Techmeme
October 30, 2021, 5:15 AM

Top News

The Verge:
Apple MacBook Pro 14- and 16-inch review: incredible performance with very long battery life and beautiful displays but expensive with absurd RAM pricing  —  Apple's new pro laptops right the wrongs of the past half decade  —  Let's start simply: the new MacBook Pros with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips …
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Apple's VP of Mac and iPad Product Marketing Tom Boger says Touch ID is more convenient than Face ID on a laptop since users' hands are already on the keyboard  —  Full-size ports, real function keys and other retro features, plus cutting-edge M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, make the new MacBook Pro models the laptops to beat
Gene Park / Washington Post:
Meta is just playing catch-up as Roblox, Steam VR, VRChat, and other platforms have already developed metaverse-like experiences  —  In addition to announcing Facebook's rebranding to Meta on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg delivered a number of lofty promises about the metaverse and its features.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Facebook's metaverse is designed to solve several problems: an aging userbase, dependence on Google and Apple, regulatory risk, and reputational damage  —  If his new strategy works — a big if — it could help address several of Facebook's biggest problems.
Ethan Zuckerman / The Atlantic:
Meta's promised metaverse is going to be boring and is meant to distract us from the world that Facebook helped break  —  It was terrible then, and it's terrible now.  —  In a booth at Ted's Fish Fry, in Troy, New York, my friend Daniel Beck and I sketched out our plans for the metaverse.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Mark Zuckerberg / About Facebook:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Meta acquires Within, the company behind VR fitness game Supernatural; Within will continue working on the game and help Meta improve future VR hardware  —  The company already owns Beat Saber  —  Meta has announced that the studio behind VR workout game Supernatural will be joining the company …
Damon Beres / Wired:
Advocates for the blind say DMCA exemptions to break ebook DRM for accessibility should be permanent, rather than having to be renewed every three years  —  Advocates will once again be granted a DMCA exception to make accessible versions of texts.  They argue that it's far past time to make it permanent.
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Microsoft had a nearly $2.49T market cap at close on Friday, passing Apple's $2.46T market cap to become the world's most valuable public company  —  - Microsoft passed Apple in market cap on Friday, making it the world's most valuable public company.  — The move comes after Apple …
New York Times:
A look at a16z's crypto lobbying and draft legislation it is circulating in DC, which some worry may create regulatory loopholes for its portfolio companies  —  The Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose founders played big roles in the development of the internet …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft acquires Two Hat, a content moderation provider that has helped improve Xbox communities for the past few years  —  The deal will help Microsoft's consumer services push  —  Microsoft has acquired Two Hat, a content moderation provider that's helped keep harmful content off Xbox.
Wall Street Journal:
Nick Clegg, Amy Klobuchar, Josh Hawley, Chris Hughes, Clay Shirky, and others on how to reform social media platforms and limit their harm  —  Revelations about Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have highlighted the problems posed by the biggest social media sites.  What would it take to reform the platforms and limit their harm?
Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: Florida startups have raised about $1.3B in Series A and Series B funding so far in 2021, which is more than quadruple the $277M raised in all of 2020  —  The hype around South Florida as an up-and-coming startup hub isn't just hype.  Seed- and early-stage investment …
Liya Su / DealStreetAsia:
Chinese smart home devices maker Aqara raises a $155M Series C from investors including state-backed Shenzhen Capital and China Telecom  —  Chinese smart home devices maker Aqara, which is owned by Xiaomi-backed Lumi United Technology, has raked in an aggregate of 1 billion yuan ($155 million) in its Series C round of financing.

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