Techmeme
April 9, 2021, 3:55 PM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon wins enough votes to beat union effort in Alabama; of the 3,215 ballots cast, there were 1,798 votes opposing the union and 738 votes in favor  —  - Amazon on Friday secured enough votes to defeat the unionization drive at one of its Alabama warehouses.
About Amazon:
Amazon thanks workers for voting against unionizing, says less than 16% voted to join the union and counters the union's claims that Amazon won by intimidation  —  Thank you to employees at our BHM1 fulfillment center in Alabama for participating in the election.
Kellen / Droid Life:
Epic filing reveals that in a 2016 email Phil Schiller said “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us”, which Epic argues is proof of lock-in  —  Epic and Apple are preparing to battle it out in court over the App Store (remember that whole Fortnite debacle?) …
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google denies reports Pixel 5a 5G is cancelled, says it'll be available this year in the US and Japan and announced in line with last year's a-series phone  —  Despite rumors this morning to the contrary, Google has just issued an on the record statement that the “Pixel 5a” does indeed exist and will not be canceled.
Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:
Researchers say Facebook's algorithms disproportionately show certain types of job ads to men and women; no evidence of gender skewing was found on LinkedIn  —  Researchers found the platform's algorithms promoted roles to certain users; company pledges to continue work in removing bias from recommendations
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Source: Reddit is exploring a Clubhouse-like feature that would enable moderator-run voice chats  —  The front page of the internet may be getting a voice.  —  Reddit is quietly exploring a new feature that would enable moderator-run voice chats, possibly similar to Clubhouse, according to a source familiar with the company's plan.
The Markup:
YouTube blocks advertisers from using terms like “Black lives matter” to find videos to advertise against but was letting them use phrases like “White power”  —  “Black power” and “Black Lives Matter” can't be used to find videos for ads, but “White power” and “White lives matter” were just fine
The Markup:
New York Times:
Taiwan is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to chip factories of TSMC and others, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers  —  The island is going to great lengths to keep water flowing to its all-important semiconductor industry, including shutting off irrigation to legions of rice growers.
Will Gottsegen / Decrypt:
Robinhood says 9.5 million customers traded crypto on its platform in Q1 2021 compared to 1.7 million in Q4 2020, an increase of 458%  —  The online brokerage service Robinhood said on Thursday that 9.5 million of its customers traded cryptocurrency on its platform in Q1 of 2021.
Thomas Wilde / GeekWire:
Report: March was Twitch's biggest month to date, with 2B+ hours watched, helped by “sleep streaming,” where popular streamers film themselves while sleeping  —  Twitch hit another viewership record last month, buoyed by hot content like watching people sleep and a roleplaying mod for an eight-year-old sandbox game.
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 pose fire hazards  —  The CPSC says the devices' batteries are the source of the overheating  —  Verizon said Thursday it is working …
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.
Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:
Orum, which speeds up bank payments by using AI to assess risk, raises $21M Series A led by Bain Capital  —  Today you can load a movie on Netflix in a second, catch an Uber in a minute and get groceries delivered in an hour.  You'd think money would move just as quickly—and some of it does.
CTech:
TipRanks, which uses NLP to measure the performance and rank 7,000+ professional stock analysts, raises $77M led by led by Prytek and More Investment House  —  Israeli-based fintech company provides a simplified stock research platform that makes alternative datasets accessible and visual for retail investors

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
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More News

Casey Newton / Platformer:

Earlier Picks

R. Lawler / Engadget:
Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:
David Priest / CNET:
Amanda Macias / CNBC:
Matt Mullenweg:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch: