Techmeme
July 13, 2021, 11:10 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple and Goldman Sachs are working on a “buy now, pay later” service to let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments, to rival Affirm  —  - Service to let users pay off any Apple Pay purchase over time  — Fresh partnership with Apple could boost Goldman consumer push
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
REvil's infrastructure and websites are offline, including its data leak sites, less than two weeks after attacking 1,500+ businesses with ransomware via Kaseya  —  The infrastructure and websites for the REvil ransomware operation have mysteriously gone offline as of last night.
Shannon Vavra / The Daily Beast:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
The current version of Apple's Weather app won't show 69 degrees, rounding a degree, potentially due to sourcing data in Celsius and converting to Fahrenheit  —  It's not so nice  —  If you're an iPhone user, the weather is always a particularly nice 70 degrees.  Or 68 degrees.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a $99 MagSafe Battery Pack for the iPhone 12 lineup, with a total capacity of 1460mAh, arriving July 19  —  Apple today released the MagSafe Battery Pack accessory for iPhone 12 models.  Many months after the iPhone 12 series was unveiled, Apple has quietly released …
Telegraph:
Excerpt from An Ugly Truth: from Jan. 2014 to Aug. 2015, Facebook fired 52 staffers for exploiting access to user data, prompting an overhaul of data governance  —  In an exclusive extract, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang reveal how an ethos of openness meant private information could be misused
Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook is rolling out the ability for Group administrators to designate “group experts”, partly in an effort to help Facebook combat misinformation  —  The social network has been trying to combat misinformation by elevating authoritative sources.
The Information:
In April, Amazon acquired over a dozen staff from Facebook to boost its own low earth orbit satellite internet efforts; Amazon paid Facebook to seal agreement  —  Amazon has acquired a team of more than a dozen wireless internet experts from Facebook in an effort to boost its multibillion-dollar effort …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Discord buys Sentropy, which emerged from stealth last summer with AI-powered moderation software to fight online abuse and $13M in funding  —  The online chat platform Discord is buying Sentropy, a company that makes AI-powered software to detect and remove online harassment and hate.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Inside the World Wide Web Consortium as members debate the future of online privacy, with browsers' engineers often at odds with companies that rely on tracking  —  James Rosewell could see his company's future was in jeopardy.  —  It was January 2020, and Google had just announced key details …
Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg:
France fines Google $593M for failing to comply with a 2020 order to negotiate in good faith with publishers for displaying article snippets in Google News  —  - Tech giant penalized for not agreeing deal with publishers  — Fine is the second biggest French antitrust penalty so far
New York Times:
Two GOP lawmakers are pointing to previously unreleased emails to allege that Amazon unfairly used its influence in competing for Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract  —  Newly released emails show particular praise of Amazon among top Defense Department officials during the Trump administration …
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Google will now take a 15% cut on the first $3M in sales for “newly signed games” on Stadia from October through the end of 2023  —  Platform will take 15 percent cut on first $3 million in sales for new titles.  —  As part of a Stadia keynote presentation today …
Kaya Yurieff / The Information:
Substack to launch Substack Grow next month, a free six-session course over Zoom to help writers build a following and earn their first $1,000  —  The top 10 publishers on Substack bring in more than $20 million a year in subscriptions, underpinning the newsletter platform's revenue growth.
Mark Landler / New York Times:
After England's defeat in Euro 2020, Boris Johnson and others condemn racist abuse of players on social media, with some calling for tougher action by platforms  —  The social media bigotry, directed at three players who missed penalty kicks in the Euro 2020 final, was condemned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and most everyone else.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
Recruiters, be that zeroth candidate  —  Welcome again!  Earlier, we looked at how personality assessments are evaluation tools that help look at candidates beyond resumes.  Let's look at how to use …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Microsoft CPO: If you aren't prototyping with AI you're doing it wrong | Aparna Chennapragada
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(Bonus) World Cup Of Entrepreneurs Part 2
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
Ed Helms Answers Your Hard Questions
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Are VC jobs truly AI Proof? (Marc thinks so)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Qasar Younis from Applied Intuition
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:10 PM ET, July 13, 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

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Biz Carson / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

NetBlocks:
Mikael Thalen / The Daily Dot: