Techmeme
April 19, 2021, 8:10 AM

Top News

Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Source: Clubhouse's latest round values the startup at $4B  —  Audio-chat app Clubhouse closed a new Series C round of financing, the company said during its weekly town hall on Sunday, without disclosing the amount raised.  —  A source familiar with the matter confirmed to Reuters …
Clubhouse:
Clubhouse has raised a Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz, with DST Global, Tiger Global, and Elad Gil participating  —  Since then we have grown faster than expected, as Clubhouse has expanded across hundreds of countries around the world.  With millions of new users bouncing around the hallways …
Peter Kafka / Vox:
Sources: Facebook will announce a suite of audio products on Monday, including a Clubhouse-like app, a podcast discovery product connected to Spotify, and more  —  Announcements are coming on Monday, but some products won't show up for a while.  —  Facebook wants you to start talking, and listening, on Facebook.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
WordPress announces that it will treat Google's FLoC as a “security concern”, and will automatically disable the technology in its upcoming July release  —  WordPress announced today that they plan on treating Google's new FLoC tracking technology as a security concern and plans to block it by default on WordPress sites.
Fiona Kelliher / Mercury News:
Charles “Chuck” Geschke, who co-founded Adobe in 1982 with John Warnock and helped develop PDF technology, has died at 81  —  Charles “Chuck” Geschke, co-founder of the iconic Silicon Valley company Adobe Inc. and prominent cheerleader of downtown San Jose, died Friday at age 81.
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
The Bank of England and the UK Treasury jointly create a taskforce to explore a potential central bank digital currency  —  Quick Take  — The Bank of England and HM Treasury have jointly created a CBDC taskforce.  — They will explore a potential digital currency in the U.K.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
What to expect from Apple's April 20 event: refreshed iPads, including Pro model with mini-LED display, 3rd-gen Pencil, AirTags, iMacs in different colors, more  —  Apple is planning to hold its first event of 2021 on Tuesday, April 20, and it's looking like it will be an iPad-centric event.
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
US investigators probing a breach at Codecov, a software auditing company, that affected some of its 29K customers; the breach was in Jan. but detected in April  —  U.S. federal investigators are probing an intrusion at San Francisco-based software auditing company Codecov that affected …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
A look back at the netbook explosion of the late 2000s and how iPads, Chromebooks, and appliance-like computers took the netbook's place  —  The sound of a slow processor screaming  —  There's an Apple event next week, and it's looking fairly likely that we'll see updated models of the iPad Pro and perhaps the iPad Mini.
Will Goodbody / RTÉ:
Newly filed Google Ireland Holdings accounts show $75B+ in profits moved through the subsidiary in 2019, the last year Google used the “double Irish” tax scheme  —  Newly filed accounts show that over $75bn in profits moved through a subsidiary of Google that was incorporated in Ireland in 2019 …
Todd Feathers / The Markup:
A look at lobbying efforts by Facebook, Apple, Google and others in Connecticut, Texas, and other US states crafting consumer privacy bills  —  The Markup found industry fingerprints on at least five bills around the country—weak laws, experts say, that are designed to preempt stronger protections

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