Techmeme
December 12, 2020, 1:15 AM

Top News

Gizmodo:
Public records show school districts across the US are purchasing phone hacking tools from companies like Cellebrite to search students' personal devices  —  In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district's school resource officers.
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Oracle says it is moving its corporate headquarters from Redwood City, CA to Austin, TX and will implement “a more flexible employee work location policy”  —  - Oracle is the latest tech company to relocate from California to Austin, Texas.  — HPE announced its move to Houston earlier this month.
BuzzFeed News:
Four key Facebook staffers who dealt with hateful or violent speech have left in recent weeks, calling out leadership for lack of action in their farewell posts  —  On Wednesday, a Facebook data scientist departed the social networking company after a two-year stint, leaving a farewell note for their colleagues to ponder.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it has acquired screen-sharing social app Squad whose team will join Twitter, and it will shut down the app tomorrow  —  Today, Twitter announced that it is acquiring Squad and that the team from the screen-sharing social app will be joining Twitter's ranks.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Some iPhone users say iOS 14 is not showing notifications when receiving SMS texts and iMessages  —  An iOS 14 bug doesn't show notifications when some new messages arrive  —  If you've noticed that you're receiving SMS texts and iMessages from people but aren't getting any notifications about them, you're not alone.
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Filing: California is seeking to join the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against Google, making it the first Democratic state to request to join 11 GOP AGs in the suit  —  - California is seeking to join the Justice Department in its antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to a court filing the state submitted on Friday.
Kyunghee Park / Bloomberg:
Hyundai buys an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in a deal that values the robot company at $1.1B  —  - SoftBank, affiliates to retain 20% interest in U.S. company  — South Korean group develops robots for practical use  —  Hyundai Motor Group agreed to buy a controlling stake …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Text inside Twitter's app code suggests that live broadcasting app Periscope may get shut down  —  Twitter has been doubling down on video services within its app, building out Twitter Live and recently launching Fleets so that users can share more moving media alongside their pithy 180-word observations, links and still photos.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Bionic, which helps businesses manage applications via automated app analytics, has come out of stealth with $17M in Series A and seed funding  —  App analytics startup Bionic today emerged from stealth with $17 million, a combination of series A and seed funding.
Bloomberg:
Innoviz, a lidar company backed by auto suppliers Magna and Aptiv, is going public via a SPAC merger expected to close in Q1 2021 at a valuation of $1.4B  —  - Startup supplies laser sensors for BMW's iX model due in 2021  — Innoviz is fourth lidar company in 2020 to go public via SPAC
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Sources: Israeli surveillance vendors like Bsightful, backed by the US public company Verint, hook into ad exchange systems to siphon app location data  —  This year has seen a rush amongst government snoops for a new and sometimes contentious data set: location data grabbed by smartphone popular apps.
Washington Post:
FTC and state AG antitrust complaints use dramatic language, bolstered by emails, to portray Zuckerberg as a villain who vowed to “crush” the competition  —  Antitrust enforcers are casting the billionaire executive, once one of American tech's 'darling superstars …
New York Times:

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More News

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Kayleigh Barber / Digiday:

Earlier Picks

Yunan Zhang / The Information:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
The Daily Beast:
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge: