What's Popular on Techmeme
Facebook launches a Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, a one-stop-shop for information on how to register and vote
London-based Habito, which offers mortgages online, raises £35M Series C led by Augmentum Fintech, SBI Group and mojo.capital
Apple's pledge to go carbon neutral by 2030 relies in large part on its Taiwanese suppliers TSMC and Foxconn, which use around 90% non-renewable sources
Sources: Palantir is planning to go public through a direct listing of its shares in late September
Blend, which develops a SaaS platform for lenders, raises $75M Series F led by Canapi Ventures at a valuation of ~$1.7B, up more than 70% from a year earlier
Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek returned to Twitch on Wednesday, following Mixer's shutdown; his return stream attracted ~500K active viewers at its peak
Canalys: 31.9M smartphones shipped to the US in Q2, down 5% YoY; Apple shipped 15M iPhones to the US, up 10% YoY, and Samsung shipped 7.4M units, down 1% YoY
Coinbase says it will offer fiat loans to US retail customers, backed by as much as 30% of a customer's bitcoin holdings, in 17 states this fall
Sources: ByteDance has been in talks with India's Reliance for investment in TikTok's India operations since late last month, after India banned the app in June
Square says it is testing a short-term loan feature, giving between $20 and $200, repayable over a month, with around 1,000 users
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and others partner to scenario-plan for the last three months before US Election Day, including slow election results
Lyft reports Q2 revenue of $339M, above expectations but down 61% YoY, as active riders drop 60% YoY to 8.7M; revenue per active rider was $39.06, down 2% YoY
Cisco reports Q4 revenue of $12.2B, down 9% YoY, net revenue of $2.6B, up 19% YoY, says more than half its revenue is from software and services; stock down 6%+
Source: Facebook and Snap recently approached Dubsmash, a lip-syncing video app, about an acquisition, with discussions including a possible nine-figure deal
Facebook rolls out an interstitial screen that pops up when users try sharing COVID-19 content, showing the source and date created, adding much-needed friction
Profile of Jim Hood, who tussled with Google during his 16 years as Mississippi's AG and, sources say, is now advising the AG-led multistate antitrust probe
Sources: Airbnb reported Q2 revenue of $335M, down from $842M in Q1 and over $1B in Q2 2019, as its adjusted loss rose to $400M, up from $341M in Q1
Finnish startup Varjo, which develops high resolution VR/XR headsets and VR technologies for enterprise applications, raises $54M Series C
As Amazon joins SpaceX and OneWeb in launching satellite constellations, astronomers worry about the effects on astronomical observations and image quality
nytimes.com · 14 hours ago
Hands-on with a non-functioning Surface Duo prototype, which has two 5.6-inch OLED screens forming a 8.1-inch display, bound together by a unique hinge
Interview with Jorge Ríos, co-founder and CEO of Bridgefy, a popular protest app which uses mesh-networking tech for messaging without an internet access
Gong, which uses AI to provide insights on customer behavior and improve sales, raises $200M Series D, at a $2.2B valuation, led by Coatue
After a $650M settlement in a biometric data collection case last month, Facebook faces a new suit alleging Instagram collects biometric data without consent
bloomberg.com · 14 hours ago
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says it will likely need to shut down for several months in California if it is forced to re-classify drivers as employees
Hands-on with Instagram's Reels: confusing, frustrating, impossible to navigate, and lacking TikTok's editing features
A look at so-called Russian, encrypted, or "white" SIMs, used by criminals to spoof phone numbers, add voice manipulation to calls in real-time, and more
Instagram has been taken over by "social justice slideshows" that use the 10-image carousel format to inform and educate about myriad issues
vox.com · 14 hours ago