Techmeme
December 30, 2021, 12:15 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: following Haugen's leaks, Meta sought to divide lawmakers along partisan lines to forestall regulation, as Zuckerberg told employees not to apologize  —  Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg drove response to disclosures about company's influence; sending deputies to testify in Congress
Washington Post:
As the US faces record COVID-19 infections, effective use of exposure notification apps is unlikely, given slow adoption and poor data on their efficacy  —  The United States is grappling with record-high infections, but adoption of the system is still far behind what its creators and proponents envisioned
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Fortnite servers are back online after a major five-hour outage prevented players from logging on, among other issues  —  The hit battle royale game told players “You do not have permission to play Fortnite.”  —  There was some bad news if you're on winter break and hoping to play some Fortnite …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
HDMI Forum will introduce HDMI 2.1a, the latest standard, at CES 2022, with minor updates that only further complicate the system's haphazard device support  —  Brace yourself for yet another new HDMI standard  —  The HDMI standards are a mess.  HDMI 2.1, in particular, is a uniquely frustrating mess …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
T-Mobile confirms reports of a data breach caused by SIM swap attacks on a “very small number of customers”, following six other data breaches since 2018  —  T-Mobile confirmed that recent reports of a new data breach are linked to notifications sent to a “very small number of customers” who fell victim to SIM swap attacks.
New York Times:
How tech founders and investors use the Qualified Small Business Stock tax break, a 1990s-era provision for SMBs, to minimize taxes on their investment profits  —  Once aimed at small businesses, a 1990s-era tax break has become a popular way for Silicon Valley founders and investors to avoid taxes on their investment profits.
Paul Butler:
Web3 game Axie Infinity's play-to-earn model blurs the lines between “player” and “worker”, creating a Ponzi scheme with built-in deniability  —  In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people …

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More News

Cobie:
Laura Forman / Wall Street Journal:
Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Monica Alleven / Fierce Wireless:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: