Trending Stories from wsj.com
Cirque Du Soleil Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Amazon is boosting efforts to lure military and commercial space organizations as major users of AWS, hoping to benefit from rising spending in the sector
Techmeme · 2 days ago
Sources: Uber in talks to buy Postmates for ~$2.6B in a deal that could be announced next week if not sooner
Just Eat Takeaway's Grubhub acquisition rests on the belief that restaurants should handle delivery, helping it avoid the costs of building delivery fleets
Amazon details new one-time bonuses for front-line workers and delivery contractors with Amazon throughout June, after phasing out its initial pandemic pay bump
Techmeme · 2 days ago
Wirecard Scandal Puts Spotlight on Auditor Ernst and Young
Unilever says it will halt US advertising on Facebook and Twitter for at least the remainder of 2020, citing hate speech and divisive content on the platforms
Sources: facing growing ad boycott, Facebook told advertisers it will "not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure" but will invest more in tackling hate
Sources: White House has discussed various strategies to build competition against Huawei in 5G, like tax breaks and export-bank financing for Ericsson, Nokia
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son Says He Will Resign From Board of Alibaba
Sources and documents detail a months-long cyberstalking and harassment campaign by members of eBay's security team against those behind the ECommerceBytes blog
‘Crush This Lady.’ Inside eBay’s Bizarre Campaign Against a Blog Critic
Sources: Trump's campaign has discussed moving away from Facebook and Twitter, potentially to platforms like Parler, following disputes with both platforms
Sources: Dell is examining spinning off its ~$50B stake in VMWare as well as other options; after hours, Dell's stock is up 14%+, VMware's is up 8%+
Amazon unveils a Climate Pledge Fund, which will invest an initial $2B in startups building sustainable technologies
Techmeme · 1 week ago
TikTok Users Gush About China, Hoping to Boost Views
Looking Forward to the End of Humanity
The IRS says it bought access to a marketing database of location data for millions of US cellphones to try to identify and track potential criminal suspects
WSJ News Exclusive | IRS Used Cellphone Location Data to Try to Find Suspects
How Exactly Do You Catch Covid-19? There Is a Growing Consensus – WSJ
Sundar Pichai says Google will increase its proportion of execs from underrepresented groups by 30% by 2025, contribute $175M+ for Black business owners, more
Book excerpt by Trump's former national security adviser: Trump offered in 2019 to reverse Huawei's criminal prosecution if China agreed to a trade deal
Graphika report details a Russia-based influence campaign, known as Secondary Infektion, that ran over 6 years and 300 sites, but failed to win a large audience
Tech Firms Are Spying on You. In a Pandemic, Governments Say That’s OK.
Multiple studies seem to show that people are more honest and convey more personal thoughts when writing on smartphones than writing on PCs
Political advocacy and voter-registration groups are targeting phones of protesters and sending them messages about registering to vote or taking other actions
PayPal, Square, others make some businesses wait for weeks to access funds, to protect themselves against the rise of disputed transactions during the pandemic
Sources: at its current pace, Quibi will sign up fewer than 2M paying subscribers by the end of its first year, well under its original target of 7.4M
China's $1.4T tech campaign includes a massive 5G project, aiming for 600K base stations by end of 2020, relies on money from private sector, local governments
Filing: Tencent took a 1.6% stake in Warner Music Group for $200M in Warner's IPO in separate transactions by two Tencent subsidiaries; shares now worth ~$250M
Sources: California is conducting an inquiry into Amazon's practices, focused in part on Amazon selling its own products in competition with third-party sellers
Techmeme · 3 weeks ago
Sources: Just Eat Takeaway is nearing an all-stock deal to acquire Grubhub that could be finalized as early as Wednesday, after Uber-Grubhub talks stalled
Black tech execs hope the current attention on racial disparities will help diversify tech workers, as black people account for only 7.8% of core US IT workers
Interviews with Huawei staff and a review of internal documents shed light on Huawei's efforts to reorganize and aggressively respond to the growing US pressure
Overall, remote learning this spring didn't work: schools disagree on fair student assessment, students lack equal access to technology, teaching got harder
Elon Musk Calls For Amazon Breakup
Reddit · 4 weeks ago
Last Person to Receive Civil War-Era Pension Dies
Rivals say Microsoft's used sharp-elbowed tactics to push Teams during the pandemic, including 50 staffers working with NYC's school district to replace Zoom
Stitch Fix to Lay off About 1,400 Employees in California
YouTube and YouTube TV have more than 100M people in the US watching on TV screens each month, rising 80% YoY in March, according to the company
Coronavirus Patients Sometimes Don't Get Back Taste, Smell Senses
Individual Investors Get Burned by Collapse of Complex Securities
COVID-19 Technology Task Force, an effort to let big tech companies assist White House's pandemic response, beset by disagreements over privacy and other issues
Comcast is spinning off Blockgraph, its cable TV ad-targeting service, to create a three-way joint venture with ViacomCBS and Charter Communications
Blood of recovered Covid-19 patients is becoming a hot commodity
Sources: Tencent is in talks to buy a $200M stake in Warner Music Group in advance of Warner's IPO; the offering is expected to value WMG around $11.7B- $13.3B
Platform Science, which provides fleet management telematics software for trucking companies, raises $42M Series B led by Prologis with Daimler participating
Sources: Amazon is in advanced talks to buy self-driving car startup Zoox; the deal will value Zoox at less than the $3.2B valuation it achieved in 2018
Techmeme · 1 month ago