Techmeme
February 4, 2020, 8:35 PM

Top News

Charlie Warzel / New York Times:
Shadow's Iowa failure was a dangerous combination of techno-utopianism and laziness, which led to slapdash software engineering, procurement, and deployment  —  Democrats desperately need to win the internet to beat Trump.  Their first big test was a massive failure.  —  Mr. Warzel is an opinion writer at large.
HuffPost:
Sources: Shadow, a company affiliated with Democratic digital nonprofit ACRONYM, built the Iowa caucus app that contributed to delays in reporting results  —  Shadow, a Democratic digital firm, created the app that was supposed to deliver quicker caucus results.
@rabble:
[Thread] Democratic campaign tech projects suffer from one-off startup-like funding with no money for further development, lack of trust between campaigns, more  —  If you want to understand what happened with Shadow and the failure of the Iowa Caucus app you have to understand how electoral campaign tech work is done and funded. Let me tell you a story to make sense of it.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Some users' Google Photos videos in Takeout backups were exported to strangers between November 21-25, 2019; those affected were notified by email  —  With Google Takeout, you can download your data from Google apps as a backup or for use with another service.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange has made a takeover offer for eBay that could value the marketplace at more than $30B; eBay stock closes up 8.78%  —  A deal could value the online marketplace at more than $30 billion  —  New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Amid coronavirus fears, ZTE cancels its MWC 2020 press conference, LG Electronics says it is withdrawing from exhibiting and participating in the Barcelona expo  —  The second big company to cancel its MWC appearance  —  LG Electronics, the division of LG Corporation responsible for mobile phones …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Instagram generated ~$20B in advertising revenue in 2019, making up more than a quarter of Facebook's revenue  —  - Unit brought in about $20 billion in 2019, people familiar say  — Photo-sharing app has gained in importance since 2012 purchase
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service launches from beta with Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Uplay support, rivaling Google Stadia at $5/month  —  The BYOG cloud gaming service with Steam, Epic, Battle.net, and Uplay support  —  For the past eight years …
David McCabe / New York Times:
How the big companies like Marriott, Disney, and IBM, are pushing to limit Section 230 of the CDA, challenging Facebook, Google, and the internet as we know it  —  A motley group of powerful companies have their knives out for Section 230, which shields platforms from lawsuits over content posted by users.
Financial Times:
Michael Ronen, a US managing partner for SoftBank's Vision Fund, says he is “negotiating” his exit from the fund, amid concern about its direction  —  A top US executive at SoftBank's $100bn Vision Fund is leaving after expressing concerns about “issues” at the technology conglomerate …
Twitter:
Twitter says users “may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media” likely to cause harm; such tweets will be labeled or removed  —  It's our responsibility to create rules on Twitter that are fair and set clear expectations for everyone on our service.
Emily McCormick / Yahoo Finance:
Disney beats analyst expectations for Q1, reporting $20.86B in Q1 revenue, up 36% YoY, 26.5M subscribers for Disney+, and 30.4M for Hulu, up 33% YoY  —  DIS) posted better than expected results in the company's first report since the launch of its eponymous streaming service.
Michael Santoli / CNBC:
Tesla's stock more than tripled in 3+ months, from $255 on Oct. 23 to $877 today, closing up 13.7%; 12K+ Robinhood users bought TSLA for the first time Monday  —  Jim Cramer: Tesla is a tech company and must be valued as one  — Yes, there's an entrenched short base that's getting torched …
Davey Alba / New York Times:
Alphabet-owned Jigsaw is testing Assembler, a tool to identify doctored photographs, even ones created with the help of AI, with over a dozen news organizations  —  The company, owned by Google's parent, introduced a free tool it calls Assembler to sort out real images from fake ones.
Wall Street Journal:
The White House says companies, including Dell, Microsoft, and AT&T, are working together to create an open standard for 5G tech to reduce reliance on Huawei  —  Companies including Dell, Microsoft and AT&T are part of the effort, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow says
Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
Google says it has paid Android developers over $80B since 2012, well below the $100B threshold Apple announced it surpassed back in 2018  —  Google has confirmed that it has now paid out over $80 billion to Play Store developers since the launch of the digital marketplace in March 2012.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Google makes its Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 AR headset available for direct purchase, nearly a year after its launch  —  Designed for businesses and developers and still $999  —  Google is making its latest augmented reality headset, Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 …
Sarah Buhr / TechCrunch:
Real estate startup Homie, which employs realtors who don't take commission, raises $23M Series B and plans to expand to more US cities  —  Homie has made an impression among younger, first-time home buyers in the Utah and Arizona markets for cutting out the traditional closing costs …
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
Paris-based Convelio, a logistics startup for fine art, raises €9M Series A led by Acton Capital as it looks to expand to the US and into other market segments  —  Convelio, a Paris-based logistics tech startup in the fine art industry, has raised a €9 million in Series A round led …

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