Techmeme
January 16, 2020, 9:10 AM

Top News

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Internal memo: Mozilla lays off ~70 after its 2019 plans to boost revenue streams outside of search, like new subscription products, did not pan out  —  Mozilla laid off about 70 employees today, TechCrunch has learned.  —  In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell …
Alan Boyle / GeekWire:
Sources: Apple has acquired Seattle-based Xnor.ai, which develops low-power, edge-based AI image recognition tools, for around $200M  —  Apple has acquired Xnor.ai, a Seattle startup specializing in low-power, edge-based artificial intelligence tools, sources with knowledge of the deal told GeekWire.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Fitbit confirms it has begun the rollout of blood oxygen monitoring feature to some of its wearables  —  Fitbit's devices from recent years have blood oxygen monitoring (SpO2) hardware, but they haven't used it — until now.  Users on Reddit and elsewhere have noticed that their Versa …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Microsoft begins rolling out its Chromium-based Edge browser, available now for Windows and macOS  —  Right on schedule, Microsoft today launched its new Edge browser based on Google's Chromium open source project.  You can download Chromium Edge now for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
In a tweet, Trump criticizes Apple for refusing to unlock phones of violent criminals and says his administration helps Apple “all of the time” on trade  —  - In a tweet, president Donald Trump addressed the conflict between the FBI and Apple over locked iPhones used by the suspected Pensacola shooter.
New York Times:
Yuan Yang / Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Kim Hart / Axios:
PitchBook: West Coast's share of total US VC deal value dropped to 50.2% in 2019 vs. 62.3% in 2018; 78% of funding went to CA, NY, and MA, up from 75% in 2018  —  Venture capital investment is seeping out from Silicon Valley to the rest of the country, but the West Coast still dominates the market by a wide margin.
Alexis C. Madrigal / The Atlantic:
As tech becomes the dominant force in the modern economy, Silicon Valley's culture since 1970s of nimble startups successfully challenging incumbents is fading  —  For decades, whole regions, nations even, have tried to model themselves on a particular ideal of innovation, the lifeblood of the modern economy.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
As companies comply with privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, many have insecure practices for giving users their data and some outsource user identity verification  —  A new California privacy law gives consumers the right to see and delete their data.  But getting access often requires giving up more personal details.
Adam Bluestein / Marker:
Tom Schmidt / Dragonfly Research:
A look at the role of liquidators in the decentralized finance ecosystem, who make money by liquidating under-collateralized loans on crypto lending platforms  —  Over the past two years, a number of decentralized lending protocols, including MakerDAO, Compound, dYdX, and others …

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More News

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Earlier Picks

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James Vincent / The Verge:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: