Techmeme
April 15, 2021, 1:20 AM

Top News

Ari Levy / CNBC:
Coinbase shares close at $328.28, valuing the company at $85.78B, down from its open of $381; Nasdaq listed shares at $250 before Wednesday's open  —  - Coinbase's market cap exceeded $100 billion after its debut Wednesday morning on the Nasdaq, though the stock fell later in the day.
Bloomberg:
Profile of 23-year-old Nick Lim, who founded Vancouver-based VanwaTech, a hosting provider for white supremacist websites like Daily Stormer and 8kun  —  Two and a half months before extremists invaded the U.S. Capitol, the far-right wing of the internet suffered a brief collapse.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission says it is investigating Facebook's data leak that recently resulted in personal info of 533M accounts being posted online  —  Facebook's lead data supervisor in the European Union has opened an investigation into whether the tech giant violated data protection rules vis …
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Twitter says it will study any “unintentional harms” caused by its algorithms and will make the findings public as part of its Responsible ML Initiative  —  new plan to study the fairness of its algorithms.  As part of the effort, which the company has dubbed the …
Washington Post:
Sources: Australian company Azimuth unlocked San Bernardino shooter's iPhone for FBI, using a flaw in Mozilla's open source code used for lightning accessories  —  Azimuth unlocked the iPhone at the center of an epic legal battle between the FBI and Apple.  Now, Apple is suing the company co-founded …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Kuo: 2022 iPhone lineup will feature two 6.1" and two 6.7" devices, no mini-sized 5.4"; high end models will have 48MP camera and 8K video capability  —  The upcoming 2022 iPhone lineup will feature two 6.1-inch devices and two 6.7-inch devices, with no mini-sized 5.4-inch iPhone …
Ryan Mac / @rmac18:
[Thread] A Facebook moderator at Accenture who just quit decries inadequate mental health support and says the current system is bad for Facebook itself  —  A Facebook content moderator contracted through Accenture in Austin quit this morning with a blistering internal note. I've typed it out in full so people can read it for themselves. https://twitter.com/...
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Dell to spin off its stake in VMware and use the proceeds of $9.3B-$9.7B to pay down Dell's debt, expecting to close the deal in Q4; Dell stock up 8%+  —  Dell sees the spin-off as a way to give each company more strategic flexibility and improve capital structure efficiencies …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Instagram says it is running a small global test to let users toggle Like counts on or off on their own or others' posts; Facebook will run a similar test  —  Instagram today will begin a new test around hiding Like counts on users' posts, following its experiments in this area which first began in 2019.
New York Times:
Hundreds of executives and companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, sign a statement opposing “any discriminatory legislation” around voting  —  Amazon, Google, G.M. and Starbucks were among those joining the biggest show of solidarity by businesses over legislation in numerous states.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Parallels releases Desktop 16.5 with native Apple Silicon support, letting users run Windows 10 ARM Insider Preview on M1 Macs, and touts improved performance  —  M1 Mac users now have a new way to virtualize Windows on their machines.  Parallels has officially released Parallels Desktop 16.5 today …
Amy Feldman / Forbes:
Benchling, which provides cloud-based software to manage biotech R&D, raises $200M led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities at $4B valuation, 5x its value in May  —  Sajith Wickramasekara was just 24 when he made the cut for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for his biotech R&D startup, Benchling.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Customers describe unhappiness with Apple contractor Phobio's handling of trade-ins, with quotes for devices slashed for alleged “defects” after being sent in  —  When Daniel McGloin decided to trade in his mid-2017 Apple MacBook in February of this year, he thought he was getting a pretty good deal.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Amazon unveils second-gen Echo Buds with a 20% smaller design and enhanced noise cancellation for $120 or $140 with a wireless charging case  —  The second-gen Echo Buds are 20 percent smaller and priced very aggressively  —  Amazon is today introducing its second-generation pair of Echo Buds.
Michael Sheetz / CNBC:
Astranis, which is developing small, low-cost satellites to provide broadband internet, raises $250M Series C at a $1.4B valuation led by BlackRock  —  - Astranis, a San Francisco-based company with an alternative approach to providing internet access from satellites, closed new funding to ramp up production.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources detail how Amazon uses its power across markets to compel vendors in one market to accept its terms in others, including threatening punitive action  —  A heavyweight in retail, cloud computing, digital advertising, streaming and smart speakers, the tech giant compels vendors in one market to engage with it in others

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