Techmeme
December 31, 2021, 5:45 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Several women who believe they were tracked with AirTags say Apple's safeguards against stalking are insufficient  —  Privacy groups sounded alarms about the coin-sized location-tracking devices when they were introduced.  Now people are concerned those fears are being realized.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Indian antitrust watchdog orders an investigation into Apple's practice of mandating use of its payments system for iPhone apps in the App Store  —  Indian antitrust watchdog on Friday ordered an investigation into Apple's business practices — in particular, the mandatory use …
Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge:
CES will end a day earlier, on January 7, as an “additional” COVID-19 safety measure, after Google, Microsoft, and other big companies canceled in-person plans  —  The show now ends on January 7th  —  CES has dropped the last day of its 2022 tech conference in Las Vegas …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
OpenSea bans PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club, two NFT projects dueling over which is the authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club ripoff  —  And dodging NFT marketplace bans while doing it  —  A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody.
Tim / Droid Life:
Google pauses the rollout of its December update for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro until late January after reports of calls dropping and disconnecting  —  In a bit of frustrating news, Google has confirmed that it has paused the December update for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, aka the first Feature Drop update for the two devices.
Brad Linder / Liliputing:
Devices running BlackBerry 10 or OS 7.1 and earlier will lose key services like calling, texting, data usage, and 911 access starting January 4  —  BlackBerry stopped shipping phones and tablets with its own software years ago, switching to Android in 2015 before shifting from a hardware company …
New York Times:
Investigation: how China identifies, tracks, and pressures its critics on Facebook and Twitter, including Chinese living abroad and citizens of other nations  —  Authorities in China have turned to sophisticated investigative software to track and silence obscure critics on overseas social media.
Tom Parsons / What Hi-Fi?:
Interview with Apple's VP of Acoustics and head of AirPods marketing about designing AirPods 3, Spatial Audio, Bluetooth's limitations, and more  —  First, a qualification: Gary Geaves isn't quite “the man who made the AirPods”, and I'm sure he'd never describe himself as such.
Brian Quarmby / Cointelegraph:
Ethereum scaling project Polygon says it quietly fixed a bug that put $23.6B in MATIC tokens at risk, but not before $2.04M in tokens was stolen  —  “Considering how much was at stake, I believe our team has made the best decisions possible given the circumstances,” said Polygon's co-founder Jaynti Kanani.
Rebecca Elliott / Wall Street Journal:
Tesla's software engineering expertise let it navigate the global chip shortage by rewriting software to use alternative chips in its cars  —  Electric-vehicle maker is expected to manufacture roughly 80% more vehicles this year than it did in 2020  —  Tesla Inc. has emerged …

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More News

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Will Oremus / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Rebecca Feng / Wall Street Journal: