Techmeme
February 7, 2020, 4:30 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the Trump admin has bought access to a database tracking locations of millions of phones in the US and is using it for immigration and border control  —  Commercial database that maps movements of millions of cellphones is deployed by immigration and border authorities
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Instagram has internally prototyped an Instagram Partner Program that will let IGTV creators earn money by showing ads alongside their videos  —  Instagram may finally let IGTV video makers earn money 18 months after launching the longer-form content hub.  Instagram confirms to TechCrunch …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 may end up raising less than half of the planned $108B, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself  —  The new pool could end up being less than half its planned size, with nearly all of its capital coming from SoftBank itself
CNBC:
Uber's stock is up ~10% after the company announced a Q4 loss that was narrower than expected and moved its profitability forecast forward  —  - Uber's revenue growth picked up in the quarter.  — During the fourth quarter, Uber faced tighter regulations impacting its business in London and California and continued to slash costs.
Uber:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Paystand, which is building a blockchain-based platform to make commercial B2B transactions as easy as Venmo payments are for consumers, raises $20M Series B  —  Paystand has raised $20 million to modernize commercial payments using its blockchain-based platform so that paying a corporate bill …
New York Times:
The number of reported child sexual abuse videos surged to 41M in 2019, surpassing the number of reported illicit photos; Facebook reported 85% of the total  —  In a first, videos outnumbered photos in reports to the authorities last year.  Facebook found the most imagery, the bulk of it on its Messenger app.
AnandTech:
64-core AMD Threadripper 3990X CPU review: great for rendering and scientific computing but has the same performance as AMD's 32-core CPU for other applications  —  The recent renaissance of AMD as the performance choice in the high-end x86 market has been great for consumers, enabling a second offering at the top-end of the market.
Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter workers contributed ~$270K to the Bernie Sanders campaign, more than any other presidential candidate, in Q4 2019  —  Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, has been highly critical of tech companies.  Their employees don't seem to mind.
Wall Street Journal:
NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange abandons potential eBay takeover deal after a backlash from investors  —  Investors had pushed back against move to acquire e-commerce company  —  The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange abandoned its pursuit of eBay Inc. EBAY 2.36% …
Ben Lane / HousingWire:
HouseCanary, which develops software to automate residential real estate valuations, raises $65M Series C, bringing its total raised to $130M  —  Series C funding round grows fintech's total funding to $130 million  —  It seems that investors have some interest in automating real estate appraisals.
Joe DeBlasio / Google Online Security Blog:
Google says starting with Chrome 82 in April, it will gradually start blocking “mixed content downloads”, which are non-HTTPS downloads started on secure pages  —  Today we're announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files.
Robert Stevens / Decrypt:
Blockchain data management startup Fluree says it has signed a contract with US Air Force to securely share data within the military and with US allies  —  The US Air Force has signed a contract with blockchain data management company Fluree to more securely track and share information within the military.

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More News

Mark Harris / TechCrunch:
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
Vipal Monga / Wall Street Journal:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
David Kirton / Reuters:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: