Techmeme
July 31, 2021, 5:10 AM

Top News

Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:
In a filing, Amazon disclosed EU privacy regulators fined the company a record $888M for violating GDPR data storage rules in a July 16 decision  —  - Luxembourg watchdog wields new powers with highest data fine  — Fine follows probe based on complaint by French privacy group
Amazon.com, Inc.:
Natalie Wolchover / Quanta Magazine:
Physicists say they used Google's quantum computer to demo a time crystal, which forever cycles between states without consuming energy, for the first time  —  Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy.
Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times:
New book claims Elon Musk demanded to be made Apple CEO during Tesla buyout talks in 2016, before Tim Cook cursed and hung up; Musk says he never spoke to Cook  —  Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century  —  If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission …
Dan Wang / Foreign Affairs:
How US sanctions forced Chinese companies to develop key tech themselves, aligning the companies' incentives with China's goal of economic self-sufficiency  —  In 2016, AlphaGo, a computer program developed by machine learning experts in London, beat the world's top players of the classical Chinese board game Go.
Reuters:
Stephen Shankland / CNET:
Twitter offers bug bounty of up to $3,500 to spot bias in its photo cropping algorithm, which was shown to favor white people over Black people  —  Twitter has a new way to rid itself of artificial intelligence bias: pay outsiders to help it find problems.  On Friday, the short-message app …
Tim Perry / HTTP Toolkit:
Safari's extremely slow pace in adopting popular features and fixing showstopping bugs, and refusal to engage with contentious API proposals, is harming the web  —  There's been a lot of discussion recently about how “Safari is the new IE” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  —  I don't want to rehash …
Nicholas Megaw / Financial Times:
Digital bank Monzo reveals a loss of £130M on £66M revenue for the year ended Feb. and says UK FCA is investigating it over potential money laundering breaches  —  Digital lender suffers second ‘going concern’ warning from auditors  —  The Financial Conduct Authority …
Brian Merchant / VICE:
Metaverse, as Zuckerberg and others imagine, is an odd vision built from a compendium of juvenile fantasies, perceived market opportunities, and overt dystopias  —  Silicon Valley CEOs keep hailing its imminent arrival as they hawk digital goods, but the metaverse was a dystopian idea from its inception.
Paul Smith / Australian Financial Review:
Australia-based IntelligenceBank, a marketing software provider for brands, raises $37M from Five Elms Capital to help speed up its expansion in the US  —  IntelligenceBank, a Melbourne-based marketing operations platform that counts ANZ Bank, National Australia Bank, Suncorp, Bupa, KFC …
Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert:
[Thread] Facebook's future prospects remain strong as the secular rise of digital advertising blunts any headwinds from regulators, Apple, critics, and others  —  My takeaway from $FB earnings: Facebook will inevitably become the most important company in the lives of most people on Earth for the next 20-30 years. I don't see any credible, extant mechanism that can constrain its growth (1/X)
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
A look at Intel's dismal 2020, which saw the delay of its 7nm architecture, Apple's switch to Arm-based chips, and the departure of Jim Keller and other execs  —  In the summer of 2020 Intel seemed poised for triumph.  Then it all went wrong.  “To put it briefly: Intel blew it,” …

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:
How EQ plays a defining role in workplace communication  —  What if everyone you worked with had a psychic ability to understand how you're feeling and respond accordingly?  Wouldn't that be great?
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

Techmeme Ride Home:
Airbnb's Midlife Transformation
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View:
China's catching up to US AI... Here's why it won't matter
Azeem Azhar explores how AI and exponential technologies are shaping our future.
Subscribe to Azeem Azhar's Exponential View.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
How Apple trapped itself in China
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Debunking Healthcare's Biggest Myths with Zach Weinberg and Derek Thompson
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Spotlight On:
Supabase's Paul Copplestone on the difference between "playing startup" and strategy
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Invest Like the Best:
Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback - Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 AM ET, July 31, 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

Peter Guest / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks

Greg Ip / Wall Street Journal:
Davey Alba / New York Times:
Tom Wilson / Reuters:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Nick Statt / Protocol:
Kieran Leavitt / Toronto Star: