Techmeme
July 22, 2021, 11:15 PM

Top News

Matthew Gault / VICE:
Old stories on news sites including WaPo are displaying embedded porn videos after the domain for the defunct video service Vidme was bought by a porn company  —  Stories on major news sites like ‘The Washington Post,’ and ‘New York Magazine’ currently have porn embedded in them.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Two Democratic senators introduce a bill to strip away social media platforms' Section 230 liability shield if they amplify harmful public health misinformation  —  A new bill would make Facebook liable for misinformation  —  As coronavirus cases rise in unvaccinated populations …
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Q&A with Zuckerberg about his vision for the metaverse and its potential to further splinter our sense of shared reality, Biden's comments about Facebook, more  —  As June came to an end, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees about an ambitious new initiative.
Nature:
Arm details PlasticARM, a 32-bit processor built on a flexible substrate, that it says can lead to embedding of low-cost, ultrathin chips into everyday objects  —  Nearly 50 years ago, Intel created the world's first commercially produced microprocessor—the 4004 (ref. 1), a modest 4-bit CPU …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Several major websites and services, including Amazon, Steam, and Airbnb, were down for about an hour on Thursday due to issues with Akamai's Edge DNS service  —  Update 12:48 p.m. ET: Akamai says it has implemented a fix for the issue.  “We have implemented a fix for this issue …
James Vincent / The Verge:
DeepMind says it used AI to create a “transformative” map of human proteins; some compare the potential impact of the work to that of the Human Genome Project  —  DeepMind plans to release hundreds of millions of protein structures for free  —  AI research lab DeepMind has created …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Snap Q2: revenue of $982M, up 116% YoY, DAUs up 23% YoY to 293M, and net loss shrunk 53% YoY to $152M; stock is up 13%+ after hours  —  - Snap on Thursday reported its second-quarter earnings, beating expectations across the board for earnings, revenue and user growth.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Twitter beats with Q2 revenue of $1.19B, up 74% YoY, vs $1.07B est., ad revenue of $1.05B, up 87% YoY, and mDAUs of 206M, up 11% YoY; stock is up 8%+  —  - Twitter's revenue growth accelerated and surpassed analysts' expectations.  — The social-media company introduced its first subscription service in the quarter.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Intel reports Q2 revenue of $18.5B, up 2% YoY, vs. $17.8B est., Data Center Group revenue of $6.5B, down 9% YoY, while PC unit sales were up 33% YoY  —  - Intel reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday in CEO Pat Gelsinger's second earnings report at the helm of the American chip giant.
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Kaseya says it obtained a universal decryptor for the REvil ransomware and is helping customers recover their data; it is unclear if Kaseya paid the ransom  —  Remote management software vendor Kaseya said today it obtained a universal decryptor for the REvil ransomware and is now in the process …
Edwin Chan / Bloomberg:
Sources: China sees Didi's decision to go public despite pushback from regulators as a challenge to its authority and is considering unprecedented penalties  —  - Regulators weigh several penalties, from fine to delisting  — Ride-hailing startup raised $4.4 billion in U.S. listing
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Twitter is testing a way to downvote replies on iOS to understand the types of replies users find relevant to a conversation; downvotes won't be public  —  Last year, Twitter's chief product officer Kayvon Beykpour confirmed that the social network was “exploring” the idea of adding a dislike button to the app.
Michael Corkery / New York Times:
Amazon ends use of arbitration for customer disputes, which critics said put consumers at a huge disadvantage; disputes can now be pursued in federal court  —  Now they will be pursued in federal court, a significant retreat from a strategy that often helps companies avoid liability.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Instagram is testing Limits, which lets users facing a flood of harassment temporarily limit comments and messages from specific groups of followers  —  Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed the company is testing a new feature called “Limits,” which would give users the ability to temporary lock …
Sarah McBride / Bloomberg:
Neuralink competitor Paradromics raises $20M Seed led by Prime Movers Lab; so far in 2021 brain-machine interface startups have raised $132.8M  —  A competitor to Elon Musk's Neuralink said it raised $20 million, enough to get it on track to introduce a new generation of powerful and tiny electrodes to the human brain.
Sohini Podder / Reuters:
NoSQL cloud database Couchbase's shares jumped 23% in its Nasdaq debut, giving it a market valuation of $1.2B, after raising $200M in its IPO  —  Shares of Couchbase Inc (BASE.O) jumped more than 23% in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday, giving the database software company a market capitalization of nearly $1.2 billion.
More: Forbes and Datanami
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Uber Freight to acquire Transplace, which makes transportation management software, from TPG, in a deal that values Transplace at $2.25B  —  - Uber Freight, the rideshare company's trucking division, said Thursday it's acquiring Transplace in a deal that values the transportation logistics company at $2.25 billion.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google's unified smartwatch platform with Samsung to be called Wear OS 3 and come as an update to a few watches in H2 2022, not including any Tizen watches  —  Only a few current watches will get it, but not until late 2022  —  Google has finally given its new, unified smartwatch platform a name — and it's an obvious one: Wear OS 3.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
What you need to know about fine-tuning LLMs  —  Success with generative AI hinges on honing a pretrained LLM to be a specialist at your intended domain or application.  Learn how to fine-tune for four key characteristics.
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Introducing: The Zoho One Impact Makers Program  —  Beyond likes and shares: How creators can help businesses thrive A few years ago, creators had two choices: chase brand deals or hope for ad revenue—thankfully …
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

Hard Fork:
The Tech Behind Signalgate + Dwarkesh Patel's "Scaling Era" + Is A.I. Making Our Listeners Dumb?
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.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Aaron Levie (CEO, Box) on Enterprise AI Trends No One is Talking About Yet
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Invest Like the Best:
Josh Kushner - Building Thrive Capital
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Techmeme Ride Home:
AI Studio Ghibli
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Great Chat:
Does anyone care about bad behavior anymore?
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.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Capitalism vs. the bird flu
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:15 PM ET, July 22, 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

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Washington Post:
Shoshana Wodinsky / Gizmodo:
CNN: