the web encryption scheme HTTPS has added a lot of green padlocks—and corresponding data protection—to the web.
Aditi Shrivastava / The Economic Times:
Indian ride-hailing company Ola to launch a car rental service in the coming weeks; sources: Ola will invest more than $500M in the service  —  Homegrown ride-hailing platform Ola will invest over $500 million to launch a ‘self-drive’ service aimed at broadening its portfolio of transportation solutions …
More: Entrackr
Ryan Gallagher / The Intercept:
Sources: Google is secretly assessing work completed on Dragonfly, its censored search engine for China, leaving some staff concerned that work on it continues  —  Google executives are carrying out a secret internal assessment of work on a censored search engine for China, The Intercept has learned.

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