Techmeme
April 12, 2021, 11:50 PM

Top News

Microsoft:
Microsoft says it has acquired speech tech company Nuance for $19.7B in cash, a 23% premium on its Friday closing price, as it boosts its healthcare offerings  —  Acquisition will combine solutions and expertise to deliver new cloud and AI capabilities across healthcare and other industries
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Nvidia unveils Grace, a high-performance Arm-based server CPU for large-scale neural network workloads, expected to become available in Nvidia products in 2023  —  Kicking off another busy Spring GPU Technology Conference for NVIDIA, this morning the graphics and accelerator designer …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is in early stages of developing a product that combines an Apple TV with a HomePod speaker and has a FaceTime camera and smart home functions  —  - Company also exploring Amazon-like speaker with iPad as screen  — Apple has trailed Amazon, Google in the connected home market
Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
Sources detail how Facebook allowed state-backed political manipulation in small countries, prioritizing abuses considered PR risks in countries like the US  —  A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform  —  Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders …
Brave Browser:
Brave is disabling Google's FLoC tracking method from all of its releases, saying it materially harms user privacy under the guise of being privacy-friendly  —  Peter Snyder, Senior Privacy Researcher at Brave  —  FLoC is a recent Google proposal that would have your browser share …
Ian Hamilton / UploadVR:
Facebook to host Oculus Gaming Showcase, a virtual event focused exclusively on VR games, on April 21, with streams on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch  —  Facebook will host an Oculus Gaming Showcase streaming to various sites on April 21.  —  The event will stream to Twitch, Facebook …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google to shut down Play Movies and TV app for Roku, Samsung, LG, and Vizio on June 15, will push users to use YouTube instead  —  After announcing Google TV last year, its predecessor had an unspoken expiration date.  This week, Google has confirmed that it will kill off the Play Movies & TV app …
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:
Despite the backlash, Free Software Foundation doubles down on restoring Richard M. Stallman to its board after he issued a defensive non-apology apology  —  Weeks after being readmitted to the Free Software Foundation board, Stallman speaks and the board stands behind him.
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Biden administration announces the nominations of ex-NSA deputy director Chris Inglis as first national cyber director and Jen Easterly as CISA head  —  The Biden administration plans on Monday to name a former senior National Security Agency official as the first national cyber director …
Zak Doffman / Forbes:
Researchers have discovered a flaw where any user can deactivate another user's WhatsApp via multiple 2FA requests and emailing support to deactivate account  —  A nasty new surprise for WhatsApp's 2 billion users today, with the discovery of an alarming security risk.
Axios:
Senator Josh Hawley unveils a proposal aimed at Big Tech that would bolster antitrust laws and ban acquisitions by companies with a market cap of over $100B  —  Corporate giants would be barred from acquisitions and century-old antitrust laws would get sharper teeth under a new proposal by Sen. Josh Hawley …
Tyler Wilde / PC Gamer:
Court filings show that Epic committed $444M on “minimum guarantees” for game developers that release on Epic Game Store but stay off of Steam for a year  —  Here's how much money Epic is burning to make the Epic Games Store a Steam competitor.  —  To take on Steam …
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Apple Support docs show that unusual mid-production hardware changes were made to its A12, A13, and S5 chips last fall, to update the Secure Storage Component  —  Apple made unusual mid-production hardware changes to the A12, A13, and S5 processors in its devices in the fall of 2020 to update …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
The FCC releases a speed test app on Android and iOS to help measure internet speeds in the US, and will use the data to inform its broadband deployment efforts  —  The FCC Speed Test App could help the agency correct its data  —  The Federal Communications Commission has released …

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:
CIO challenge 6: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
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:
Fri. 11/15 - Crypto Ascendant
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 11:50 PM ET, April 12, 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

Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Pranob Mehrotra / XDA Developers:
Leo Kelion / BBC:
Bloomberg: