Techmeme
November 9, 2021, 7:40 PM

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitter Blue rolls out to the US for $2.99/month with Scroll's ad-free articles across 300+ pubs, an undo button, Nuzzel-like “top articles” roundup, and more  —  And in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as part of Twitter Blue  —  Twitter Blue, the company's subscription service …
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Unity to acquire Peter Jackson's visual effects company Weta Digital, including 275+ engineers, for $1.625B; Weta Digital's FTX artists will form a new entity  —  Unity has just announced its intent to acquire Weta Digital, the legendary visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson, for a massive $1.625 billion.
New York Times:
By January 19, Meta aims to remove ad targeting options based on user interactions with content about health, race, political affiliation, religion, and more  —  Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, said on Tuesday that it planned to eliminate advertisers' ability …
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Bipartisan House bill would force tech platforms to offer an “input-transparent algorithm” that doesn't require user data to generate recommendations  —  A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced a companion to a Senate bill that would let people use algorithm-free versions …
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft announces a $249 11.6" Surface Laptop SE, exclusively for schools and students, running Windows 11 SE, and starting with 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage  —  Microsoft's low-end education PC is official!  —  What you need to know  — Microsoft is adding a new laptop to its Surface hardware portfolio.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Meta shares bullying and harassment numbers for the first time, claims the category represents ~0.14% of Facebook content and ~0.05% of Instagram content  —  The social media giant published several transparency reports on Tuesday.  —  Facebook published a series of reports on Tuesday …
Pranob Mehrotra / XDA Developers:
Samsung unveils 14nm, 16GB LPDDR5X DRAM chip for mobile devices, claims data transfer speeds of 8.5Gbps, 1.3x faster than LPDDR5 while consuming 20% less power  —  Samsung today announced the world's first LPDDR5 DRAM chip for mobile devices.  The new memory module is fabricated using …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
iOS 15.2 beta includes the Communication Safety in Messages feature that Apple announced this summer, as an opt-in feature parents can enable  —  Apple over the summer announced new Child Safety features that are aimed at keeping children safer online.  Apple has confirmed that one of those features …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Alex Gorsky, chairman and departing CEO of Johnson & Johnson, joins Apple's board of directors; Tim Cook calls him a “visionary in healthcare”  —  Apple today announced that Alex Gorsky, the chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson, has joined its board of directors.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
fuboTV to acquire French multiplatform streaming company Molotov for $190M; Molotov co-founder and CEO Jean-David Blanc will become chief strategy officer  —  fuboTV is making a significant move in Europe with plans to acquire Molotov, a French startup with a leading television streaming service. fuboTV …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Netflix games arrive on Apple's App Store and users will start being able to access them through Netflix's iOS app tomorrow  —  Last week, Netflix launched its debut lineup of mobile games to Android users globally.  Today, the games are expanding to users on iOS.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
You.com, an AI-powered open source search engine, launches in beta with $20M in funding led by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff  —  You.com, which bills itself as the world's first open source search engine, today announced its public beta launch along with $20 million in funding led …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Clubhouse rolls out Replay on iOS and Android, letting users record live rooms and share them as a podcast or a clip on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok  —  Clubhouse hosts and moderators will have a fresh tool in their kit today.  The company is pushing a new feature live on both its iOS …
Bloomberg:
Netflix for iOS is rolling out Kids Clips, a TikTok-like feature that shows new daily short videos from its children's library  —  - Company to test ‘Kids Clips’ on iOS in U.S., other countries  — Feature is similar to ‘Fast Laughs’ comedy offering for adults
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Unpacking some key aspects of what constitutes a metaverse, such as making and owning virtual property, 3D telepresence in a persistent world, and more  —  Will we all live in the metaverse soon?  Or is the idea just Second Life redux?  —  These days it seems like everybody …
Wall Street Journal:
An internal September 2018 Facebook memo found ~40% of traffic to Pages went to those with plagiarized or recycled content  —  About 40% of traffic to pages in 2018 went to those with content that was plagiarized or recycled, and Facebook has been slow to crack down on copyright infringement

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Sara Fischer / Axios:

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