Techmeme: Amazon widens its lead in the Alabama unionization vote on the second day of counting; union seeking to represent Amazon workers says 3,215 ballots were cast (New York Times)

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April 9, 2021, 11:00 AM

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Kellen / Droid Life:

Epic filing reveals that in a 2016 email Phil Schiller said “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us”, which Epic argues is proof of lock-in — Epic and Apple are preparing to battle it out in court over the App Store (remember that whole Fortnite debacle?) …

More: The Verge, MacRumors, Thurrott, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Tom's Guide, SamMobile, The Independent, TechRadar, iPhone Hacks, BGR, Android Headlines, Pocketnow, Cult of Mac, Wccftech, 9to5Google, Android Authority, and SlashGear

Tweets: @reckless, @gartenberg, @gartenberg, @charlesarthur, @tomwarren, @pierce, @dcseifert, @marcoarment, @tomwarren, @jherskowitz, and @droid_life

Patrick McGee / Financial Times:

A senior Apple engineer compared App Store's defenses against malicious actors to “bringing a plastic butter knife to a gunfight”, according to legal documents — Revelation part of legal documents released by Epic Games ahead of antitrust trial

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:

As part of its filing in its case against Epic, Apple argues that the App Store doesn't lead the gaming market and so cannot be considered a monopoly

The Markup:

Investigation finds Google uses a secret blocklist to stop advertisers from making YouTube ad campaigns for hate terms; it worked less than a third of the time — Many well-known White supremacist and White nationalist terms and slogans were not blocked — First of two parts.

More: The Markup, YouTube Official Blog, The Markup, and Search Engine Land

Tweets: @s_m_i, @themarkup, @farai, @leonyin, @hypervisible, @hypervisible, @pranavdixit, @rasmus_kleis, and @lizthegrey

Kim Lyons / The Verge:

Verizon is recalling 2.5M Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspots, ~1.3M of which are in use, after investigation found batteries could overheat and cause fire hazards — The CPSC says the devices' batteries are the source of the overheating — Verizon said Thursday it is working …

More: U.S. Consumer Product …, Gizmodo, AppleInsider, CNBC, iMore, MacRumors, PhoneArena, SlashGear, Android Headlines, Consumer Reports, CNET, and Forbes

Tweets: @uscpsc, @quinnypig, @caseynewton, and @dane

New York Times:

Amazon widens its lead in the Alabama unionization vote on the second day of counting; union seeking to represent Amazon workers says 3,215 ballots were cast — With about half the ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had a more than 2-to-1 advantage over those in favor …

More: Washington Post, Input, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, NPR, Insider, MarketWatch, TechCrunch, The Guardian, and NPR

Tweets: @stevekovach, @greene, @ethancharlatan, @bradstone, @dandhnguyen01, @erikloomis, @rbreich, @delrey, @matthiasellis, @comradesanchez, @jason_koebler, @mattmday, @daveleeft, @brandonmagner, @grimkim, @josheidelson, @rwdsu, @maxberger, and @delrey

Will Gottsegen / Decrypt:

Robinhood says 9.5 million customers traded crypto on its platform in Q1 2021 compared to 1.7 million in Q4 2020, an increase of 458% — The online brokerage service Robinhood said on Thursday that 9.5 million of its customers traded cryptocurrency on its platform in Q1 of 2021.

More: Robinhood, Gizmodo, The Block, coinspeaker.com, Reuters, BitcoinExchangeGuide, InsideBitcoins.com, TechCrunch, and CoinDesk

Tweets: @juthica, @alternatejones, and @masasoncap

Katie Canales / Insider:

Report: hackers scraped data of 500M LinkedIn users and posted it for sale online; LinkedIn confirms the dataset includes publicly viewable info from its site — - Personal data from 500 million LinkedIn users has been scraped and is reportedly for sale on a hacking forum.

Reuters:

Facebook suspends 16K accounts for trading fake reviews and made more changes to prevent paid content, after UK competition watchdog intervened a second time — (Reuters) - Social media company Facebook Inc suspended 16,000 accounts for selling or buying fake reviews of products and services …

Casey Newton / Platformer:

Amid a mental health crisis because of COVID-19, Stanford researchers found that most tech platforms have no policies related to discussions of self-harm — Exclusive: Amid a rising mental health crisis, Stanford researchers find many companies ignoring posts about self-harm

More: Stanford Internet Observatory. Tweets: @caseynewton, @carnage4life, @stanfordio, @ekp, and @etbrooking

New York Times:

Taiwan is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to chip factories of TSMC and others, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers — The island is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to its all-important semiconductor industry, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers.

More: Tom's Hardware. Tweets: @nytimestech, @tonchi, @nytimestech, @nytimes, and @prasannavishy

Bloomberg:

Sources: Abu Dhabi's state fund Mubadala has started preparations for a US IPO of GlobalFoundries that could value the chipmaker at about $20B — - Abu Dhabi firm starts preparations for listing of chipmaker — Sovereign fund holds initial talks with potential advisers

More: Fortune

Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:

Orum, which speeds up ACH bank payments by using AI to assess risk, raises $21M Series A led by Bain Capital — Today you can load a movie on Netflix in a second, catch an Uber in a minute and get groceries delivered in an hour. You'd think money would move just as quickly—and some of it does.

Tweets: @nikmilanovic, @charleyma, and @sarthakgh

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:

Iyuno-SDI Group, whose ERP software offers media localization services like subtitles, dubbing, and accessibility features, raises $160M from SoftBank Vision 2 — Iyuno-SDI Group, a provider of translated subtitles and other media localization services, announced today it has raised $160 million in funding from SoftBank Vision 2.

Sahil Patel / Wall Street Journal:

Community, which lets public figures, media outlets, and brands text with fans, raises $40M from Salesforce Ventures, bringing its total raised to $90M — The platform for brands and celebrities seeks to expand to more large marketers and small businesses — Community.com Inc. …

More: Variety

Amanda Macias / CNBC:

US Commerce Department adds seven Chinese supercomputing entities to an export blacklist for allegedly building supercomputers used by Chinese military — - Commerce added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. economic blacklist citing national security concerns.

More: U.S. Department of Commerce, Ars Technica, The Record, Light Reading, Reuters, BBC, TechSpot, The Register, TechRadar, and SiliconANGLE

Tweets: @noahbarkin, @chinausfocus, @nhkworld_news, @ccp_china_watch, @ftchina, @gpovanman, @commercegov, and @tengbiao

Jeanny Yu / Bloomberg:

Tencent-backed Linklogis, which helps facilitate supply chain finance transactions, rises 11% in its $1.02B Hong Kong IPO — - Linklogis priced $1 billion offering near midpoint of range — Too early to say city's IPO sentiment is recovering: UOB — Chinese fintech firm Linklogis Inc. rose …

More: Tech in Asia

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”, after CBS aired a Late Show rerun in which Colbert mocked Trump

Alex Ritman / Variety:

In Channel 4's 2025 Alternative Christmas Message, Jimmy Kimmel said “tyranny is booming” in the US and, on his ABC suspension, “We won, the president lost”

Henry Blodget / Regenerator:

Bari Weiss' 60 Minutes decision may have been a way to both signal that she's serious about shifting CBS' sensibility to the right and “improve” a story

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More News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

App Annie: average daily time spent in apps crossed four hours in the US, Turkey, and India for the first time in Q1; time spent in India grew 80% from Q1 2019

More: App Annie and VentureBeat

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Alyce, which uses AI to analyze users' relationships with their colleagues and provide gift recommendations, raises $30M Series B led by General Catalyst

More: FinSMEs. Tweets: @epaley

Becky Bracken / Threatpost:

Report: collaboration tools like Slack and Discord are increasingly being used to spread malware, often using the tool's own CDNs and APIs to evade detection

More: TechRadar and SecurityWeek

R. Lawler / Engadget:

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have recovered after a brief outage; Facebook says a configuration change caused the issue

More: The Verge, news.com.au, Insider, BGR India, iPhone Hacks, Android Police, and Android Authority

Tweets: @wongmjane, @facebook, @technicallyron, @hmltn, @oneunderscore__, @agreenphotog, @zephyrteachout, @emilygorcenski, @thetweetofgod, @quinnypig, @wongmjane, @deadline, and @mmaltaisla

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:

Amazon offers a rare insight into its Indian business over the past decade: $3B of Indian-made goods exported, 1M+ local jobs created, and 250,000 new sellers

More: The Financial Express, Hindustan Times, Moneycontrol, The Hindu BusinessLine, Livemint, and PYMNTS.com. Tweets: @bloombergquint

Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:

Lawsuit alleges that, since 2017, civil rights groups have flagged hundreds of anti-Muslim Pages and Groups to Facebook, more than half of which stayed up

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

London-based mobile game studio Tripledot raises $78M Series A and says it has an active user base of 11M, up from 6M six months ago

More: GamesIndustry.biz, Silicon Canals, Business Wire, and FinSMEs

Tweets: @dannycohen and @deantak

Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:

Intel details Bleep, which uses AI to redact audio when it detects “hate speech” and lets users toggle how much they want to hear

More: VICE, Forbes, SiliconANGLE, Eurogamer.net, The Next Web, and The Verge

Tweets: @chrismessina, @gotonathan, @athertonkd, @lorenzofb, @waypoint, @robzacny, @edzitron, @ekanaut, @stickehbun, @paul__armstrong, @learmonth, @greene_dm, @jason_koebler, @xfosh, @kotaku, and @martinsfp

Earlier Picks

Olivia Raimonde / Bloomberg:

Cryptocurrency mining company Riot Blockchain says it will buy Texas-based Bitcoin hosting facility Whinstone for $80M in cash and around $570M in stock

More: Riot Blockchain, Inc., Bitcoinist.com, coinspeaker.com, Decrypt, Bitcoin Magazine, Cointelegraph, and Cryptonews

Tweets: @felixsalmon and @dlknowles

David Priest / CNET:

Samsung announces $40 SmartTag+, which uses Bluetooth and UWB to locate lost items, and AR to guide users to them, launching globally on April 16

More: Samsung US Newsroom, The Verge, TechRadar, Gizmodo, Phandroid, PhoneArena, ScreenRant, Android Headlines, Neowin, GSMArena.com, Tom's Guide, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, Android Central, Android Police, Droid Life, and SamMobile

Tweets: @gigastacey, @techhighest, @mgsiegler, and @andrewmartonik

Matt Mullenweg:

Matt Mullenweg denounces Wix's bizarre marketing campaign against WordPress and says Wix's business model “is getting customers to pay more and more every year”

More: On my Om, TechRadar, Search Engine Journal, Pixel Envy, and The Register

Tweets: @brooke, @hkanji, @harrymccracken, @digiphile, @lisasabinwilson, @chrismessina, @campuscodi, @darkpatterns, @ricmac, @piccalilli_, @michelleames, @louisgray, and @mmasnick

Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge:

Lenovo debuts 6.92" Legion Phone Duel 2 with two 2,750 mAh batteries, two USB-C ports, two cooling fans, Snapdragon 888, and up to 18GB RAM, starting at €999

More: Lenovo StoryHub, Laptop Mag, PCMag, Android Police, AndroidGuys, Android Headlines, Wccftech, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Android Authority, MUO, and 9to5Google

Tweets: @bgr and @verge

James Vincent / The Verge:

Facebook says it is adding contextual labels like “satire page” and “public official” to some posts in News Feeds, to reduce confusion about their origin

More: Tom's Guide, MUO, SlashGear, Pocketnow, The Next Web, Android Headlines, and Livemint

Tweets: @fbnewsroom, @wordstern, @sethdillon, @digiphile, @thedextriarchy, @wordstern, @propornot, @pleaseruiz, and @gisellalomax