Techmeme River

September 16, 2019, 11:35 PM

September 16, 2019

11:25 PM •	Song Jingli / KrASIA: Hong Kong-based AutoX, which recently announced plans to roll out 100 robotaxis in Shanghai by early 2020, has closed $100M Series A from Alibaba and others
11:05 PM •	Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Crisp, which helps food brands reduce food waste by analyzing data from sources such as inventory databases and POS systems, raises $14.2M Series A
10:20 PM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: LastPass fixes a bug in its Chrome and Opera extensions which exposed credentials entered on previously visited websites
9:05 PM •	Joseph Cox / VICE: Richard Stallman has resigned as president and director of Free Software Foundation and from MIT's CSAIL over his comments related to Jeffrey Epstein
8:00 PM •	Privacy International: The High Court of South Africa rules that bulk surveillance is unlawful, in case brought after a reporter found his phone communications were recorded in 2008
7:05 PM •	Tina Bellon / Reuters: To comply with NYC regulations, Uber will start locking out drivers from its app at times and in areas of low demand in the city, from Tuesday
6:30 PM •	Bloomberg: China is struggling to rein in its citizens' appetite for online gambling, which is fueling an online casino boom in the Philippines and Cambodia
5:55 PM •	Devindra Hardawar / Engadget: Apple Arcade is a no brainer at $4.99/mo., with a strong selection of exclusives and a model that lets devs focus on fun instead of extracting money from users
5:15 PM •	Reuters: Sources: Match Group's Tinder has finished filming its first TV series; spokesperson says making shows is part of a larger strategy to be revealed soon
3:05 PM •	Yahoo News: Sources: Obama's move in 2016 to expel dozens of Russian diplomats and seize estates was in part due to a brazen Russian operation to breach FBI communications
2:07 PM •	Juli Clover / MacRumors: Ahead of the planned September 19 release date, Apple Arcade is rolling out to users running beta versions of iOS 13 or iOS 13.1, with 50+ games to play
1:25 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Facebook rolls out Instagram and IGTV content scheduling for up to 6 months in advance, and new video tools for live video, Watch Party, and Creator Studio
1:15 PM •	Bloomberg: Sources: SoftBank Vision Fund backers Saudi Arabia's PIF and UAE's Mubadala are reconsidering how much to commit to Vision Fund II as a big bet on WeWork sours
1:05 PM •	Kerry Flynn / CNN: Following Twitter and Facebook, Snapchat launches a library of political ads on its platform globally from 2018 and 2019, available as downloadable spreadsheets
12:21 PM •	Chris Welch / The Verge: Google announces a hardware event on October 15 in NYC, where it's expected to announce the Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL, Pixelbook 2, and new Google Home speakers
11:50 AM •	Dana Mattioli / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Amazon changed its search algorithm last year to boost items that were more profitable for it, overriding internal dissent from lawyers and engineers
10:45 AM •	Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat: Qualcomm to buy TDK's remaining interest in RF360 Holdings, a joint venture focused on RF front-end, paying $3.1B total, a sum that includes earlier payments
10:25 AM •	CBC News: Facebook says it is planning changes to tool allowing advertisers to rewrite news story headlines after UK's Conservative party altered a BBC headline in an ad
10:15 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Greenlight, which provides preloaded debit cards for kids 13 and older that parents can manage from their smartphones, raises $54M Series B led by Drive Capital
10:00 AM •	Steven Melendez / Fast Company: Mozilla, Creative Commons, and Coil announce a $100M grant over five years to developers using Web Monetization, a proposed browser standard for micropayments
9:40 AM •	Colin Packham / Reuters: Sources: Australia has concluded that China was responsible for the hacking of its national parliament and three largest political parties earlier this year
9:30 AM •	Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Israel-based Trigo raises $22M Series A to enable supermarkets to launch Amazon Go-like cashierless stores by providing them with cameras, sensors, and software
9:00 AM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: Personal information of most of Ecuador's population, including 6.7M children, left exposed online with home addresses, phone numbers, work information, more
8:10 AM •	Ry Crist / CNET: The Wi-Fi Alliance launches the Wi-Fi Certified 6 program for devices using next-gen 802.11ax Wi-Fi radios, expected to be up to 40% faster than Wi-Fi 5
7:20 AM •	Sean O'Neill / Skift: Beekeeper, a communications platform for hourly workers without desktop PCs, raises $45M Series B co-led by Thayer Ventures and Swisscanto
4:30 AM •	Wall Street Journal: Since its 2014 IPO, Alibaba has struggled to grow beyond China despite investing $5B+ in new markets; ~5% of its last FY revenue came from international retail

September 15, 2019

10:25 PM •	What's New in Publishing: A look at TopBuzz, the English version of ByteDance's Chinese AI-powered news aggregator Toutiao, that rose from 1.8M MAUs in Nov. 2017 to 23M MAUs by Oct. 2018
9:05 PM •	Washington Post: The dearth of TikTok videos on Hong Kong protests offers a glimpse of how China could shape the perception of real-world events by US and global audiences
7:35 PM •	Wall Street Journal: As AT&T's CEO plans to retire, AT&T's TV business keeps declining, the Time Warner integration looks shaky, and now an activist shareholder pushes for changes
6:15 PM •	Rob Walker / New York Times: Despite what media and politicians say, there is no tangible tech backlash from consumers, who shrug off warnings of a dystopian future and embrace new tech
5:25 PM •	Christoph Rauwald / Bloomberg: Volkswagen is unifying its fragmented IT efforts under a new Car.Software unit, which will develop “vw.os”, with first cars with new software shipping next year
2:20 PM •	Jeremy Horwitz / VentureBeat: An overview of Qualcomm's various R&D projects aimed at making 5G technology ubiquitous over the next few years
12:35 PM •	Financial Times: Sources: Libra representatives to meet officials from 26 central banks, including the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, in Basel, Switzerland on Monday
11:15 AM •	Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: Interview with Cloudflare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn on its IPO, its dual-class stock structure giving employees 10x the voting rights over public shares, more
8:10 AM •	Cyrus Lee / ZDNet: China Unicom and China Telecom, the two smaller mobile carriers among China's big three operators, are teaming up to build 5G networks across 15 Chinese cities
5:05 AM •	Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk: Winklevoss' crypto exchange Gemini launches Gemini Custody, a custody service targeting financial institutions, with support for 18 cryptocurrencies
2:00 AM •	Renee Dudley / ProPublica: Ransomware hackers are targeting managed service providers, causing chaos for the city governments, medical clinics, and smaller businesses who use them for IT
1:15 AM •	FinSMEs: Sourced Group, which helps enterprises in regulated industries migrate their IT infrastructure to the cloud, raises CAD$20M
12:40 AM •	Jake Bright / TechCrunch: DHL expands its DHL Africa eShop to 13 additional markets, upping the presence of the global shipping company's e-commerce platform to 34 African countries
12:15 AM •	Srividya Kalyanaraman / AmericanInno: CIMCON Lighting, whose smart city platform simplifies the deployment of sensors, cameras, and other devices, such as Wi-Fi access points, raises $33M Series C

September 14, 2019

11:50 PM •	Margie Manning / St Pete Catalyst: ComplianceQuest, which develops cloud-based quality management software for life sciences and manufacturing sectors, raises $36M Series A
11:25 PM •	Lucas Matney / TechCrunch: Caper, which is developing smart grocery carts that use AI and various sensors to let shoppers quickly scan items and checkout, raises $10M Series A
9:30 PM •	Andy Greenberg / Wired: Researchers: flaws in the Crash Override malware, which took down the Ukrainian power grid for an hour in 2016, kept it from causing lasting damage
7:25 PM •	David Coats / VC by the Numbers: Analysis: ~51% of capital invested into US VC-funded companies exiting over the last decade lost money, while less than 4% generated a 10x or greater return
5:20 PM •	Jeff Abramowitz / Wired: Launched 20 years ago, Wi-Fi nearly lost out to the rival HomeRF, which was developed and promoted by a group including Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft
3:50 PM •	Miles Kruppa / Financial Times: Research: tech start-ups spent $44B on advertising and cloud computing from Facebook, Google, and Amazon in 2018, making up ~10% of the revenue of tech giants
1:45 PM •	Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica: Interview with Björk about her album Vulnicura VR, which is arguably the world's first full “VR pop album”, now available on Windows PC via Steam
11:50 AM •	Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft will reportedly launch a 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop 3 during its October 2 event
7:05 AM •	Jason Parham / Wired: A profile of Urban Dictionary, which started as a fun way to find meanings for slang but has done little to moderate submissions, letting hate speech flourish
2:00 AM •	Jason Snell / Six Colors: A look at Ultra Wideband-based U1 chip in iPhone 11 models, which is being used for AirDrop and could have many other potential applications like tracking tags

September 13, 2019

9:05 PM •	Allison Schiff / AdExchanger: After selling AppNexus to AT&T for $1.6B, Brian O'Kelley raises $10M for his new startup, CMDTY, to apply his adtech expertise to supply chain logistics
7:20 PM •	TechCrunch: Spotify acquires SoundBetter, a music production marketplace for artists, producers, and musicians to connect on specific projects, for an undisclosed sum
6:20 PM •	Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly: Audible will limit its Captions program, which shows text alongside narration, to public domain works until the copyright lawsuit filed by seven publishers ends
5:37 PM •	Brooks Barnes / New York Times: SEC filing: Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger has resigned from Apple's board
5:20 PM •	Los Angeles Times: Sources: Disney is mimicking Netflix in offering TV producers and others profits sooner in exchange for backend revenue, the first legacy media company to do so
4:40 PM •	Eric Peckham / TechCrunch: Patreon says it is selling the assets of Kit, the social-shopping platform that it acquired in June 2018, to localized affiliate link service Geniuslink
4:05 PM •	Annie Palmer / CNBC: MoviePass says it is shutting down and ending service for all subscribers on Saturday, September 14
3:40 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Applied Intuition, which provides software simulators for developing, testing, and deploying autonomous vehicles, raises $40M Series B
3:00 PM •	Julie Verhage / Bloomberg: Sources: Square is testing a new Cash App feature that would let users make free stock trades
2:40 PM •	Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: US Treasury sanctions three North Korean state-sponsored hacking groups, Lazarus, Bluenoroff, and Andarial; Lazarus was responsible for WannaCry ransomware
12:55 PM •	Jason Koebler / VICE: House Judiciary Committee's letter to Apple asks for all internal communications from 14 top execs relating to “restrictions on third-party repairs”
12:15 PM •	Chris Welch / The Verge: Discord says it's phasing out the digital game store it launched less than a year ago as part of its $9.99 per month Nitro subscription service, by October 15
12:10 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: YouTube says it will no longer allow paid views and advertising to influence its YouTube Music Charts, instead calculating rankings based only on organic plays
12:06 PM •	Annie Palmer / CNBC: Cloudflare closes up 20% on its first day of trading after raising $525M in its IPO, which valued the company at over $4B
11:10 AM •	Annie Palmer / CNBC: WeWork announces sweeping corporate governance changes in amended S-1; sources: WeWork is now seeking a valuation as low as $10B to $12B in its IPO
10:40 AM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Apple says developers now have the option to offer a grace period for auto-renewable subscriptions when they lapse due to factors like expired credit cards
10:20 AM •	Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: Zhuanzhuan, a China-based marketplace for trading used goods, raises $300M Series B from its parent company 58.com and Tencent Holdings
9:25 AM •	Tom Warren / The Verge: iOS 13 exploit bypasses the lockscreen to get access to contacts, appears to be fixed in beta copies of iOS 13.1, which is slated for release on September 30
9:10 AM •	Sean Silcoff / Globe and Mail: Element AI, which helps companies improve their operations using AI, raises $151.4M Series B, reportedly at a $625M valuation
8:42 AM •	Tony Romm / Washington Post: Bipartisan House lawmakers ask Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple for detailed information about internal operations and execs' emails in antitrust probe
8:25 AM •	Lucas Matney / TechCrunch: Sources: Daqri, which built enterprise-grade AR headsets and reportedly raised $275M in funding, has closed its HQ, laid off many employees, ahead of a shutdown
7:30 AM •	Aditi Shrivastava / The Economic Times: Bangalore-based OkCredit, which allows small business owners to record financial transactions digitally, raises $67M Series B led by Lightspeed and Tiger Global
2:45 AM •	April Glaser / Slate: How incidents like banning an “Always Punch Nazis” comic at Kickstarter led to a unionization push by employees who believe in the altruistic image of the brand

September 12, 2019

11:30 PM •	Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Sidewalk Labs spinout Replica raises $11M Series A for its modeling tool that uses mobile location data to show public agencies how, when, and why people travel
9:26 PM •	Martin Brinkmann / gHacks Technology News: Mozilla launches Premium Support for Firefox enterprise customers starting at $10 per supported installation, includes benefits like critical bug fixes with SLA
9:00 PM •	Michael del Castillo / Forbes: Dapper Labs, developer of CryptoKitties, raises $11.2M from a16z, Warner Music Group, and others for its proof-of-stake, high transaction volume blockchain Flow
8:00 PM •	Priyamvada Mathur / PitchBook: Cloudflare prices its IPO at $15/share, raising $525M, which gives it an initial market cap of ~$4.4B, an increase of 144%+ over its last private valuation
7:05 PM •	Lesley Goldberg / Hollywood Reporter: AT&T's WarnerMedia signs an exclusive five-year deal with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot for TV, film, and streaming projects; sources: deal is worth ~$250M
6:05 PM •	Isabel Kershner / New York Times: Facebook imposed a 24-hour ban on a chatbot operated by the official account of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for violating hate speech rules
5:35 PM •	Lauren Debter / Forbes: Direct-to-consumer dental startup SmileDirectClub closes down 28% on its first day of trading, after raising $1.35B in its IPO at a $9B valuation
4:40 PM •	Corbin Davenport / Android Police: Android 10 allows multiple apps to access a phone's microphone at once, in a way designed to benefit accessibility services and Google Assistant
4:05 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Walmart plans to reach 50%+ of the US by year end with “Delivery Unlimited”, its grocery delivery membership program that costs $98/year or $12.95/month
3:55 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Panoramic, an AI-powered digital marketing platform with clients including 20th Century Fox and MGM, comes out of stealth with $35M in funding
3:03 PM •	Adi Robertson / The Verge: Google won't need to admit wrongdoing in a NLRB settlement over complaints of restricting employees' speech, but will need to inform employees of speech rights
2:35 PM •	Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Shape Security, which uses AI to help companies protect against automated and imitation attacks, raises $51M Series F at a $1B+ valuation led by C5 Capital
2:25 PM •	Facebook: Facebook lays out four values that guide its Community Standards, in order to promote freedom of expression: authenticity, safety, privacy, and dignity
2:20 PM •	Lindsey O'Donnell / Threatpost: Researchers: “SimJacker”, a widespread SIM card-based vulnerability, is being exploited by a private actor “that works with governments to monitor individuals”
2:15 PM •	April Glaser / Slate: Kickstarter has fired two union organizers in eight days; sources: both were fired for what management said were performance-related issues
1:45 PM •	Alan Ohnsman / Forbes: Self-driving car startup Voyage, the Udacity spinoff operating taxi fleets in two retirement communities, raises $31M Series B led by Franklin Templeton
1:20 PM •	Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Incredible Health, a US-based job matching platform for nurse vacancies, raises $15M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz
1:10 PM •	Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch: Apple says it is tweaking changes announced at WWDC to App Store policies around Sign in with Apple and the rules around children's app categories
1:00 PM •	Claudia Koerner / BuzzFeed News: Facebook takes down fact-check of anti-abortion video after complaints from four GOP senators alleging bias; Facebook's fact-checking partner is investigating
12:45 PM •	Nat Levy / GeekWire: Seattle-based Swiftly, which develops tech offerings for supermarkets to help compete with Amazon and Walmart, raises $15.6M seed round
12:35 PM •	Richard Gingras / The Keyword: Google says it changed how it ranks stories and updated guidelines for evaluation of search results to help better identify and surface original news reporting
12:10 PM •	Casey Newton / The Verge: Google Photos starts rolling out Memories, a tool that brings back old photos and videos on their anniversaries in an Instagram Stories-like format
11:45 AM •	Andrew Ross Sorkin / New York Times: Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft did not sign a letter from 145 CEOs, including Lyft, Twitter, Airbnb, and Uber CEOs, urging Senate action on gun violence
11:30 AM •	Tom Warren / The Verge: Slack launches a dark mode for macOS, Windows, and Linux, with dark mode variants of all existing sidebar themes and a new “Nocturne” dark mode theme
11:06 AM •	Rob Copeland / Wall Street Journal: Sources: NLRB ordered Google to let employees speak out on political and workplace issues, as part of a settlement of complaints that it restricts free speech
10:55 AM •	Todd Spangler / Variety: Walmart's Vudu is launching family-friendly features, like Family Play, which lets viewers automatically skip or mute “objectionable” content, and a kids' mode
10:50 AM •	Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Ola says Ola Bike, the two-wheeler service it launched in 2016, is now operational in 150 Indian cities and towns, and it intends to grow it 3x in the next year
10:40 AM •	Anthony Cuthbertson / The Independent: French Economy and Finance Minister says the country will block the development of Facebook's Libra in the EU as it poses a threat to “monetary sovereignty”
10:30 AM •	Theodore Schleifer / Vox: Sources: federal investigators, including the FBI, are probing the conduct and practices of Mithril Capital, the VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel
10:25 AM •	Simon Carraud / Reuters: Google has agreed to pay a €500M fine and €465M in additional taxes in France to settle a fiscal fraud probe that began four years ago
10:20 AM •	Alfred Ng / CNET: Spotify updated its ToC in August, requiring Premium Family subscribers to provide location data “from time to time” to ensure users live at the same address
10:10 AM •	Jared Newman / Fast Company: Amazon launches Alexa Answers, a crowdsourcing platform that lets any user answer questions asked by other users, in the US
10:00 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Simbe Robotics, which builds autonomous inventory robots for the retail industry, raises $26M Series A led by Venrock
9:45 AM •	Jonathan Vanian / Fortune: Trifacta, which helps clean corporate data so it can be analyzed, raises $100M from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Telstra Ventures, NTT Docomo, and others
9:30 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Lacework, which helps protect cloud environments from data breaches, raises $42M from Sutter Hill Ventures and Liberty Global Ventures
9:15 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: SmartDrive, which provides in-truck video-based telematics and transportation insights, raises $90M led by TPG Sixth Street Partners
8:50 AM •	Nicole Lee / Engadget: Hands-on with the HTC Vive Cosmos VR headset, which ships on October 3 for $699 with a trial subscription to Viveport Infinity, HTC's unlimited game service
7:50 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Healthy.io, which helps patients analyze urine samples with a testing kit and smartphone app, raises $60M Series C led by Corner Ventures
7:15 AM •	Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Akeneo, which develops a product information service to manage all information about products in stores and online, raises $46M Series C led by Summit Partners
6:35 AM •	Alex Konrad / Forbes: Profile of Daniel Dines, the CEO of robotic process automation company UiPath, which has 3,000+ employees around the world and generated $155M revenue in 2018
2:30 AM •	Blake Montgomery / The Daily Beast: Filing: ICE will pay Cellebrite, an Israeli hacking tools vendor, between $30M to $35M over the next one to five years, more than ten times their 2017 contract

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