Techmeme
April 8, 2021, 11:55 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Union seeking to represent Amazon workers in AL says 3,215 ballots were cast; half of ballots have been counted, votes against unionization have 2-1 advantage  —  With about half the ballots counted late Thursday, votes against unionization had a more than 2-to-1 advantage over those in favor …
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Verizon is recalling 2.5M Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspots, ~1.3M of which are in use, after investigation found batteries could overheat and cause fire hazards  —  The CPSC says the devices' batteries are the source of the overheating  —  Verizon said Thursday it is working …
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
As part of its filing in its case against Epic, Apple argues that the App Store doesn't lead the gaming market and so cannot be considered a monopoly  —  Back in August 2020, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after an update that bypassed the App Store's in-app purchases system.
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Katie Canales / Insider:
Report: hackers scraped data of 500M LinkedIn users and posted it for sale online; LinkedIn confirms the dataset includes publicly viewable info from its site  —  - Personal data from 500 million LinkedIn users has been scraped and is reportedly for sale on a hacking forum.
Amanda Macias / CNBC:
US Commerce Department adds seven Chinese supercomputing entities to an export blacklist for allegedly building supercomputers used by Chinese military  —  - Commerce added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. economic blacklist citing national security concerns.
David Priest / CNET:
Samsung announces $40 SmartTag+, which uses Bluetooth and UWB to locate lost items, and AR to guide users to them, launching globally on April 16  —  Samsung has announced it will launch its new $40 SmartTag Plus globally on April 16, with US availability to follow “in the coming weeks.”
Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:
Intel details Bleep, which uses AI to redact audio when it detects “hate speech” and lets users toggle how much they want to hear  —  Intel gave a presentation at GDC a few weeks back, but I'm guessing nobody actually watched it because it took until this week for anyone to notice …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Facebook says it is adding contextual labels like “satire page” and “public official” to some posts in News Feeds, to reduce confusion about their origin  —  Facebook is adding labels to satire pages in the News Feed  —  Facebook is adding additional labels to posts …
Matt Mullenweg:
Matt Mullenweg denounces Wix's bizarre marketing campaign against WordPress and says Wix's business model “is getting customers to pay more and more every year”  —  Wix, the website builder company you may remember from stealing WordPress code and lying about it …
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: production of some MacBooks and iPads has been postponed due to the global component shortage; supply of some iPhone components is “quite tight”  —  US tech giant's headaches suggest even worse chip shortages lie ahead  —  TAIPEI — Production of some MacBooks and iPads …
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Lawsuit alleges that, since 2017, civil rights groups have flagged hundreds of anti-Muslim Pages and Groups to Facebook, more than half of which stayed up  —  Suit says the company made false claims to consumers by promising, at congressional hearings, that it quickly removes hate groups and hate speech
Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge:
Lenovo debuts 6.92" Legion Phone Duel 2 with two 2,750 mAh batteries, two USB-C ports, two cooling fans, Snapdragon 888, and up to 18GB RAM, starting at €999  —  Multiple ports, a pop-up camera, and yes — two fans  —  Lenovo's next gaming phone leaked earlier this week …
R. Lawler / Engadget:
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have recovered after a brief outage; Facebook says a configuration change caused the issue  —  After a brief outage, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are available once again.
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, raises $115M at a $1.6B valuation, and says it is nearing a transaction rate of $1B  —  This morning, Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, announced that it has closed $115 million across two investments …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
UK startup TrueLayer, which lets fintech apps connect with customers' bank accounts, raises $70M Series D led by Addition, bringing its total raised to $142M  —  - TrueLayer lets fintech apps like Revolut and Freetrade connect with customers' bank accounts using technology known as APIs.
Becky Bracken / Threatpost:
Report: collaboration tools like Slack and Discord are increasingly being used to spread malware, often using the tool's own CDNs and APIs to evade detection  —  Workflow and collaboration tools like Slack and Discord have been infiltrated by threat actors, who are abusing their legitimate functions …

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Emi Nietfeld / New York Times:
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