Techmeme
March 23, 2021, 3:01 AM

Top News

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sources say Discord is exploring a sale that could value it at $10B+, with one source saying it is in the final stage of negotiations  —  Discord is going through a sales process now that could result in a purchase of the communications and cha5t platform for much more than $10 billion, GamesBeat has learned.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft is in talks to buy Discord for more than $10B; one source says Discord is more likely to go public than sell itself  —  Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Niantic announces a new partnership with Nintendo to develop mobile games built on Niantic's AR tech, starting with a game based on Nintendo's Pikmin franchise  —  Niantic and Nintendo announced a new partnership  —  Niantic, developer of the smash hit Pokémon Go, has announced a new partnership with Nintendo.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Biden announces his intent to nominate Lina Khan, a legal scholar and leading voice in the growing tech antitrust movement, to serve as an FTC commissioner  —  Khan brought Big Tech scrutiny mainstream  —  President Joe Biden has announced his intent to nominate Lina Khan …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Judge certifies a class action suit against Apple that claims it knew for years that MacBooks' butterfly keyboards were flawed and small fixes were insufficient  —  The suit says Apple knew its thinner keyboard was rotten  —  A judge has certified a class action suit against Apple for its fragile butterfly keyboard design.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft rebrands Xbox Live as Xbox network, says the change is to distinguish the online service from Xbox Live Gold membership  —  Xbox network is the future  —  Microsoft is rebranding Xbox Live to Xbox network.  Instances of the new branding started appearing in the Xbox dashboard recently …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says it will begin a limited reopening of its Redmond HQ on March 29 and plans a future focus on hybrid workplaces  —  Microsoft is letting some employees back into the office  —  Microsoft is planning to start reopening its Redmond, Seattle headquarters later this month.
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Jack Dorsey's first tweet sold as an NFT for $2,915,835.47 on a service called Valuables; Dorsey says he sent all proceeds to GiveDirectly's Africa fund as BTC  —  The winning bidder for the Twitter CEO's first tweet was Sina Estavi  —  After it spent just over two weeks on the market …
R. Lawler / Engadget:
Android apps like Gmail and Google Pay are crashing and “WebView” is to blame; Google says it is working on a fix  —  This afternoon, a number of Android users (self included) suddenly saw notifications pop up on their devices saying that apps had stopped running.
Joe Light / Bloomberg:
Boston Fed officials and MIT researchers, who have been developing prototypes for a digital dollar platform, plan to unveil their research as soon as July  —  - Boston Fed, MIT researchers plan to unveil platform work soon  — Project could threaten banks, credit cards, cryptocurrencies
Rand Fishkin / SparkToro:
SimilarWeb: in 2020, ~65% of Google searches ended without a click, up from ~50% in June '19; mobile searches are far more likely to end without a click  —  In August of 2019, I published research from now-defunct clickstream data provider, Jumpshot, showing that 50.33% of all Google searches ended without …
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Samsung plans to release new Galaxy Z Flip and Fold phones this year and is working on a double-folding phone to be unveiled as early as this year  —  South Korean tech titan is working on new double-hinged model  —  TAIPEI/SEOUL — Samsung Electronics is betting heavily on foldable smartphones …
Chavi Mehta / Reuters:
Facebook says it took down 1.3B fake accounts from October-December and 12M pieces of COVID-19 misinformation; Facebook has 35,000 staff tackling misinformation  —  (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Monday it took down 1.3 billion fake accounts between October and December …
Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
YouTube confirms it is testing a feature in the US that automatically detects products in videos and provides related content links  —  As part of one of YouTube's latest experiments, the video-sharing platform looks to expand beyond the “Products in this Video” feature that auto-detects specific items …
Áine Cain / Insider:
Report: Amazon has added 3,700 new sellers every day in 2021 so far for a total of 295,000; 26% of new sellers are in the US while 10.1% in India  —  - Research firm Finbold has found that Amazon is drawing in new sellers at a rapid rate.  — In 2021, the online giant attracted 3,700 new merchants a day.
More: FinboldTweets: @mehedih_
Andrew Chung / Reuters:
SCOTUS declined to hear Facebook's appeal to stop a proposed $15B class action lawsuit that accused Facebook of secretly tracking users via the “like” buttons  —  (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away Facebook Inc's bid to pare back a $15 billion class action lawsuit accusing …
Ari Levy / CNBC:
Budget TV maker Vizio is planning a NYSE IPO and pitching investors on its growing ad and streaming businesses, driven by SmartCast, which has 12.2M accounts  —  - Vizio plans to sell shares in next week's IPO at $21 to $23 each, giving it a valuation of $4.2 billion at the top end of the range.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's HomePod mini has a sensor, currently disabled, that measures temperature and humidity; Apple is working on speakers with screens and cameras  —  Apple Inc.'s HomePod mini speaker launched last November with new features such as a home intercom system.

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:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
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:
Mon. 11/18 - More Smartglasses On The Horizon
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 3:01 AM ET, March 23, 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

Cathy Reisenwitz / OneZero :

Earlier Picks

Andy Day / Fstoppers:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: