Techmeme
January 23, 2019, 4:35 PM

Top News

Day One: The Amazon Blog:
Amazon says it is field testing Amazon Scout, a small autonomous six-wheeled delivery robot, in Snohomish County, Washington  —  Delivery ,Washington,Technology,Innovation  —  At Amazon, we continually invest in new technologies to benefit customers.  We've been hard at work developing a new …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google launches YouTube TV in 95 new US markets, says it now covers 98% of US households  —  98 percent of US households are covered as of today, with the rest coming soon  —  YouTube TV is finally nearing nationwide availability.  The streaming TV service first launched in February 2017 …
Reuters:
Waymo to invest $13.6M in a factory for level 4 autonomous cars in Michigan, partnering with Magna to install Waymo's self-driving system in cars made by others  —  (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving vehicle unit said on Tuesday it plans to build a plant in Michigan to transform vehicles …
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Microsoft is automatically installing NewsGuard, a plug-in that guides users on which news websites can be trusted, on mobile versions of its Edge browser  —  Mail Online rated one out of five for credibility by new feature to fight fake news  —  Microsoft's internet browser is warning users …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
After Netflix price hikes, Hulu will lower its base, ad-supported subscription plan to $6/mo, down from $8/mo, and hike its Live TV service to $45/mo on Feb. 26  —  The core service is getting cheaper, but live TV now costs more  —  Hulu just announced that it will lower the price of its base …
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Google spent $21.2M on US govt lobbying in 2018, up from $18.04M in 2017; Facebook spent $12.62M, up from $11.51M; and Microsoft spent $9.52M, up from $8.5M  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google disclosed on Tuesday that it spent a company-record $21.2 million on lobbying …
Steven T. Wright / Ars Technica:
A look at the history of LiveJournal, the early blogging platform that boasted 10M+ accounts at its height but faltered after questionable business decisions  —  George RR Martin's platform switch reminds us of an early blogging giant greatly changed.  —  Last April, famed writer …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Confluent, the company behind open source streaming data project Apache Kafka, raises $125M Series D led by Sequoia Capital, source says at a $2.5B valuation  —  Open source software has produced a new multi-billion-dollar company - one that has some of Silicon Valley's best-known venture firms jockeying …
Aaron Mackey / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Federal prosecutors and US court in Seattle agree to publish info on warrantless surveillance requests, will disclose case numbers and crime being investigated  —  The public will learn how often federal investigators in Seattle obtain private details about your communications …
Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg:
Andela, which trains and places African programmers to work remotely for US companies, raises $100M Series D from Al Gore's Generation Investment Management  —  Outsourcing isn't generally seen as the most high-minded of industries.  But when the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative …
Anthony D'Alessandro / Deadline:
The Motion Picture Association of America has added Netflix as a member, the first internet-based service to be added  —  UPDATED with Netflix officially joining: It's official, Netflix is a member of the MPAA.  The Washington, DC-based organization just dropped the following release:

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Sara Fischer / Axios:

Earlier Picks

Pushkala Aripaka / Reuters:
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Sam Levin / The Guardian:
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Apple: