Techmeme
December 7, 2021, 1:25 AM

Top News

The Markup:
Sources: Life360, a family safety app with 33M users, has sold users' precise location since 2016 and is one of the location data broker industry's top sources  —  The app is a major source of raw location data for a multibillion-dollar industry that buys, packages, and sells people's movements
Wall Street Journal:
Intel plans to take its Mobileye unit public, sources say at a $50B+ valuation; Intel acquired the self-driving car company in 2017 for about $15B  —  Move could value Mobileye at more than $50 billion, according to people familiar with the matter  —  Intel Corp. is planning to publicly list shares …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Microsoft seizes 42 domains allegedly used by a Chinese cyber espionage group that targeted organizations in 29 countries including the US  —  Microsoft said today that its legal team has successfully obtained a court warrant that allowed it to seize 42 domains used by a Chinese cyber-espionage group …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
WhatsApp now lets users set all one-to-one chats to disappear by default after 24 hours, seven days, or 90 days  —  Its disappearing messages feature is getting an upgrade  —  WhatsApp is adding new functionality to its disappearing messages feature, which lets users set messages in a chat …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Report: the US DOJ has asked Roblox why it changed “games” to “experiences” on its website, and asked Roblox and other developers to clarify the difference  —  The United States Justice Department is investigating Apple for antitrust issues, and Roblox is an area …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Lyft CFO Brian Roberts, who joined the company in 2014 and took it public, leaves to become CFO at NFT marketplace OpenSea  —  Lyft's long-time CFO Brian Roberts, who took the company public, announced Monday that he was departing the ride share company that he joined in 2014 to take the same role at NFT marketplace OpenSea.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Facebook Gaming announces a Play with Streamer feature that lets creators invite audience members to join a game, debuting alongside Pac-Man Community's launch  —  Mark Zuckerberg unveiled that Pac-Man Community is debuting on Facebook Gaming as one of the first games where audiences can play together while spectating.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
MongoDB reports Q3 revenue of $227M, up 50% YoY, a net loss of $81.3M, up from $72.7M YoY, and Atlas cloud database revenue up 84%; stock up 17%+  —  - Revenue growth accelerated, including in the fast-growing Atlas cloud service category.  — Sales and marketing expenses continue to mount.
More: ZDNet and MongoDB
Andrew E. Kramer / New York Times:
US investigators traced ransomware payments back to companies in the Moscow skyscraper Federation Tower East, suggesting Russia tolerates ransomware operators  —  Cybersecurity experts tracing money paid by American businesses to Russian ransomware gangs found it led to one of Moscow's most prestigious addresses.
Julian E. Barnes / New York Times:
Bloomberg:
Investigation: Swiss company Mitto, which offers text message services to companies in 100+ countries, helped governments surveil phones; Mitto denies the claim  —  Mitto AG's network used to track people via mobile phones, former employees say.  —  The co-founder of a company that has been trusted …
Kaya Yurieff / The Information:
Universe, a mobile-based website builder, raises a $30M Series B led by Addition, and says over 500,000 creators and SMBs have used its sites in the past month  —  Creators are making custom websites in vogue again.  —  After years of watching social networks abruptly tweak their algorithms …
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Rep. Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally and former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, says he will resign to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group  —  - Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., will resign from Congress to become chief executive officer of former President Donald Trump's fledgling social media entity next month.
Mia Sato / The Verge:
YouTube publishes its first Copyright Transparency Report, showing H1 2021 had 2.2M+ videos hit with incorrect copyright claims and 729M total copyright claims  —  Creators have complained about the claims and appeal process  —  Over 2.2 million YouTube videos were hit with copyright claims …
Ben Smith / New York Times:
A document from TikTok's engineering team in Beijing details the app's addictive algorithm, which pursues DAUs by optimizing for “retention” and “time spent”  —  It's the most successful video app in the world.  Our columnist has obtained an internal company document …

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