Techmeme
December 24, 2020, 10:05 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
China's market regulator announces antitrust investigations into Alibaba, first of its kind for a Chinese internet company, for alleged monopolistic practices  —  Probe into China's biggest tech group is one of the first of its kind for country's internet sector
Bloomberg:
China's regulatory crackdown to limit the influence of Jack Ma, who has long cultivated the image of a rebel fighting the system, has been years in the making  —  When Jack Ma took to a Shanghai conference stage in October, China's most famous entrepreneur was on the brink of pulling off …
Bloomberg:
Source: Square has held talks to acquire music streaming service Tidal, which Jay-Z acquired for $56M in early 2015  —  - Streaming music platform has struggled to keep up with Spotify  — Dorsey has met with Jay-Z multiple times during the pandemic  —  Square Inc., the digital-payment …
Kate Duffy / Business Insider:
April Christina Curley, a Google recruiter focused on Black colleges, says she was fired in September and alleges a hostile work environment for Black people  —  - A Google employee, who said she was fired by the tech giant in September, claimed Monday that her manager told her that her way of speaking …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Apple is planning to release an updated Apple TV with a focus on gaming, an updated remote, and a new processor next year  —  Hey everyone, it's Mark Gurman.  I cover all things Apple Inc. at Bloomberg Technology and I'm the host of the new consumer tech segment Power Up on Bloomberg TV.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple's new privacy prompt to allow or deny tracking, originally meant to be introduced in Sept., has started to roll out for some iOS 14 users in certain apps  —  As a privacy measure, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad apps to request permission from users to track …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Nuro says it has been granted a permit to test and charge for its commercial autonomous delivery service by California's DMV, the first company to do so  —  Hours after announcing that it acquired self-driving truck startup Ike, Nuro revealed it's the first company to receive permission …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
SEC sues Ripple Labs, its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Chairman Chris Larsen, alleging they violated federal securities laws in selling XRP to retail consumers  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) believes Ripple Labs violated federal securities laws in selling the XRP cryptocurrency to retail consumers.
Zach Dorfman / Foreign Policy:
US officials say Chinese tech companies, including Alibaba and Baidu, have been enlisted to process stolen US data for Chinese spy agencies to analyze  —  Beijing was giving China hawks in the United States plenty of ammunition.  That same year, hackers working for China's People's Liberation Army …
John Harney / Bloomberg:
Leo Kelion / BBC:
DeepMind details MuZero, revealed in 2019 and following AlphaZero, which can master games without knowing the rules and is working on YouTube video compression  —  DeepMind's latest AI program can attain “superhuman performance” in tasks without needing to be given the rules.

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Google:
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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
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IDrive:
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.

Featured Podcasts

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Earlier Picks

Matthew Green / @matthew_d_green:
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Drew FitzGerald / Wall Street Journal:
Kevin McLaughlin / The Information:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Rachel Sandler / Forbes:
Jennifer Epstein / Bloomberg: