Techmeme
January 20, 2021, 5:15 PM

Top News

Jon Porter / The Verge:
Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8M for restricting cross-border game sales in EU's Digital Single Market  —  ZeniMax, Capcom, and Bandai Namco were among the publishers fined  —  Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8 million …
Bloomberg:
Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, addressing teachers on an online conference, quashing intense speculation about his fate  —  Alibaba and Ant co-founder Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, quashing intense speculation about the plight …
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Donald Trump pardons ex-Waymo and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski; Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey were among those supporting a pardon for Levandowski  —  Last year Anthony Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google, where he was an engineer for its self-driving car efforts …
Drew FitzGerald / Wall Street Journal:
Interview with Ajit Pai, who outlasted many senior officials in the Trump administration, on 5G, internet access, and FCC's independence over his tenure  —  Ajit Pai says he focused on fostering investment while maintaining independence  —  Ajit Pai's four years atop the Federal Communications …
Zoë Bernard / The Information:
Sources: Andreessen Horowitz to launch an opinion section on its website that will publish articles related to technology and business from outside contributors  —  Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, which once courted attention from the news media, is ramping up its own media efforts.
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
A look at a16z's communication efforts over the years, as the firm expands its own media operations and has largely stopped cooperating with reporters  —  Why media whisperer Margit Wennmachers is going direct.  —  Benedict Evans, Andreessen Horowitz's former in-house analyst …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Google is investigating why Margaret Mitchell, who helps lead its ethical AI team, downloaded and shared a large number of files with people outside the company  —  Google is investigating recent actions by Margaret Mitchell, who helps lead the company's ethical AI team, Axios has confirmed.
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon says it wants to help the Biden administration's vaccination efforts, says non-WFH Amazon staff should be vaccinated “at the earliest appropriate time”  —  Read more.  —  Amazon says it is ready to turn its facilities into COVID-19 vaccination sites and is offering other resources to the U.S. government.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Malwarebytes says it was hacked by group that breached SolarWinds, via Azure and Office 365 exploits, but attackers only accessed a subset of internal emails  —  Malwarebytes becomes fourth major security firm targeted by attackers after Microsoft, FireEye, and CrowdStrike.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Opera acquires YoYo Games for $10M and launches Opera Gaming division to monetize its gaming efforts; Opera GX gaming browser had 7M MAUs in Dec., up 350% YoY  —  Web browser maker Opera has acquired YoYo Games, maker of the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine, for $10 million, and it has also launched its Opera Gaming division.
Rob Walker / Marker:
An in-depth look at the PDF file format, a staple since the 1990s, as Adobe says 303B PDFs were opened using its services in FY2020, a 17% rise YoY  —  How has the low-fi 30-year-old innovation reigned for so long?  —  When is the last time you downloaded, opened, printed, or created a good old-fashioned PDF?
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Netflix reports Q4 revenue of $6.64B vs. $6.63B est., up 21.5% YoY, and global streaming paid memberships of 203.7M, up 8.5M vs. 6.5M est.; stock up 16%+  —  - Netflix reported fourth quarter 2020 earnings Tuesday that beat analyst expectations on revenue and net subscriber additions but fell below EPS estimates.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

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