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.

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