Techmeme
December 16, 2020, 12:40 PM

Top News

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook attacks Apple in full-page newspaper ads, claiming upcoming iOS 14 changes that limit data gathering and targeted ads are bad for small businesses  —  - Ads criticize Apple's plan to restrict some data gathering  — Facebook placed ads in the NYT, WSJ and Washington Post
Megan Graham / CNBC:
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.
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.
Alex Stamos / Washington Post:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Google says its new Chromecast with Google TV will get an Apple TV app in early 2021, giving users access to TV+ originals and iTunes purchases  —  Coming in early 2021 to the Chromecast with Google TV  —  Google's latest Chromecast with Google TV is filling in one of its biggest missing apps …
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Substack launches Substack Reader, an RSS reader for tracking newsletter subscriptions and other feeds, in beta  —  Substack Reader is now available in beta  —  If you're worried about all your newsletter subscriptions getting lost in your inbox, Substack may have a solution.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
At an end-of-year, company-wide meeting, Facebook said it is working on TLDR, an AI tool that would summarize longform articles in bullet points  —  Facebook told employees on Tuesday that it's developing a tool to summarize news articles so users won't have to read them.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Google's Stadia arrives on iOS and iPadOS in beta for mobile web, letting users access their game library on Apple devices  —  Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on an iPad is pretty great  —  Google Stadia has finally made its way to iOS over a year after launch.  The company's mobile web beta …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Apple AirPods Max review: high-luxury design, terrific sound quality, and very effective noise cancellation, but they are heavy and the case is an abomination  —  Apple's over-ear headphones have tremendous build quality and sound, but there's no denying they're expensive
CoinDesk:
Bitcoin crosses $20K to reach an all-time high after doubling in the past three months  —  After testing investor patience for three weeks, bitcoin has finally crossed above $20,000 to reach fresh all-time highs.  —  The number one cryptocurrency by market value jumped …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Australian regulator sues Facebook for allegedly using its Onavo VPN app to spy on users for commercial purposes in 2016 and 2017  —  Yet more trouble brewing for Facebook: Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing the tech giant over its use, in 2016 and 2017 …
Caitlin McCabe / Wall Street Journal:
Leaked doc: Massachusetts securities regulators are expected to file a complaint against Robinhood claiming it exposed investors to “unnecessary trading risks”  —  The wildly popular trading platform exposed Massachusetts investors to ‘unnecessary trading risks,’ according to the complaint
Hirsh Chitkara / Protocol:
Interview with Stanford comp lit professor Adrian Daub on the naiveté of undergrads eager to work in tech, “useless” VC Twitter, and challenges to SV narratives  —  In the early 2010s, professor Adrian Daub began noticing changes in some Stanford undergraduates that troubled him.
Periscope:
Twitter says it will discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021, after bringing 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.
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.
William Boston / Wall Street Journal:
Germany says it will permit the use of Huawei's 5G tech after receiving assurances from the company about its safety, pending parliamentary approval  —  New network-security legislation is latest rebuke to U.S. effort to rein in Chinese tech giant  —  BERLIN—The German government …
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Discord says iOS and Android users will now be able to share their screens  —  The super popular chat app Discord is getting a much-requested feature starting today: mobile screen sharing.  —  As the name suggests, mobile screen sharing lets users capture and broadcast everything …

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Earlier Picks

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Craig Timberg / Washington Post: