Fri. 05/15 – Facebook Buys GIPHY

The US strikes at Huawei again. Apple acquires a VR startup and there’s conflicting rumors on those AR glasses. Is Silicon Valley really about to become a ghost town? And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.

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Links:

• U.S. moves to cut Huawei off from global chip suppliers as China eyes retaliation (Reuters)
• Scoop: Facebook to buy Giphy for $400 million (Axios)
• Apple Acquires Startup NextVR that Broadcasts VR Content (Bloomberg)
• Apple’s computerized glasses won’t be ready until 2022 ‘at the earliest,’ top analyst says (Bloomberg)
• Latest leak has "sleek" Apple Glasses coming out in 2021 instead of 2022 (Apple Insider)
• Uber’s CEO, a Seasoned Dealmaker, Pursues His Biggest One Yet (Bloomberg)
• Chrome will start blocking resource-heavy ads in August (VentureBeat)
• Tech Workers Consider Escaping Silicon Valley’s Sky-High Rents (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Weekend Longreads:

• OnlyFans, Influencers, And The Politics Of Selling Nudes During A Pandemic (Elle.com)
• How Sporcle followed trivia fans from bars to Zoom and built a $2.5M business (Protocol)
• Founder Of Borders Bookstores, Webvan Returns With Dreams Of Beating Amazon At Food Delivery (Forbes)
• Inside HBO Max, the $4 Billion Bet to Stand Out in the Streaming Wars (Variety)
• The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet (Wired)
• Our weird behavior during the pandemic is messing with AI models (MIT Technology Review)
• Yes, websites really are starting to look more similar (The Conversation)

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