Spotify will suspend political ads in early 2020, citing the lack of tools to review them; source: political ads are not a significant source of its revenue
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and the RNC are among Spotify advertisers — Spotify is suspending the sale of political advertising …
China launches two more satellites for BeiDou, its GPS competitor, says it will be fully complete in June, with centimeters-level accuracy by the end of 2020
70% of Chinese smartphones now compatible with Beidou — BEIJING — China announced Friday that it is just months away …
Mastercard SpendingPulse: US online holiday sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24 grew 18.8% YoY, for a 14.6% share of the total retail sales during the period
(Reuters) - U.S. shoppers spent more online during this year's holiday shopping season, a report by Mastercard Inc (MA.N) …
NY governor has vetoed a bill that would have legalized e-bikes/scooters citing safety concerns; bill was overwhelmingly passed in June by the NY legislature
Sean O'Kane / The Verge :
As 8tracks prepares to shut down on December 31, its co-founder shares a post-mortem of what went wrong with the once-promising music streaming startup
8tracks has had a long run and its day in the sun. We're sad to announce, however, that the company and its streaming service will wind …
A look back at how Facebook and Twitter evolved over the 2010s, chasing size and influence at a cost to society that will take years to understand
The two companies had a bad run in the 2010s. It was their own fault. — It's been a rough decade for Facebook and Twitter. Tweets: @jason_kint , @buzzfeednewsuk , and @laurahelmuth See also Mediaga...
Tuvalu, a tiny island nation with the .tv TLD, has been cashing in on domain sales to Twitch and others, representing ~8% of the island's gross national income
In 1995, Stephen Boland sat in his government office while working as the macroeconomic planner for the Pacific microstate of Tuvalu when the fax machine whirred to life. Tweets: @yancyeaton , @brians...
UK's Competition and Markets Authority says Amazon failed to address its concerns about the investment in Deliveroo, refers the deal to a full investigation
Jasper Jolly / The Guardian :
Profile of Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, including the development of Fortnite, why he chose North Carolina as a base, and his ambitious land conservation efforts
The News & Observer's Tar Heel of the Year — The News & Observer recognizes North Carolina residents who have made significant contributions … Tweets: @newsycombinator , @will_doran , and @newsobser...
Tencent debuts Tencent Meeting, a Zoom-like cloud-based video conferencing service, as it continues its push into enterprise services
Tencent rolled out on Wednesday a Zoom-like video conferencing app dubbed Tencent Meeting amid its push to enterprise-facing services.
Facebook Messenger now requires a Facebook account to sign up, removing the option to use a phone number, says a vast majority of users log in through Facebook
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
A retrospective on Facebook's past decade, during which it grew to 2.45B users to become a major facet of life worldwide and wound up in regulatory crosshairs
Facebook grew 600% in 10 years, worming its way into basically everything. How? — By the end of 2009, Facebook … Tweets: @arstechnica and @arstechnica Tweets: @arstechnica : How on Earth did this o...
BitMEX Research report: of 12 big initial exchange offerings in 2019, 11 are almost worthless compared to the price their tokens first traded for on exchanges
Initial exchange offerings (IEOs), which launched in 2019 have lost investors up to 98% of their money, damning new statistics show.
Wikimedia says India's proposed intermediary liability rules will impact Wikipedia and limit access to information online, urges government to redraft rules
which govern how websites w/ users in India host content on their platforms. Read: https://wikimediafoundation.org/ ... #ForFreeKnowledge (THREAD) @wikimedia : We are deeply concerned that @GoI_MeitY'...
With print books often cheaper than ebooks, whose sales stabilized at ~20% of total book sales, a look at the aftermath of Apple's ebook price fixing lawsuit
Publishing spent the 2010s fighting tooth and nail against ebooks. There were unintended consequences. Tweets: @tekaldas , @tkingdot , @paulkrugman , @gorskon , @jamesrbuk , @dandrezner , @irhottakes...
As labels increasingly rely on streaming data to scout talent, they could become less willing to sign artists whose music isn't engineered to maximize profit
The explosion of metrics and algorithms isn't just reflecting what's happening in the music industry. It's transforming it. Tweets: @amirmizroch , @wired , and @artsjournalnews See also Mediagazer Tw...
Profile of Rune Christensen, the leader of MakerDAO, a decentralized finance project providing trustless loans, now backed by ~$312M worth of ethereum
Brady Dale / CoinDesk :
All 20 standards proposals related to surveillance tech received by UN's ITU since 2016 have come from Chinese companies like Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision
Financial Times :
Livestreams have become a popular venue for charity fundraising, replacing legacy telethons, with Twitch users raising $75M+ for charities between 2012 and 2017
Elise Favis / Washington Post : Tweets: @launcherwp and @elisefavis Tweets: Launcher / @launcherwp : On Saturday, @DrLupo raised over $2 million for @StJudePLAYLIVE. Between 2012-17, @Twitch has rais...
Amazon has ~35% of US ecommerce and ~6% of addressable US retail, and is two thirds the size of Walmart, which would make an antitrust case against it difficult
Benedict Evans : Tweets: @aaronbuley , @stevesi , @robertwiblin , @eicker , @mschoening , @evplusev , @sachinrekhi , and @mayank_b23 Tweets: Aaron Buley / @aaronbuley : Wow. Hard to believe, but afte...
A look at the rise of tech activism in the 2010s led by blue-collar or contract workers, with a sharp rise in activism of full-time/white-collar workers in 2019
The Guardian : Tweets: @dotben , @organizejs , @angemariasolis , and @teamcoworker Tweets: Ben Metcalfe / @dotben : Even tech activism in 2019 reflects the divides of opportunity in society. White-co...
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.