Techmeme
April 30, 2019, 4:44 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook Dating launches in 14 more countries, will come to US in 2019, adds Secret Crush feature to let users select up to 9 friends for Tinder-like matching  —  Facebook built Dating to be privacy-safe, hoping to avoid the awkwardness of friends or family checking out your romance profile.
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Messenger adds a Close Friends tab, the ability for users to book appointments with merchants, other business tools like lead generation chatbot templates, more  —  To win chat, Facebook Messenger must be as accessible as SMS, yet more entertaining than Snapchat.
Richard Nieva / CNET:
Zuckerberg opens F8 reiterating Facebook's new focus on a “privacy-focused communications platform” prioritizing end-to-end encryption and interoperability  —  Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is doubling down on privacy.  —  At F8, the social network's annual developer conference …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Facebook unveils plans for Messenger app for Windows and macOS, a new social video-watching feature, a lightweight and full-featured version of Messenger, more  —  Ahead of its annual F8 developer conference in San Jose, Facebook has offered a glimpse into some of the things it's cooking …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Instagram is launching a camera redesign to make it easier to make high quality posts without importing media, adds dedicated shopping tags for creators  —  Turning Instagram into a more robust commerce platform  —  Instagram is announcing a couple of new features today that are designed …
Ian Sherr / CNET:
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Bird is launching monthly scooter rentals for $24.99 in San Francisco and Barcelona  —  The company will even deliver the scooter right to your front door  —  If using an app to track down a nearby electric scooter to rent is too much of a crapshoot, Bird is now offering monthly rentals …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
General counsel to both Bitfinex and Tether says in an affidavit that the USDT stablecoin is only 74% backed by cash and equivalents as of April 30  —  The USDT stablecoin is only about 74 percent backed by fiat equivalents as of April 30, says its issuer's general counsel.
Ju-min Park / Reuters:
Samsung posts a profit of $5.4B in Q1, down 60% YoY, as its semiconductor and mobile businesses post a 64% drop and a 40% drop in operating profits respectively  —  SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd posted a 60 percent drop in first-quarter operating profit on Tuesday …
BBC:
Vodafone denies report that said Huawei could have had unauthorized access to the carrier's fixed-line network in Italy, saying the issues were caught and fixed  —  Vodafone has revealed that it found vulnerabilities in equipment supplied to it by Huawei in Italy 10 years ago.
Bloomberg:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Creative Commons launches its search engine out of beta, with over 300M images indexed  —  Nonprofit organization Creative Commons is today publicly launching its search engine, after over two years of beta testing.  The new service is designed to offer an easy way to search the commons' archive …
Tweets: @mattmcgee
Wall Street Journal:
Cable operator Altice USA agrees to acquire streaming-video network Cheddar for $200M; Cheddar founder Jon Steinberg to become president of the Altice News unit  —  Cheddar founder and CEO Jon Steinberg is set to become president of Altice News, overseeing Cheddar, News 12 and i24News
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
NSA says the number of warrantless search queries conducted by the NSA of Americans' data rose 28% in 2018  —  The intelligence community's annual transparency report revealed a spike in the number of warrantless searches of Americans' data in 2018.  —  The data, published Tuesday by the Office …
Tweets: @dangillmor
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Microsoft's game streaming platform Mixer now lets streamers reward fans for participation, not just subscriptions, with a feature called Channel Progression  —  On game streaming platforms today, there's really only one way to earn status within a creator's community: you have to become a subscriber.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
UiPath, a process automation platform targeting IT businesses, raises $568M Series D led by Coatue, at a $7B valuation  —  Companies are on the hunt for ways to reduce the time and money it costs their employees to perform repetitive tasks, so today a startup that has built a business …
Apple:
Apple reports Q2 revenue of $58B, down 5% YoY, with international sales accounting for 61% of Q2 revenue, record services revenue of $11.5B; stock up 4%+  —  Services Revenue Reaches New All-Time High of $11.5 Billion  —  Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2019 second quarter ended March 30, 2019.
More: MacRumors and The Verge

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More News

Joseph Cox / Motherboard:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

Earlier Picks

Sally Khudairi / The Apache Software Foundation Blog:
Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: