Techmeme
April 20, 2021, 12:15 PM

Top News

Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Sources: Microsoft is revamping its Store app on Windows 10 and will let devs submit unpackaged Win32 apps, use third-party commerce platforms in apps, and more  —  Microsoft wants to bring life back to the Store app on Windows 10.  —  What you need to know  — Microsoft is working on a new Store app for Windows 10.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Venmo adds support for buying, holding, and selling four types of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash  —  Venmo is adding support for cryptocurrency, starting today.  The company says it will begin to roll out the ability for Venmo's more than 70 million users to buy …
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
Amazon is opening a hair salon in London, where customers can try on virtual hair colors using an AR color bar and shop beauty products using QR codes  —  Amazon reinvented supermarket shopping with its  —  checkout-less Go stores, now the e-commerce giant is applying its tech prowess to hairdressing.
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Internal Facebook emails, accidentally sent to a journalist, show its “long-term strategy” for data scraping incidents, framing it as a “broad industry issue”  —  More scraping incidents are “expected” in the future.  —  An internal email accidentally leaked by Facebook …
New York Times:
Governments around the world are moving to limit the power of tech companies with an urgency and breadth that no single industry had experienced before  —  Never before have so many countries, including China, moved with such vigor at the same time to limit the power of a single industry.
Wall Street Journal:
An in-depth look at the reasons behind the chip shortage, including focus on higher-margin, cutting-edge chips, and stockpiling due to US China trade tensions  —  Semiconductor producers are trying to increase output, but the small gains are unlikely to fix the shortfalls hampering production …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Nextdoor is introducing an anti-racism notification, which asks users to reconsider posting content if the app thinks it may be offensive  —  It calls the feature the anti-racism notification  —  Nextdoor is introducing a new anti-racism notification, which asks users to reconsider posting content …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Source: Facebook-backed Diem is aiming to launch a pilot with a single stablecoin pegged to the US dollar later this year  —  - The Diem Association is aiming to launch a pilot with a single stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar in 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Chargebee, which helps enterprises with billing, subscriptions, revenue operations, and compliance, raises $125M at a $1.4B valuation  —  A startup that enables businesses to set up and manage their billing, subscription, revenue operations and compliance has become the newest firm to earn the much coveted unicorn status.
Rachel Levin / Outside Online:
As a disproportionate number of people who purchased homes in Tahoe in 2020 were tech employees from the Bay Area, locals worry about “Aspenification of Tahoe”  —  Rachel Levin is a San Francisco-based journalist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker …
John Seabrook / New Yorker:
As NYC selects Bird, Lime, and Veo for its e-scooter pilot program, a look at why NYC is seen as an invaluable proving ground for the scooter-sharing concept  —  Fleets of electric scooters have taken over city streets worldwide.  With New York finally climbing aboard, do they represent a tech hustle or a transit revolution?
Sohini Podder / Reuters:
Classy, which builds fundraising software for non-profit institutions, raises $118M led by Norwest Venture Partners  —  Classy, a technology company which builds fundraising software for non-profit institutions, has raised $118 million in fresh capital from venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners …
More: Crunchbase News.  Tweets: @caseynewton
Reuters:
FireEye and networking company Pulse Secure say two China-linked hacking groups used a flaw in its VPN devices to target customers in the US defense industry  —  At least two groups of China-linked hackers have spent months using a previously undisclosed vulnerability in American networking devices …
Liz Lee / Reuters:
Microsoft to establish its first data center region in Malaysia as part of its Bersama Malaysia initiative, which aims to skill 1M Malaysians by the end of 2023  —  KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Microsoft Corporation will invest $1 billion over the next five years in Malaysia as part …
Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
Dogecoin rose ~10% in the past 24 hours driven by the #DogeDay hashtag for 4/20; it jumped 400%+ in the past week and now has a market cap of $53B+  —  - DogeDay trends on social media, pushing prices near 42 cents  — ‘Dogecoin is symptomatic of the zeitgeist,’ says Trenchev
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Octopus Deploy, which develops a deployment automation tool, raises $172.5M from Insight Partners  —  Founded almost a decade ago, Octopus Deploy has grown to serve 25,000 organizations, including Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney and Stack Overflow, through bootstrapping.

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About Facebook:
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