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November 19, 2020, 10:20 PM
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| Dan Primack / Axios: |
Roblox files S-1 for its IPO, reports losses of $206M on $589M in revenue, 31.1M DAU, and 22.2B engaged hours, up 122% YoY, for the first nine months of 2020 — Roblox, a Silicon Valley-based based social gaming platform for tweens and teens, on Thursday filed for a $1 billion initial public offering.
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Roblox, CNBC, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, The Verge, CNN, GameSpot, TheStreet, Gamasutra, Crunchbase News, and New World Notes
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google says it has completed a global rollout of RCS and will start testing end-to-end encryption in Android Messages — In mid-2019, Google decided to take over and speed up the launch of RCS. A little over 17 months later, Google announced today that it has completed a global rollout of RCS …
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The Keyword, The Verge, Engadget, SiliconANGLE, TechCrunch, Android Central, TechRadar, Android Authority, Chrome Unboxed, Android Police, Neowin, XDA Developers, CyberScoop, Thurrott, and HotHardware.com News
Tweets: @tingftw, @ohmdee, @wcathcart, @maxwinebach, @hallstephenj, @backlon, @richardjnieva, @matthew_d_green, @backlon, @backlon, and @derekmross
| Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: |
Apple defends its delayed IDFA changes in iOS 14 and slams Facebook, saying “its intent is to collect as much data as possible” on its users — Last month, a coalition of eight civil and human rights organizations penned an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook regarding …
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The Independent, Fast Company, MyHealthyApple, iDownloadBlog.com, Apple Must, MacRumors, and Apple Terminal
Tweets: @caseynewton, @peterstringer, @tompainetoday, and @alexeheath
| Bloomberg: |
Facebook responds to Apple's defense of IDFA, saying Apple is using its “dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection” — Apple Inc. on Thursday slammed Facebook Inc. and other internet giants for their ad-targeting practices in response to a letter questioning …
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The Information, Agence France-Presse, and AppleInsider
Tweets: @alexeheath, @kurtwagner8, @willoremus, @kantrowitz, and @herrmanndigital
| Nick Statt / The Verge: |
Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming service launches in beta on iOS as a web app, bypassing Apple's App Store and letting iOS users play Fortnite — Nvidia joins Microsoft in bypassing Apple's App Store — Nvidia is joining its fellow cloud gaming providers in choosing to bypass Apple's App Store …
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The Official NVIDIA Blog, ZDNet, Ars Technica, iMore, TechCrunch, Kotaku, Input, TechSpot, Softpedia News, Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, BBC, HotHardware.com News, KnowTechie, Fortune, Thurrott, TechRadar, iPhone Hacks, Laptop Mag, iDownloadBlog.com, Reuters, SlashGear, CNBC, Gizmodo, iClarified, AppleInsider, and MacRumors
Tweets: @nickstatt, @tomwarren, @slightlylate, @starfire2258, and @nickstatt
| Adi Robertson / The Verge: |
Facebook's Q3 transparency report: 0.1%-0.11% of what users see violates hate speech rules; 95% of hate speech takedowns are proactive, up from 24% in 2017 — Lawmakers and moderators criticized its policies this week — Facebook says it is proactively detecting more hate speech using artificial intelligence.
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About Facebook, VentureBeat, Ars Technica, Washington Post, About Facebook, Protocol, About Facebook, Reuters, Social Media Today, Adweek, The Hill, Mashable, Axios, CNN, SiliconANGLE, CNET, TechCrunch, CNBC, and Engadget
Tweets: @kkeneally, @margiedemocracy, @know_more_news, @natijomartinez, @janelytv, @rmac18, @hypervisible, @evelyndouek, and @guyro
| Tony Romm / Washington Post: |
Sources: state and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook for buying rivals Instagram and WhatsApp — State and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook that will challenge the tech giant's acquisition of two rivals … | Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Microsoft Edge now has coupon and promo codes built in for online shopping — Edge also gets new PDF annotation and screenshot inking features — Microsoft is adding a new coupons feature to its Edge browser today. Coupons and promo codes will appear inside Edge as an alert when you're shopping online …
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Windows Blog, SlashGear, The Next Web, Windows Central, Engadget, OnMSFT.com, TechCrunch, TechRadar, and ZDNet
| Sheera Frenkel / New York Times: |
Report: election misinfo often evaded YouTube's efforts to stop it, as videos supporting false voter fraud claims were viewed 138M+ times during election week — YouTube videos endorsing the false idea that there was widespread election fraud were viewed more than 138 million times on the week of Nov. 3 … | Wall Street Journal: |
BuzzFeed has agreed to acquire Verizon Media's HuffPost in a stock deal, as part of a larger agreement to syndicate content on each others' platforms — New-media companies have been exploring mergers as they try to jumpstart growth — BuzzFeed Inc. has agreed to acquire Verizon Media's HuffPost …
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New York Times, FinSMEs, NBC News, TechCrunch, BuzzFeed, Associated Press, Vox, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Adweek, Deadline, Tubefilter, The Irish Times, Input, Hollywood Reporter, Fast Company, Variety, and TheStreet
| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
The second-gen version of Echo Frames, Amazon's Alexa-enabled glasses that debuted last year for some customers, will be available generally on Dec. 10 for $250 — - Amazon on Thursday said it's making the Echo Frames available to the general public, after launching the device last year …
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About Amazon, The Verge, TechCrunch, GeekWire, TechHive, Voicebot.ai, PYMNTS.com, Neowin, CNET, 9to5Toys, AppleInsider, SlashGear, Engadget, MSPoweruser, TechSpot, Adweek, Gizmodo, and Android Central
| Damien Wilde / 9to5Google: |
Google says Stadia is coming to iOS as a Safari PWA within “several weeks” — Apple's tough enforcement of its App Store policies has led to a sad lack of a playable version of Google Stadia on iOS. That is set to change very soon as public testing of a dedicated progressive web app …
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Polygon, The Verge, CNBC, iMore, Ubergizmo, Engadget, SlashGear, AppleInsider, Gamasutra, 9to5Google, KnowTechie, ExtremeTech, Cult of Mac, MacDailyNews, Trusted Reviews, MacRumors, Android Police, iDownloadBlog.com, 9to5Toys, iPhone Hacks, Apple Terminal, Gizmodo, Pocketnow, XDA Developers, CNET, and Pocket Gamer.biz
Tweets: @googlestadia, @zmknox, @iansherr, @nickstatt, @eric_seufert, and @starfire2258
| Ron Miller / TechCrunch: |
FireEye acquires cybersecurity investigation company Respond Software for $186M, while announcing it received a $400M investment from Blackstone and ClearSky — The security sector is ever frothy and acquisitive. Just last week Palo Alto Networks grabbed Expanse for $800 million.
More:
Business Wire, Bloomberg, ZDNet, TheStreet, and Respond Software
| Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat: |
Zapata Computing, which operates a platform for writing quantum computing software, raises $38M Series B led by Comcast Ventures, Pitango and Prelude Ventures — Zapata Computing has raised $38 million for its quantum computing enterprise software platform.| Heather Kelly / Washington Post: |
A look at Facebook Groups, used by two thirds of Facebook's MAUs and a company focus since 2017, which make leaving the platform especially difficult — Facebook invested heavily in the one feature it knew people couldn't leave behind: Their groups — Before the pandemic, Andrea Norrington barely checked Facebook.
Tweets: @geoffreyfowler, @kcpike, @heatherkelly, and @olivier_amar
| John Gruber / Daring Fireball: |
The M1 Macs are astonishingly good and Rosetta is the exemplification of “it just works”, but the iOS app experience ranges from terrible to OK, at best — Better necessarily implies different. — That's one of my favorite axioms. It's both intuitively and undeniably true.
More:
AppleInsider, ZDNet, next big thing, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, and Softpedia News
Tweets: @stevesi, @stalman, @ukandrewtaylor, @starfire2258, @alexbrooks, @benedictevans, @danallen46, @apas, @gassee, @lukemiani, @mkbhd, @jonmasters, @detroitborg, @dcseifert, and @detroitborg
| Sebastiaan de With / Halide: |
iPhone 12 Pro Max's camera achieves images of quality previously only seen in dedicated cameras that have sensors four times its size — At Halide HQ, we've been busily working away on a very deep, technical analysis of what's new in iPhone 12 cameras this year. All four of 'em.
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Digital Photography Review, TechSpot, KnowTechie, 9to5Mac, Tom's Guide, and iMore
Tweets: @sdw, @chrismlacy, @pschiller, @chartier, @reneritchie, and @carreteromolero
| Leika Kihara / Reuters: |
30+ major Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common, private digital currency to promote digitalization in the cash-loving nation — TOKYO (Reuters) - More than 30 major Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common …
More:
Cryptonews, Cointelegraph, coinspeaker.com, and Decrypt
| Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: |
Go SMS Pro, an Android messaging app with 100M+ installs, is exposing photos, videos, and other files sent privately by its users — Go SMS Pro, one of the most popular messaging apps for Android, is exposing photos, videos and other files sent privately by its users. Worse, the app maker has done nothing to fix the bug.
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Trustwave, SlashGear, SiliconANGLE, Threatpost, The Verge, BleepingComputer, Dark Reading, HackRead, and The Mac Observer
Tweets: @adamsenft, @zackwhittaker, @zackwhittaker, and @zackwhittaker
| Tom Simonite / Wired: |
Research renews concerns about gender bias in image recognition services offered by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — A new paper renews concerns about bias in image recognition services offered by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. — MEN OFTEN JUDGE women by their appearance. Turns out, computers do too.| Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: |
Fitbit rolls out OS 5.1 for Sense and Versa 3 smartwatches, with Google Assistant, voice-to-text, phone calls, and automatic blood oxygen readings — The latest Fitbit smartwatches offer a lot more when it comes to hardware, but on the software, they shipped a few of those features without taking full advantage of them.| Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology: |
In an internal memo, FTC exec director said the agency will cut costs, freeze hiring, and lower IT spending, even as Congress pushes for action against Big Tech — FTC executive director David Robbins tells staff the agency will cut its case costs, freeze hiring, and lower IT spending as its resources dry up
Tweets: @kantrowitz, @kantrowitz, and @lam_barrett
| Adrianne Jeffries / The Markup: |
Google says it will end preferential search rankings for AMP pages in the spring, but remains “fully committed” to the technology — Targeting Trump Fans, QAnon Ad Slips Through Facebook's Filters — How Private Is My Pay App?
More:
OneZero , The Cloudflare Blog, and Google Developers
Tweets: @themarkup, @willcritchlow, @martinstabe, @dz, @codepo8, @ow, @robinberjon, @beep, and @adrjeffries
| Lily Hay Newman / Wired: |
Facebook's bug bounty program, now in its 10th year, paid out $1.98M in 2020 so far, on over 1,000 submissions — The vulnerability was found through the company's bug bounty program, now in its tenth year. — IT'S BEEN ALMOST a decade since Facebook started offering researchers cash rewards …
More:
About Facebook, ZDNet, BleepingComputer, and The Hacker News
Tweets: @lilyhnewman, @techjournalist, @zackwhittaker, @viss, @natashenka, and @kimzetter
| Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: |
California regulator will allow companies to offer commercial autonomous ride-hailing service pending state approval, which may take 2+ years for deployment — Companies that launch robotaxi services in California will be able to charge for and offer shared driverless rides as long …
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Los Angeles Times
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