Techmeme
March 25, 2021, 12:40 AM

Top News

Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it has disrupted a network of China-based hackers using its platform to target the Uyghur community abroad and draw them to malicious websites  —  Facebook on Wednesday announced new actions to disrupt a network of China-based hackers leveraging the platform to compromise targets in the Uyghur community.
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Interviews with 14 current and former Medium employees portray a dysfunctional company; Medium started 2021 with 700K paid subs, on track for $35M+ in revenue  —  I.  —  Last week, a partnerships manager at Medium working with the White House found that there was a strange problem with the platform …
Axios:
Ahead of House hearing, Mark Zuckerberg calls for Section 230 reform that makes protections conditional on platforms' ability to identify and remove content  —  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will tell lawmakers his plan for “thoughtful reform” of a key tech liability shield rests …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Analysis of Intel's Foundry Services event: a transparent and clarifying keynote outlining a bold plan to overcome Intel's problems by using its strengths  —  Three notes about today's update:  — First, the Intel keynote I'm going to write about, along with the analyst Q&A session that followed …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Dr. Ian Cutress / AnandTech:
David Pierce / Protocol:
Slack debuts Connect, letting users DM any Slack user regardless of organization, and has updated its opt-in invite flow after feedback that it could be abused  —  Forget email.  The final frontier for Slack, as it tries to reimagine the way millions of people communicate at work, is the text message.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Report: Apple updates factory guidelines to prevent leaks, including criminal background checks on workers, surveillance cameras, and component tracking  —  Apple has made several changes to its factory security guidelines to help prevent leaks, according to a new report from The Information.
Johana Bhuiyan / Los Angeles Times:
How Google handles user data requests from DHS, ICE, and other agencies, often giving users little time to obtain a court order quashing the request  —  You're scrolling through your Gmail inbox and see an email with a strange subject line: A string of numbers followed by “Notification from Google.”
The Markup:
Analysis of vaccine appointment sites for every US state, Puerto Rico, and DC shows some have issues maintaining users' privacy, loading on mobile devices, more  —  The results, measuring accessibility and privacy protections, were not always great  —  Christine Meyer, a Pennsylvania doctor …
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
A look at Remember the Internet, a series of pocket-sized books dedicated to immortalizing subcultures and combating the ephemerality of being online  —  How do we memorialize life online when it's constantly disappearing?  —  For many of us, for better or for worse, the internet is home.
Arielle Pardes / Wired:
Interviews with low-wage contract workers at Silicon Valley campuses show the existential threat to livelihoods from longterm COVID-19 closures  —  As tech campuses became ghost towns, the people who kept them running—cooks, custodians, drivers—faced an existential threat to their livelihoods.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Arizona Senate skips vote on bill HB2005, which would have forced Apple and Google to let apps in their app stores use alternative in-app payment systems  —  The bill went poof  —  The Arizona State Senate was scheduled to vote an unprecedented and controversial bill on Wednesday …
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
The SEC confirms it is investigating SoftBank, according to the SEC's response to a FOIA request; SoftBank was alleged to be a “Nasdaq whale” last year  —  A response to a Freedom of Information request about Softbank's trading activity has revealed that the Uber and Wework investor is under investigation.
Washington Post:
Analysis of content moderation at the entire stack of internet infrastructure companies, from platforms to CDNs to ISPs, and how they see their responsibilities  —  Moderating content isn't just something Facebook and Twitter do.  There's a ‘stack’ of companies that run the Internet — and they are under pressure to act.
Taylor Lyles / The Verge:
Disney+ will cost $1 more per month starting March 26, increasing to $7.99/month or $80/year, marking the first price hike for the service  —  The price is going up to $7.99 a month for subscribers in the US starting on March 26th  —  You have just two days left to lock in Disney Plus at its current price.
Paul Tamburro / GameRevolution:
Reddit says it has cut ties with a controversial former UK politician who it had recently hired, after 200+ subreddits, like r/Music, went private to protest  —  UPDATE: Reddit has now confirmed that it has fired Aimee Knight from her position with the company.
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Sydney-based Baraja, which makes a Spectrum-Scan LIDAR with no moving parts, raises $31M Series B led by Blackbird Ventures, after $32M Series A two years ago  —  Lidar companies across the planet are going SPAC, but Baraja isn't in a hurry to go public.  The Australian lidar maker has raised …
Sam Shead / CNBC:
Elon Musk says people can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin in the US and later this year outside the US  —  - The automaker last month revealed that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.  — People outside the U.S. will be able to buy a Tesla with bitcoin “later this year.”

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More News

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Earlier Picks

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Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: