Techmeme
January 30, 2020, 11:20 AM

Top News

Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Avast will shut down its marketing subsidiary Jumpshot following controversy over selling user data to third parties  —  Avast's CEO said the move is “absolutely the right thing to do.”  —  Avast is winding down its subsidiary Jumpshot following an explosive investigation into the sale …
Emma Court / Bloomberg:
Practice Fusion, which offers free, ad-supported health records software to doctors, agrees to pay $145M DOJ fine for its role in boosting opioid prescriptions  —  - Practice Fusion ensured that addictive drugs were on the menu  — 'It's evil.  There's really no other word for it,' doctor says
Microsoft:
Microsoft Q2: revenue of $36.9B, up 14% YoY, net income of $11.6B, up 38% YoY; Commercial Cloud revenue up 39% YoY to $12.5B; Office 365 Consumer subs hit 37.2M  —  Microsoft Commercial Strength Powers Second Quarter Results REDMOND, Wash. — January 29, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. today announced …
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Facebook:
Facebook reports Q4 revenue of $21.1B, up 25% YoY, and net income of $7.4B, up 7% YoY; DAUs rose 9% YoY to 1.66B, MAUs rose 8% YoY to 2.5B; stock drops 5%+  —  Facebook, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2019.
Eun-Young Jeong / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung reports weak Q4 earnings from low memory chip sales as net profit slumps to $4.4B, down 39% YoY, on revenue of $50.52B, up 1.1% YoY  —  Company reports weak fourth-quarter earnings from low memory-chip sales  —  SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co. reported a 39% drop in fourth-quarter net profit …
New York Times:
Facebook agrees to pay $550M to settle a class action suit over Illinois biometric law violations for tagging users in photos, after SCOTUS rejected its appeal  —  It was another black mark on the privacy record of the social network, which also reported its quarterly earnings.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nintendo says Switch passed SNES in lifetime sales with 52M+ sold, reports sales of $9.39B and net profit of $1.8B for the nine months ended in December  —  Nintendo said it is upgrading its forecast for profits in the fiscal year ending March 31, thanks to strong sales of the Nintendo Switch and games that run on it.
The Information:
Source: Apple has terminated AI startup Xnor.ai's involvement in the Pentagon's Project Maven after its recent acquisition of the startup  —  Big technology companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google have jockeyed to secure lucrative contracts supplying their products and services to the military.
Bloomberg:
California court orders Apple to pay $838M and Broadcom to pay $270M for infringing California Institute of Technology patents on Wi-Fi transmissions  —  Apple Inc. and Broadcom Inc. must pay $1.1 billion in damages for infringing California Institute of Technology patents on Wi-Fi transmissions, a jury in California ordered.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Fantastical, a popular calendar app for iOS and macOS, switches to a subscription model to unlock new premium features like Calendar Sets and weather forecasts  —  Admit it, you've lost track of how many years it's been since you paid for Fantastical.  The answer could be as long ago as 2013 …
Anirban Sen / Reuters:
Sources: online pharmacy Alto, which offers same-day deliveries and medication management apps, has raised ~$250M led by SoftBank, at a valuation of over $1B  —  BANGALORE (Reuters) - SoftBank's second Vision Fund has led a new round of funding for Silicon Valley-based drug delivery firm Alto Pharmacy …
More: Seeking AlphaTweets: @yoda
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Study that looked at 72M YouTube comments across 330,925 videos finds evidence of radicalization effect on users that leads them to extreme far-right content  —  Research presented at the ACM FAT 2020 conference in Barcelona today supports the notion that YouTube's platform is playing a role …
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
SimScale, which offers cloud-based computer-aided engineering simulation software, raises €27M Series C led by Insight Partners  —  SimScale, the Munich-based SaaS startup, has raised €27 million in Series C funding to grow its cloud-based engineering simulation tool.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
Recruiters, be that zeroth candidate  —  Welcome again!  Earlier, we looked at how personality assessments are evaluation tools that help look at candidates beyond resumes.  Let's look at how to use …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

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