Techmeme
December 15, 2020, 11:50 PM

Top News

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft is rolling out native M1 support for many Microsoft 365 for Mac apps, iCloud account integration in Outlook, and updated collaboration capabilities  —  Microsoft's new ‘Universal’ Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps for Mac will work on both Apple's M1 Arm silicon and Intel processors.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Mozilla releases Firefox 84 with native support for Apple M1 Macs, saying the browser launches over 2.5 times faster and web apps are now twice as responsive  —  Mozilla today released Firefox version 84 with native support for Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 chip, touting …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Sources: Microsoft and industry partners seize key command and control domain used in SolarWinds hack  —  By seizing the domain, Microsoft and its partners hope to identify all victims, but are also preventing attackers from escalating intrusions in currently infected networks.
Washington Post:
SolarWinds' top investors Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold a combined $286M worth of stock in the company on Dec. 7, six days before the hack was made public  —  The timing of the trades raises questions about whether major shareholders used inside information to avoid stark losses after the attack.
Periscope:
Twitter says it will discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021, saying it's brought most of the core capabilities of Periscope into Twitter  —  Today, we're sharing that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021.
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
EU proposes two bills governing tech giants, focused on illegal content and anticompetitive behavior, to empower regulators to levy large fines or break them up  —  Proposed bills would be the bloc's most ambitious internet laws since GDPR  —  European officials want new powers …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook is building a video product called Super that will let people pay content creators or celebrities to interact with them during a live broadcast  —  - New product ‘Super’ is still being tested at social network  — Facebook is developing more video features during the pandemic
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook is working on an AI tool called TLDR, which would summarize articles in bullet points and which was announced in an end-of-year, company-wide meeting  —  Facebook told employees on Tuesday that it's developing a tool to summarize news articles so users won't have to read them …
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Facebook says people linked to France's military used fake accounts to meddle in African politics, tangling with similar efforts by Russia's IRA in some nations  —  It's the first time Facebook has identified people affiliated with a Western government for sanction
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Photos expands Memories, adding new collage designs and 3D Cinematic photos that simulate depth in a scene by adding a smooth panning effect  —  Google Photos is rolling out a series of updates to its Memories feature, which surfaces your best photos from years past.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Neverware, which helps schools and enterprises resurrect old PCs with its Chromium-based CloudReady OS, gets acquired by Google, which invested in its Series B  —  Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS.
The Verge:
Google has restored service after a significant number of Gmail users saw “error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior” for a few hours  —  Stadia was experiencing issues, too  —  Google says that a “significant subset” of Gmail users ran into errors with the service Tuesday afternoon.
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
Facebook will shift its UK users into user agreements with its HQ in California, instead of its Irish unit, moving them out of reach of EU's privacy laws  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will shift all its users in the United Kingdom into user agreements with the corporate headquarters …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook will allow ads targeting Georgia voters about the Jan. 5 runoffs, starting at 9am PT on Dec. 16, even as its broader political ad ban remains  —  Facebook said Tuesday it will begin letting advertisers run ads targeting Georgia voters about the state's Jan. 5 runoff elections …
Megan Graham / CNBC:
The ad industry is bracing for Apple's privacy-focused IDFA changes and attempting to adapt with new targeting methods  —  - Apple is making a huge change to settings on users' iPhones in the name of privacy, and it will fundamentally change mobile advertising on those devices.
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple plans to produce up to 96M iPhones for H1 2021, a nearly 30% YoY increase, and is also working on a new Apple TV for next year  —  Robust orders come as smartphone industry faces severe parts shortages  —  TAIPEI — Apple plans to produce up to 96 million iPhones for the first half of 2021 …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Facebook and Twitter represent v1 of social networking, a bad copy of the analog world, whereas v2 is something unique to digital and a lot more promising  —  It's a rather motley crew.  One is a nurse, another a lawyer, a third an investment adviser.  There are three programmers, a soldier, and a data scientist.
Bloomberg:
Twitter says it has signed a multiyear deal to use AWS to power Twitter timelines, shifting away from its own infrastructure  —  - Deal may help speed service in certain parts of the world  — Twitter also relies on its own data centers and Google's cloud

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