Techmeme
January 22, 2021, 5:00 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on a thinner and lighter 13-inch high-end MacBook Air with MagSafe charging and next-gen processors to launch as soon as this year  —  Apple Inc. is working on a thinner and lighter version of the MacBook Air, the company's mass-market laptop, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is increasing the prices of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, up $1 to $10.99 per month and up $5 to $29.99 for a three-month membership  —  Xbox Live Gold prices are going up for monthly subscribers  —  Microsoft is increasing the prices of its Xbox Live Gold subscription soon.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Alphabet says that it is shutting down Loon, its internet balloon project, calling it “a successful experiment” but not a viable one  —  Plus: The moonshot's launch, health care for the mask-less, and a new era's inaugural meme.  —  DO you detect something missing?
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
In an Australian Senate hearing, a Google executive said that a law forcing Google to pay news outlets for links could prompt it to stop offering Search  —  As Google and Facebook face Senate committee, poll finds three in five Australians agree social media companies should prioritise news in feeds
Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Unclassified memo: Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have used commercial databases of location data from smartphone apps to track Americans without warrants  —  The disclosure comes amid growing legislative scrutiny of how the government uses commercially available location records.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Samsung is considering building a $10B chipmaking plant in Texas, a major investment it hopes will help it catch up with industry leader TSMC  —  - It's looking to build a cutting-edge wafer fab in the U.S.  — It would follow TSMC's decision to build a new site in Arizona
Dara Kerr / CNET:
Nick Clegg / About Facebook:
Evelyn Douek / Lawfare:
Tom Krazit / Protocol:
AWS will maintain an open source fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana, after criticism from Elastic which changed its licensing terms to monetize cloud-service use  —  Fed up with what he sees as unfair competition from AWS, Elastic CEO Shay Banon felt he had no choice but to restrict …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:

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More News

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Kate Clark / The Information:
Alex Kantrowitz / OneZero :
Kim-Mai Cutler / Initialized:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
April Glaser / NBC News:
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg: