Techmeme
January 4, 2021, 7:45 AM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources: investigators are checking if SolarWinds was hacked via its offices in Czechia, Poland, and Belarus, where the company moved much of its engineering  —  Those behind the widespread intrusion into government and corporate networks exploited seams in U.S. defenses and gave away nothing to American monitoring of their systems.
The Verge:
Samsung announces its Galaxy Unpacked event will be held on January 14, where it's expected to unveil the Galaxy S21, S21 Plus, and S21 Ultra  —  Ring in 2021 with Samsung's latest smartphones  —  Samsung will officially be announcing its latest lineup of Galaxy flagship phones …
Elian Peltier / New York Times:
A British judge rules against extraditing Julian Assange to the US, which has accused him of violating the Espionage Act, citing mental health concerns  —  The WikiLeaks founder, who is currently jailed in Britain, had been indicted in the United States on 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act.
William C. Gustafson / GitHub:
Developer of Amphetamine says Apple agreed to let the Mac app stay up with its current name and logo, after previously threatening to remove it due to its name  —  Amphetamine is a free app that helps keep your Mac awake.  Amphetamine has been on the Mac App Store since 2014 and it's been downloaded over 432,800 times.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Researchers: more than 100K Zyxel firewalls and VPN gateways have a hardcoded admin-level backdoor that can grant attackers root access to devices  —  The username and password (zyfwp/PrOw!aN_fXp) were visible in one of the Zyxel firmware binaries.  —  More than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls …
About Facebook:
Facebook says there were 1.4B+ voice and video calls on WhatsApp on NYE 2020 globally, up 50%+ YoY, and 55M+ live streams across Facebook and Instagram  —  Like all of 2020, last night's New Year's Eve was different.  There were fewer crowds celebrating in the streets around the world.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen / The Guardian:
Netflix and Prime Video are reshaping India's creative landscape amid threats of censorship; Netflix invested $400M in original content in India in 2019  —  The streaming giants are making bold TV shows but the threat of censorship looms large  —  This year's Emmy awards …
Hannah M. Mayer / Forbes:
How GPT-3 may reshape the AI and SaaS space, with OpenAI's commercial API creating a unique dependence on a closed AI model, and empowering “citizen developers”  —  The global artificial intelligence (AI) community rocked excitedly in their home office chairs in anticipation …
Wall Street Journal:
An overview of tech to expect in 2021: better webcams, portable UV sanitizers, “assisted reality” glasses, more subscription services attached to hardware  —  New ways to work, exercise, see the doctor, watch movies and sanitize every surface in sight will continue to proliferate.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign is a “high growth performer” in the Frost & Sullivan's Frost Radar™ for electronic signature software, 2024  —  We are happy to announce that Zoho Sign has clinched a position as a high growth performer …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 11/07 - More Election Stuff
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:45 AM ET, January 4, 2021.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Adam Clark / Wall Street Journal:
Alice Gledhill / Bloomberg:
Kevin Roose / New York Times: