Techmeme
July 9, 2020, 11:05 AM

Top News

Nick Statt / The Verge:
Sensor Tower: of the ~910K users that signed up for Quibi's 3-month free trial in April, only 8%, ~72K, converted to a paid subscription after the trial ended  —  The struggling streaming video platform has a not-so-great conversion rate  —  Streaming service Quibi only managed to convert …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Police are buying access to hacked data, including passwords, IP addresses, and more to help with investigations in an end-run around the usual legal processes  —  The sale is “an end-run around the usual legal processes.”  —  Joseph Cox  —  Hackers break into websites, steal information …
Anirban Sen / Reuters:
Sources: Coinbase is exploring going public via a direct listing as early as this year; Coinbase was last valued at $8B+ in 2018  —  Anirban Sen, Joshua Franklin, Anna Irrera  —  (Reuters) - Coinbase Inc has started plans for a stock market listing that could come as early as this year …
Washington Post:
Facebook says it removed 100+ Pages and accounts linked to felon Roger Stone, as well as some linked to Brazil's Bolsonaro, for coordinated inauthentic behavior  —  The longtime Trump friend and former campaign adviser used fake accounts and other deceptive tactics to manipulate public debate, the company said
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Apple says it remains “committed to the future of Thunderbolt and will support it in Macs with Apple silicon”  —  Apple silicon will still work with Intel's port standard  —  Apple is moving away from Intel's chipsets in favor of its new, custom-designed ARM chips …
Chuong Nguyen / Digital Trends:
Bloomberg:
Elon Musk claims Tesla is “very close” to developing fully autonomous vehicles despite Tesla's “Full Self Driving” feature not living up to its name since 2016  —  - The billionaire says it'll have basics worked out this year  — Tesla's in an industry race to develop fully self-driven cars
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
In a first, the CENTRE Consortium has blacklisted an Ethereum address holding $100K USDC stablecoin in response to a law enforcement request  —  The CENTRE Consortium blacklisted a USDC address in response to a law enforcement request, freezing $100,000 worth of the stablecoin, a spokesperson said Wednesday.
Nathaniel Popper / New York Times:
Sources describe stories of young, inexperienced investors on Robinhood engaging in riskier trades at far higher volumes than customers of other brokerages  —  Its users buy and sell the riskiest financial products and do so more frequently than customers at other retail brokerage firms …
Bloomberg Law:
Coinbase hires Paul Grewal, VP and deputy general counsel for Facebook, as its chief legal officer  —  Listen  —  Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase raided Facebook Inc. for one of its top in-house lawyers on Tuesday, hiring Paul Grewal to serve as its new chief legal officer.
Ina Fried / Axios:
Microsoft announces Together Mode for Teams, which overlays group call participants onto the same virtual background, and adds meeting transcripts and more  —  As the pandemic continues to reshape office work, Microsoft is adding new features to Teams that aim to make video calls more human …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
XM Cyber, which develops simulation and remediation software to expose cyberattack vectors, raises $17M Series B, bringing its total raised to $49M  —  XM Cyber, a startup developing a simulation and remediation platform to expose cyberattack vectors, today announced it raised $17 million.
More: CTech and Globes Online
Bloomberg:
TikTok users are joining in the “Dogecoin Challenge”, driving up the cryptocurrency's market cap by 40% to $500M in a day, as many pitch fanciful price targets  —  - Dogecoin surges thanks to the latest TikTok challenge  — ‘Stay Safe.  Be Smart,’ Dogecoin Twitter tells investors
Sue Halpern / New Yorker:
An in-depth look at Microsoft's ElectionGuard voting software, led by cryptographer Josh Benaloh, which aims to check whether election results are accurate  —  A mathematician's quest to make American elections more trustworthy.  —  Near the end of last year, I met Josh Benaloh …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Google has open sourced Tsunami, a vulnerability scanner for large-scale enterprise networks consisting of thousands of internet-connected systems and servers  —  Google says Tsunami is an extensible network scanner for detecting high-severity vulnerabilities with as little false-positives as possible.
Tweets: @quinnypig
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
An independent audit commissioned by Facebook harshly criticizes the company, arguing that some of its decisions were “significant setbacks for civil rights”  —  An independent audit faulted the social network for allowing hate speech and disinformation to thrive — potentially posing a threat to the November elections.

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Bloomberg:
Megha Rajagopalan / BuzzFeed News:
April Glaser / NBC News:
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: