Techmeme
February 9, 2021, 3:50 AM

Top News

Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Reddit has raised a Series E of over $250M led by Vy Capital at a $6B valuation, doubling in value since its last funding round in February 2019  —  Its WallStreetBets community played a prominent role in recent stock-trading frenzy  —  Reddit Inc. doubled its valuation to $6 billion …
Jason Koebler / VICE:
Police say a computer in a water treatment plant in FL, set up for remote access, was breached; the intruder tried raising sodium hydroxide levels in the water  —  The hacker tried to drastically increase sodium hydroxide levels in the water, Pinellas County, Florida, officials said on Monday.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Sources: Mark Cuban is co-founding Fireside, a podcast app where hosts can talk to fans live and monetize their conversations, with plans to launch this year  —  Fireside is launching this year  —  Mark Cuban is getting in on the audio and podcasting hype.
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Programming language Rust is now backed by the Rust Foundation, a new independent organization that will make it easier to accept financing beyond Mozilla  —  The Rust programming language now has its own foundation that's independent from Mozilla.  —  Programming language Rust now has the backing …
Taha Broach / The 8-Bit:
In the iOS 14.5 beta, Apple has finally added the ability to set a default music streaming service, including Spotify, when using Siri to play songs  —  Apple launched the initial beta versions of iOS 14.5 to developers and public beta testers last week.  Among the list of new features …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
A developer is exposing scam lookalike apps that are flourishing on the App Store, fueled by lax enforcement and fake reviews, after his own app was targeted  —  Over the last several weeks, developer Kosta Eleftheriou has been highlighting many apparent scam applications on the App Store.
Financial Times:
EU lawmakers are considering regulations that would force Facebook and Google to pay for news content on their platforms, echoing a similar move in Australia  —  Move by MEPs would strengthen hand of publishers against Google and Facebook  —  EU lawmakers overseeing new digital regulation …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Facebook expands policies to take down more posts with vaccine-related misinformation, including assertions that vaccines cause autism  —  Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter is building subscription products to ease its dependence on ads, including “tipping” for exclusive content and charging for TweetDeck  —  - Internal groups are researching options users might pay for  — Social network says ‘revenue durability’ is now top priority
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Electronic Arts to acquire Glu Mobile, best known for its popular game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, in $2.4B deal, a 36% premium to Glu's closing price on Friday  —  The videogame giant looks to expand its presence in mobile gaming, where it has had mixed success
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Documents show Binance dropped the defamation lawsuit against Forbes it filed in November 2020, but did not give a reason for the withdrawal  —  The exchange did not say in its latest filing why it withdrew the case, at least for now.  —  Binance Holdings, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange …
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Filing: Tesla has bought $1.5B worth of bitcoin and says it will start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products in the future  —  - Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.  — The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's Dan Riccio is focusing on future VR and AR devices, and the group working on in-house screens and cameras is now under chip chief Johny Srouji  —  - Apple moves team working on own screens, cameras to Srouji  — Riccio left top hardware job recently to work on ‘new project’
TechCrunch:
Clubhouse is now blocked in China after an uncensored period during which it grew rapidly  —  Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
Zoho Directory 2024: Enabling Access and Empowering Security  —  Hey there!  👋 As 2024 comes to a close, we're excited to highlight the latest updates in Zoho Directory.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/27 - A New "Definition" Of AGI
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:50 AM ET, February 9, 2021.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Wall Street Journal:
Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg: