Techmeme
February 17, 2021, 7:50 PM

Top News

William Easton / About Facebook:
Ahead of proposed media law, Facebook says it's banning Australians from sharing/viewing news and all users from sharing from and viewing Australian news Pages  —  In response to Australia's proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing …
News Corp:
News Corp announces a multi-year, global partnership with Google to provide content from its news sites “in return for significant payments by Google”  —  Long-term Deal Involves Payment For Premium Content For Google News Showcase;  —  Will Yield Substantial Benefits For Journalism And Society
ABC:
Australian authorities in public health, weather, and other areas say Facebook has removed posts from their feeds following Facebook's news ban  —  Facebook has restricted access to news in Australia, and so far the tech giant seems to have taken a pretty broad definition of news.
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
DOJ announces charges against three North Korean hackers for conspiring to steal and extort over $1.3B in cash and cryptocurrencies from banks and businesses  —  The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed charges against three North Korean hacker spies accused of conspiring to steal …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Researcher finds one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 chips; the GoSearch22 adware installs itself as a Safari extension  —  A security researcher found one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 processors.  —  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
YouTube says it will expand Shorts, its TikTok rival in beta, to the US soon, add 4K and DVR to YouTube TV, expand in-video shopping, and more in 2021  —  YouTube has a host of big product updates coming this year, and it just detailed a lot of them in a blog post from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Google Maps now lets users pay for public transportation and parking by integrating Passport and ParkMobile services into its app, available in 400+ US cities  —  Fill your meter or get a train ticket  —  Google Maps is adding a couple of new useful features: the ability to pay for parking or buy a train ticket right from the app.
Todd Haselton / CNBC:
Amazon announces Build It, a Kickstarter-like program that lets customers vote on products and says it will build those that get enough support within 30 days  —  - A new program from Amazon called Build It lets customers choose to back a new product, and if it gets enough support within 30 days, Amazon will build it.
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Epic Games files a formal antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission, claiming that Apple imposes commercially unviable burdens on rivals  —  Filing is latest shot in escalating feud between ‘Fortnite’ developer and Silicon Valley giant  —  Epic Games has filed …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google launches over 50 new features for its education products, including Classroom, Meet, and Workspace, with a focus on meeting educators' and admins' needs  —  Google today introduced a suite of updates for its online education tools whose adoption and further development have been accelerated …
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Internal docs: Amazon India has secretly favored big sellers, misrepresented its ties with them, and used them to circumvent tough foreign investment rules  —  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It was early 2019, and senior Amazon.com Inc executive Jay Carney was preparing for an important meeting.
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Profile of Corey Quinn, a “cloud economist” who consults for AWS clients like WaPo and Epic on cloud computing costs and often lampoons Amazon on Twitter  —  Corey Quinn has made it his business to understand Amazon's cloud-computing charges and have some fun at the company's expense.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Waymo says it has begun testing its autonomous robotaxi service with employee volunteers in San Francisco, its first expansion beyond the Phoenix metro area  —  Waymo today announced that it has begun limited rider testing with employee volunteers in San Francisco to gather feedback and improve its robo-taxi technology.
Babu Mohan / Android Central:
Twitter starts testing voice DMs, which can be up to 140 seconds long, on iOS in India, Brazil, and Japan  —  Twitter is giving its users “more options to express themselves” in conversations.  —  What you need to know  — Twitter is testing a voice messaging feature for direct messages.
Bloomberg:
Biden admin says SolarWinds attack was executed from within the US, though Russia was responsible, and nine federal agencies and ~100 companies were compromised  —  A sprawling cyber-attack that compromised popular software created by Texas-based SolarWinds Corp. was executed from within the U.S. …
Emil Protalinski / GeekWire:
IDC: Chrome OS market share passed macOS for the first time in 2020, up 4.4 points YoY to 10.8%; Windows fell 4.9 points to 80.5%, macOS rose 0.8 points to 7.5%  —  New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows.
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
How the success of California's Prop 22, driven by gig economy companies, is affecting negotiations between unions and businesses across the US  —  The tower of aging Manila envelopes, stacked in a corner of Rome Aloise's cluttered Bay Area home office, is a monument to five years of failure.
Karen Weise / New York Times:
NY AG sues Amazon, alleging it inadequately protected workers from COVID-19 in Staten Island and Queens, and retaliated against employees who raised concerns  —  The case focuses on two of the company's facilities in New York.  —  New York's attorney general, Letitia James …
Phil Muncaster / Infosecurity Magazine:
YouTube has taken down nearly 3,000 channels and accounts in Q1 that were part of Chinese state coordinated influence operation  —  UK / EMEA News Reporter , Infosecurity Magazine  —  YouTube has taken down almost 3000 channels and accounts deemed to part of separate Chinese and Russian state coordinated influence operations.
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Standard Cognition, which is developing tools for cashierless stores, similar to Amazon Go, raises $150M at a $1B+ valuation  —  A startup selling Amazon Go-like checkout technology to retailers has raised money from investors at a $1 billion valuation, minting a new unicorn a year into a pandemic …
Tweets: @ycombinatorThanks:@plantrocks

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