Techmeme
January 21, 2019, 5:10 AM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook to launch Community Actions, a News Feed petition feature for users to tag government agencies and officials and advocate for changes, on Monday  —  Gather a mob and Facebook will now let you make political demands.  Tomorrow Facebook will encounter a slew of fresh complexities …
James Cook / Telegraph:
Uber is hiring for a new Micromobility Robotics team to develop autonomous scooters and bikes that can drive themselves to reach customers and charging points  —  Uber is hiring engineers to develop electric scooters and bicycles which can drive themselves around cities in order to reach customers and charging points.
Matt Binder / Mashable:
Google Maps rolls out ability to see user-reported speed traps via small camera icons, in North America, UK, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, and Indonesia  —  Drivers will soon have an extra set of eyes on the road, courtesy of Google.  —  Google's navigation app, Google Maps …
Alex Sherman / CNBC:
SEC filing: Disney lost $1B+ from streaming in its 2018 fiscal year, with a $580M loss attributed to its stake in Hulu and $469M to ownership of BAMtech  —  - Disney's stake in Hulu and its ownership of BAMtech led to a loss of more than $1 billion in the latest fiscal year.
Emily Bell / Columbia Journalism Review:
Facebook's journalism funding does not guarantee the success of high-quality reporting on its platform, which would obviate the need for such cash infusions  —  At some point over the past year, anyone connected with journalism, its present woes, or concerns over its future probably found themselves in a room with a Facebook executive.
James Ball / Columbia Journalism Review:
Kate Clark / TechCrunch:
Knock, a home trade-in platform started by Trulia veterans, has raised $400M Series B in equity and debt financing led by Foundry Group  —  Home trade-in platform Knock has brought in a $400 million investment to accelerate a national expansion and double its 100-person headcount.
Dan Rys / Billboard:
Profile of Audiomack, which started as a mixtape hosting site and now has a popular free music streaming service with 1.5M users, up from 400K a year ago  —  “We're not intent on becoming Spotify.  We're not trying to become Apple Music," says co-founder and CMO Dave Ponte.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Video of a purported Google Pixel 3 Lite shows a phone with a plastic case, 3.5mm headphone jack, 5.56" 2220x1080 LCD display, and Snapdragon 670 CPU  —  It wouldn't be a new Pixel without a massive leak  —  At this point it may be a tradition that new Google phones show up in unboxing videos …
Wall Street Journal:
A Japanese hotel that opened in 2015 as the “world's first robot hotel” has fired most of its robots after they frustrated guests and made more work for staff  —  The robot revolution will have to wait at the Henn na Hotel in Japan, which is laying off low-performing droids

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