Techmeme
April 9, 2021, 11:00 AM

Top News

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?) …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 …

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More News

R. Lawler / Engadget:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
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Earlier Picks

David Priest / CNET:
Matt Mullenweg:
Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Max Chafkin / Bloomberg: