Latest Techmeme Headlines Today
August 09, 2022
- WhatsApp rolls out privacy features to let users leave Groups silently, choose who can see when they are online, and block screenshots of View Once messages (WABetaInfo)
- ByteDance acquired Amcare Healthcare, one of China's largest private hospital chains, source says for about $1.5B, deepening its foray into health care (Bloomberg)
- Amazon's registries for weddings, birthdays, new babies, and more are publicly visible by default, a sensitive personal data one-stop shop for identity thieves (Nikita Mazurov/The Intercept)
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Amazon's planned acquisitions of Roomba and One Medical are emblematic of Andy Jassy's hunt for a so-called fourth "pillar," beyond AWS, Prime, and Marketplace (Brad Stone/Bloomberg)
- Snapchat introduces parental controls through a new Family Center feature, letting parents see who teens are talking to but not view the content of the messages (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
- WhatsApp lets users delete a private or group chat message up to two days and 12 hours after sending it; previously, users were allowed a little over an hour (Filipe Espósito/9to5Mac)
- Oppo and OnePlus have halted sales in Germany after a court found the two companies were using 5G technology without paying for appropriate patents from Nokia (Andrew Romero/9to5Google)
- Report: Samsung plans to make an additional $3.3B investment in Vietnam to produce new semiconductor components by July 2023 and open a new R&D center in Hanoi (Che Pan/South China Morning Post)
- Crypto.com says it has secured registrations to operate as a virtual asset service provider in South Korea, acquires two local startups for undisclosed amounts (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
- Despite YouTube suspending hundreds of Kremlin-linked channels, Russia has yet to ban the service, some argue because the Kremlin views it as too big to block (Wall Street Journal)
- Apple adds option to show battery percentage in the status bar on select iPhones in iOS 16 beta 5, after removing it for models with notches at iPhone X's debut (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
- Sources: DataRobot's CFO and several other execs have resigned after CEO Dan Wright's resignation last month, amid an uproar over execs' quiet stock sales (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)
- US Treasury sanctions crypto mixing service Tornado Cash and 44 associated ETH and USDC wallets, citing its use in high profile hacks, including by North Korea (Kollen Post/The Block)
- Twilio discloses "unauthorized access" by a "sophisticated" actor using an SMS-based phishing attack on multiple staff to gain info on some accounts on August 4 (Carly Page/TechCrunch)
- What to expect from Samsung's Unpacked event on August 10: the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, Galaxy Watch 5, Galaxy Buds Pro 2, and more (Jon Porter/The Verge)
- Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries sign a multi-billion dollar revenue agreement to double long-term production, including expanding GlobalFoundries' New York plant (Reuters)
- Nvidia reports Q2 preliminary earnings, showing $6.7B revenue, down 19% from Q1 and below its $8.1B guidance, driven by lagging gaming revenue; stock drops 5%+ (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
- A profile of Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, as the company goes bankrupt; sources say he is a brash entrepreneur with a history of unhappy investors and colleagues (Wall Street Journal)
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Google files two lawsuits against Sonos, alleging it infringed on seven patents related to smart speakers and voice control, as part of the long-running dispute (Jacob Kastrenakes/The Verge)
- Apptopia: Netflix's games have 23.3M total downloads and average 1.7M DAUs, less than 1% of its subscribers; Netflix plans to reach 50 games by the end of 2022 (Jack Stebbins/CNBC)
- Vista Equity Partners plans to acquire Seattle-based automated tax compliance software maker Avalara for $8.4B in an all-cash deal (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)
- Filings: Apple spent $33M in fiscal 2021 and $169M in 2022 to date on acquisition payments, down from $1.5B in fiscal 2020, as its dealmaking slows dramatically (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- Palantir reports Q2 revenue rose 26% YoY to $473M and customers rose 250% YoY to 119; stock drops 10%+ on weak Q3 guidance and uncertainty over government deals (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)
- Lyft forms Lyft Media, helping consolidate and expand its ad offerings, and plans to show more ads inside cars, on its app, and at bike-share stations (Patrick Coffee/Wall Street Journal)
- Sources: India plans to ban Chinese smartphone markers from selling devices for under $150, impacting Xiaomi and others, seeking to boost its domestic industry (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)
- As Congress prepares for its August recess, the bipartisan antitrust bill targeting US tech giants remains in limbo; Schumer plans a vote after recess (Ryan Tracy/Wall Street Journal)
- A look at potential Ethereum forks, led by some miners, after the shift to a proof-of-stake model, called the Merge, expected as early as September (Olga Kharif/Bloomberg)
- After the draft ruling reversing Roe, location data company Tapestri says two companies asked to buy device data revealing users who visited abortion clinics (Patience Haggin/Wall Street Journal)
- SoftBank Vision Fund posts a ~$17.23B loss in the April-June quarter as the value of its tech portfolio, including SenseTime Group and Uber, fell (Sam Nussey/Reuters)
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China's Baidu secures permits for a fully driverless commercial robotaxi service in Chongqing and Wuhan that will operate largely in zones with revamped roads (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)
- Fitbit will end desktop syncing for PC and macOS in October, moving file transfers to its smartphone app, and local music and playlists to Deezer and Pandora (Abner Li/9to5Google)
- An examination of data collected by Tesla: what information its vehicles record, how Tesla uses this data to develop Autopilot, and who actually owns the data (Mark Harris/IEEE Spectrum)
- Sources: employees at many Apple stores continue to discuss unionization, Apple started to record September event; opinion: iPadOS delay was probably worth it (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- At least four top executives associated with a Chinese state-run semiconductor fund, which has invested $30B in total, have been arrested on corruption charges (Zeyi Yang/MIT Technology Review)
- Online crypto casinos like Stake are luring gamers, in some cases to the point of bankruptcy, by using celebrity endorsements and sponsored streams on Twitch (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg)
- On its Q2 2022 earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to launch a combined HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming service in the US in summer 2023 (Todd Spangler/Variety)
- UK-based Cera, whose app uses data analytics and AI to manage at-home health care, has raised $320M split equally between debt and equity led by Kairos HQ (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)
- Seamless, which provides cross-border digital remittances and cashless payments services, agrees to go public via a SPAC merger at an implied $400M valuation (PYMNTS.com)
- Illinois-based Sibel Health, which offers wearable sensors, AI-enabled data analytics, and cloud software for remote patient monitoring, raised a $33M Series B (Sean Whooley/MassDevice)
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Tom Alberg, an early Amazon investor and Madrona Venture Group co-founder, who was a key figure in shaping the Pacific Northwest's tech economy, dies at 82 (Bloomberg)
- A look at Netflix scrambling to build an ad business and revive its subscriber growth; sources: Reed Hastings expects Netflix could charge ~$80 per 1,000 views (Wall Street Journal)
- [Thread] How Apple's App Tracking Transparency blew up the digital ad ecosystem, bolstering Apple's ads business while positioning it as a privacy champion (Eric Seufert/@eric_seufert)
- Inside the cottage industry around "YouTube automation" that is dubiously persuading people to spend thousands of dollars to create video businesses on YouTube (Nico Grant/New York Times)
- [Thread] via iRobot, Amazon, one of the most powerful data collection companies on earth, will get another vast and intrusive set of data about people's homes (Ron Knox/@ronmknox)
- Researchers detail Dark Utilities, a new service that provides an inexpensive way for cybercriminals to set up a command and control center for their operations (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)
- How Coinbase went from a triumphant IPO to facing challenges with international expansion, global competition, revenue diversification, and staffing adjustments (New York Times)
- Analysis: Binance, Crypto.com, Coinbase, FTX, and other crypto companies have committed $2.4B+ to sports marketing in the past 18 months (Kim Bhasin/Bloomberg)
- Akamai: web application attacks on the gaming industry increased 167% YoY from May 2021-April 2022, and 37% of all DDoS attacks were against the gaming sector (Leigh Mc Gowran/Silicon Republic)
- A brief history of AI and why some AI researchers believe the technology they have built is sentient or conscious despite no evidence (Cade Metz/New York Times)
- Indonesia restored access to PayPal, Yahoo, and Valve services in the country after companies signed up to licensing rules introduced in 2020 (Kris Holt/Engadget)