What's Popular on Techmeme
Enterprise communications firm Mitel to be acquired for $2B by Searchlight Capital Partners in an all-cash transaction
Apple will pay Ireland €13B in back taxes starting in May, after deal is reached on where to store the funds, 19 months after EU ruled tax scheme was illegal
US Supreme Court upholds legality of patent review process called inter partes review, which has been a relatively cheap way to combat "patent troll" firms
Spotify launches a redesigned mobile app for its free users that lets them listen on-demand to any song on one of 15 personalized discovery playlists
DoorDash begins a pilot program for grocery delivery with Walmart in Atlanta, wants to work behind the scenes to power delivery networks for larger companies
Sources: Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing is in early-stage talks about a multibillion-dollar IPO as soon as this year, at a valuation of ~$70-$80B
Human Rights Watch: Chinese tech giants like Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent discriminate against women in some job listings by posting "men only" job ads, more
Verizon Q1 earnings beat estimates with revenue of $31.77B, up 6.6% YoY, and a net increase of 260K retail postpaid customers
Amazon partners with GM and Volvo to launch in-car package delivery service for Prime subscribers in 37 cities in the US
theverge.com · 5 hours ago
Inside Amazon's Lab126 and the Alexa Voice Services team, which has helped manufacturers pack Alexa into more than a hundred consumer devices
cnet.com · 5 hours ago
Facebook publishes the internal guidelines it uses to enforce its public Community Standards, will allow users to appeal when their posts are taken down
A look at how Microsoft is monetizing the Minecraft ecosystem, having paid out $7M to Marketplace creators so far
Alibaba says its smart assistant, Tmall Genie, will be featured in Chinese Mercedes, Audi, and Volvo autos, joining ~100 brands Alibaba says it's partnered with
Job listings indicate Andreessen Horowitz is hiring for "a separately managed fund focusing on crypto assets"
Researchers reveal unpatchable vulnerability in Nvidia Tegra chips that make all currently available Nintendo Switch consoles hackable
Interview with former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès on what he claims really happened in the company's final days and a look at what's next for the case against him
Technology reporter Christopher Calnan claims he was dismissed from Austin Business Journal in 2016 after the paper caved into pressure from Dell over coverage
Nest generated $726M in revenue on an operating loss of $621M in 2017, as revealed by a one-time accounting charge in Alphabet's quarterly results
CIA says foreign spies in about 30 countries use digital surveillance to monitor agents and that it is pursuing ~140 AI projects to help agents evade cameras
YouTube releases its first community guidelines enforcement report: 8M+ videos removed in Q4 2017, with 6.7M first flagged by machines
Consortium of Amazon, Netflix, and many Hollywood studios sues IPTV service SET TV, claims mass copyright infringement, seeks injunction to shutter service
torrentfreak.com · 16 hours ago
As it prepares to launch a podcasts app, Google adds seamless podcast listening across devices, allowing users to listen on a phone and resume on Google Home
Facebook gives its definition of terrorism, says it took action on 1.9M pieces of ISIS and al-Qaeda content in Q1, ~2x the previous quarter, finding 99% itself
Twitch's creators and devs gain new a revenue stream with launch of Bits, which work in Twitch Extensions, with 80/20 revenue split between creators and devs
Alphabet says its "other revenues", which include cloud business and hardware sales, made $4.4B in Q1 revenue; Other Bets had revenue of $150M on a $571M loss
Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2018 Results
After Amazon clamped down on paid reviews in 2016, the community dispersed but still flourishes, with most comments on some popular categories still fake
washingtonpost.com · 21 hours ago
Symantec: hacker group called Orangeworm is targeting equipment in US healthcare, like X-Ray and MRI machines, as well manufacturing, agriculture, IT devices
Mark Karpelès, the CEO of Mt. Gox until its 2014 bankruptcy, becomes CTO of Denver-based London Trust Media, which owns the popular Private Internet Access VPN
Around 40 Chinese mutual funds have adjusted the valuation of ZTE in their portfolios, some by 20-30%, since it suspended trading following US trade sanctions
China-based Didi Chuxing launches in Mexico in its first organic international expansion, following acquisition route into Brazil and franchise model in Taiwan
In pilot program debuting soon, Uber says it will start obscuring the log of rider pickup and drop-off locations given to drivers, instead showing general areas
Glowforge finally launches its $2,495 3D laser printer to consumers, after breaking crowdfunding records for the device in October 2015
Middle East Uber rival Careem says data of 14 million drivers and riders stolen in cyberattack
Iran's central bank bans the country's banks from dealing in cryptocurrencies over money-laundering concerns, as the country tries to halt a currency crisis
Avast outlines how hackers hid a backdoor in its PC cleanup tool CCleaner, which tainted ~2.27M downloads in 2017, as part of a targeted attack on tech firms
At $7.4B, streaming revenue was 43% of all recorded music revenues in 2017; revenue for artists selling directly via platforms like Bandcamp grew 27.2% YoY
musicindustryblog.wordpress.com · 22 hours ago
Profile of CrowdSource Rescue, a service created by two friends during Hurricane Harvey, which helped coordinate thousands of rescues during future disasters
Pear Video, a Chinese platform for short videos, raises $98.2M Series A led by Tencent and Baidu
TransferWise becomes first non-bank firm to get direct access to Bank of England's interbank payment systems to process payments without intermediary banks
Vodafone exec: company now serves 65M IoT connections, including 14.4M connected vehicles and 5M medical devices, generating~€235M in Q4 2017, up 18.8% YoY
Sources: Amazon is working on a domestic robot codenamed Vesta that can navigate inside homes like a driverless car
bloomberg.com · 22 hours ago