Techmeme
October 14, 2021, 5:05 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft is shuttering the Chinese version of LinkedIn and replacing it with a job board; sources say China told LinkedIn in March to better regulate content  —  LinkedIn cites challenging operating environment, as retreat marks the biggest departure from China by a major tech company in years
The Markup:
Investigation finds Amazon places its own brands above competitors, even those with higher ratings and more sales, despite telling Congress otherwise  —  Above Better-Rated Products  —  The online giant gives a leg up to hundreds of house brand and exclusive products that most people don't know are connected to Amazon
John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal:
A bipartisan Senate bill, unveiled Thursday, would ban internet platforms from favoring their own products or services, known as self-preferencing  —  Bipartisan legislation set to be unveiled in the Senate Thursday aims to stop tech companies from favoring their own products
James Vincent / The Verge:
Facebook details Ego4D, a research project in partnership with 13 universities that uses first-person video to improve perception by AI assistants  —  AI tools that could one day appear in Facebook's AR glasses  —  Facebook is pouring a lot of time and money into augmented reality, including building its own AR glasses with Ray-Ban.
Wilson Walker / CBS San Francisco:
Residents of a quiet San Francisco street say Waymo's self-driving cars are flocking to the neighborhood throughout the day, seemingly confused by a dead end  —  SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — A normally quiet neighborhood in San Francisco is buzzing about a sudden explosion of traffic.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google rolls out continuous scrolling for English-language mobile search results in the US  —  Google announced today it's changing the way search works on mobile devices, initially in the U.S. Now, when you reach the bottom of a set of search results on your phone, you won't have to tap to go to the next page.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
HTC announces $499 Vive Flow, a VR headset that requires an external battery and uses an Android phone as a wireless controller, available in November  —  After years of focusing on business-oriented virtual reality, HTC is launching a $499 entertainment-focused headset called the Vive Flow in November …
Harmeet Singh Walia / Counterpoint Research:
In Q2 2021, Apple captured 75% of the overall handset market operating profit and 40% of revenue despite accounting for only 13% of global smartphone shipments  —  The dynamics of the top global handset OEMs keep changing from a shipment point of view, as we saw with Xiaomi becoming …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp starts rolling out e2e encryption for chat history backups in iCloud and Google Drive  —  WhatsApp is beginning to roll out a new feature that will provide its two billion users the option to encrypt their chat history backup in iCloud or Google Drive, patching a major loophole …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitter begins testing ads in replies on Android and iOS globally, placed after the first, third, or eighth reply to a tweet  —  Just kidding, it's a bad place  —  I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel like Twitter is overloaded with ads in my feed.
Wall Street Journal:
Coinbase asks Congress to regulate digital assets outside of the existing financial system and to create a special regulator for digital asset markets  —  Crypto trading platform asks Congress to create an oversight regime separate from existing market regulators
Ari Levy / CNBC:
GitLab opens up 22% on its first day of trading, after raising $801M in its IPO at an $11B valuation  —  - GitLab started trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday under ticker symbol “GTLB.”  — The company, whose code-sharing software competes with Microsoft's GitHub, raised about $650 million in its IPO …
Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Tala, which provides mobile-first financial services in emerging markets, raises a $145M Series E led by Upstart, source says at an $800M+ valuation  —  Tala, an emerging markets digital lender that offers loans between $10 to $500 to consumers and small business owners, has raised $145 million in Series E funding.
Nikkei Asia:
TSMC says it will build its first plant in Japan, focusing on 22nm and 28nm chips, starting construction in 2022 and operations in 2024  —  Taiwan titan warns of softening smartphone and PC demand amid supply chain chaos  —  TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. …
Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:
PitchBook: tech investors and employees have netted $582.5B from US IPOs and sales in the year to September, with 93 listings between July and September  —  IPO and Spac booms have delivered a record windfall for venture capitalists in 2021  —  A wave of US public listings and sales …
More: PYMNTS.com
Campbell Kwan / ZDNet:
Analysis of 80M ransomware samples: Israel and South Korea are the most affected countries; GandCrab was the most active ransomware gang since the start of 2020  —  Israel has submitted the largest amount of ransomware samples since the start of 2020, according to a study.
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Facebook says it is expanding its “less political” News Feed test to 75 new countries, for a total of more than 80  —  Facebook is slowly expanding its effort to weed out political content from News Feed.  The company is now testing its “less political” feed in 75 new countries, Facebook said in an update.
Ivan Levingston / Bloomberg:
London-based TradingView, which offers social networking and data analysis tools for financial markets, raises $298M at a $3B valuation led by Tiger Global  —  Financial information platform and social network TradingView Inc. raised $298 million at a $3 billion valuation in a funding round led …
Ax Sharma / Ars Technica:
How a US hacker built a secret network of “news” sites and Facebook Groups to push bogus stories after an undisclosed company hired him to sway 2016's election  —  He was hired to build a fake news op but now wants to put things right.  —  This is the story of the mastermind behind …

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