Techmeme
October 31, 2021, 1:35 AM

Top News

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.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In 2018, Oculus' Jason Rubin sent a paper to Facebook executives laying the foundation for Meta's ambitions and detailing the need to own the VR market  —  - In 2018, an Oculus executive named Jason Rubin wrote a 50-page document headlined “The Metaverse” that he sent to a Facebook board member and some top execs.
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:
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 …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Roblox has been down since about 7PM ET on October 28, with some speculating the outage may be related to a Chipotle promotion, but the company denies a link  —  Roblox is having some major server issues  —  Roblox has been down for more than two days, with the game and its related website offline for millions of players.
Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia:
Beijing-based Huice, a SaaS provider that helps e-commerce businesses manage orders and more, raises a $312M Series D led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2  —  Huice, which develops software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to enable smart retail, has raised $312 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2.
Delia Cai / Vanity Fair:
Q&A with EIC Nilay Patel on The Verge's 10th anniversary, tech media's advance from early breathless gadget reviews, subject-source relationships, and more  —  After a decade covering the Zucks, Googles, and Ubers of the scene, the Verge editor in chief reflects on tech's troublesome relationship with the rest of the world.
Foreign Affairs:
How the rhetoric surrounding techno-globalism has shifted, from countries advocating for a free, open internet to imposing limits to protect national interests  —  Two key words were missing from the statements that followed the inaugural in-person summit in September of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue …
Bloomberg:
A look at student activity monitoring software GoGuardian, whose usage in US schools exploded during lockdowns as some say it adds to kids' psychological strain  —  The pandemic caused schools to embrace laptops, tablets, Zoom, and an app called GoGuardian that tracks everything students (and, sometimes, parents) do online.
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.

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