Techmeme
April 23, 2020, 5:50 PM

Top News

Dana Mattioli / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon employees often consulted sales info on third-party vendors when developing private-label merchandise, contrary to assertions to Congress  —  Contrary to assertions to Congress, employees often consulted sales information on third-party vendors when developing private-label merchandise
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple aims to sell Macs with its own chips by 2021 and is working on three Mac processors based on the 5nm A14 chip in the next iPhone  —  - New processors to be based on iPhone designs, replacing Intel  — Transition will be gradual, start with less-powerful computers
Megan Graham / CNBC:
Google to require all advertisers to verify their identities, starting in the US; existing advertisers will have 30 days to complete the verification process  —  - Google began requiring political advertisers wanting to run election ads on its platform to verify their identity back in 2018.
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Report: EU commissioner says Tim Cook told him Apple and Google's contact tracing API will be available to developers from April 28  —  The first version of Apple and Google's jointly developed, cross-platform contact tracing API should be available to developers as of next week …
Ry Crist / CNET:
FCC adopts a proposal that opens the 6GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use, freeing up more than 1,200MHz of additional bandwidth for next-gen Wi-Fi 6E devices  —  The unanimous decision opens 1,200MHz of new bandwidth for Wi-Fi 6E devices that are expected to begin arriving this year.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Apple Music app is now available on Samsung's smart TV models from 2018 onwards  —  Another Apple service comes to Samsung's sets, available now  —  Apple Music is getting an app on Samsung's most recent smart TVs, the two companies announced today.  It's the latest expansion …
Aaron Sankin / The Markup:
Facebook removes “pseudoscience” from the list of categories advertisers can use to target people after report that the category contained more than 78M people  —  While vowing to police COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, Facebook let advertisers target users interested in"pseudoscience"
Julia Black / The Verge:
Following layoffs at Bird, interviews with 16 former employees paint a picture of a workplace with high-turnover and an erratic, careless leadership  —  Inside the electric scooter startup with big workplace problems  —  Emma* was up late working on a complex analysis from her laptop in bed for Bird.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:
Research tracking tech company layoffs finds 29,463 employees were laid off from 292 companies between March 11 and April 21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic  —  Today, the U.S. Labor Department reported some sobering figures: The number of unemployment claims filed over the past five weeks surged to 26.4 million.
More: CNBC
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS launches Amazon AppFlow, an integration service for developers to easily transfer data between AWS and SaaS applications  —  AWS today launched Amazon AppFlow, a new integration service that makes it easier for developers to transfer data between AWS and SaaS applications like Google Analytics …
Karen Weise / New York Times:
Jeff Bezos, who sources say only worked on projects that posed a major risk to the company, has taken an active leadership role at Amazon amid COVID-19  —  The chief executive, who had distanced himself from day-to-day management, is closely involved in the company's response to the pandemic.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Boston Dynamics says its quadruped Spot robot is in use at one Boston hospital for remote triage of patients suspected of having COVID-19  —  The company has ambitious plans for using robots to assist COVID-19 treatment  —  Robot maker Boston Dynamics announced on Thursday that its quadruped Spot robot …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Digits comes out of stealth with a $22M Series B led by GV and launches a free AI-powered expense monitoring dashboard for small businesses  —  Digits, a fintech startup hailing from the same team that built and sold Crashlytics to Twitter, is officially launching today after two years of development.
Tweets: @levynews
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Digital whiteboard maker Miro raises $50M Series B led by Iconiq Capital, bringing its total raised to around $75M  —  Miro is a company in the right place at the right time.  The makers of a digital whiteboard are seeing usage surge right now as businesses move from the workplace and physical whiteboards.
More: FinSMEs
Patrick Shanley / Hollywood Reporter:
SuperData: worldwide digital video game spending reached a record $10B total in March, up 11% YoY, with $5.7B for mobile games, up 15% YoY  —  Console, PC and mobile games also saw significant revenue bumps amid the coronavirus lockdown.  —  Digital video game spending hit a record high …

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