Techmeme
July 14, 2021, 7:45 AM

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, rivaling Affirm  —  - Service to let users pay off any Apple Pay purchase over time  — Fresh partnership with Apple could boost Goldman consumer push
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has asked suppliers to build up to 90M next-generation iPhones this year, up 20% YoY; this year's update will be more incremental than iPhone 12  —  - Company targets 90 million shipments of this year's new models  — Iterative iPhone upgrade to boost chips, cameras and displays
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 …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Microsoft says the attacks targeting SolarWinds Serv-U software with a now-patched RCE exploit are the work of Chinese hacking group DEV-0322  —  Microsoft said today that the recent wave of attacks that have targeted SolarWinds file transfer servers are the work of a Chinese hacking group …
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 …
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.
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.
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.
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
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 …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Microsoft fixes 13 critical flaws, four of which are under active attack, and updates a fix for the “PrintNightmare” RCE flaw impacting Windows Print Spooler  —  Microsoft today released updates to patch at least 116 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based YuLife, an insurance startup that offers gamified rewards, raises $70M Series B at a $346M valuation  —  Life insurance — financial protection you buy against your death — may not read like the liveliest of industries on paper.  But a life insurance startup that believes …
More: Tech.eu, FinSMEs, and Insider
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 …
Selina Xu / Bloomberg:
China-based AI chatbot developer Xiaoice, which spun off from Microsoft last year, raises $77M Series A at a $1B valuation and says it has over 660M users  —  - Chinese venture raises capital from Hillhouse, GGV, NetEase  — AI platform powers chatbots used in cars, digital assistants

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 7:45 AM ET, July 14, 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

Shannon Vavra / The Daily Beast:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Earlier Picks

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg:
Mikael Thalen / The Daily Dot: