Techmeme
February 18, 2021, 5:00 PM

Top News

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Facebook's refusal to pay a misguided media tax, pushed by Rupert Murdoch, is a defense of the open web and criticizing it for rejecting a link tax is bizarre  —  None of this should have been a surprise.  Back in September we wrote about Facebook publicly saying that if Australia went forward …
Damien Cave / New York Times:
As news disappears from Facebook in Australia, while leaving plenty of conspiracy theories, many Australians are outraged but remain divided over what to do  —  The social network's decision to block journalism rather than pay for it erased more than expected, leaving many outraged and debating what should happen next.
Nicholas McElroy / ABC:
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Benedict Evans:
William Easton / About Facebook:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Google adds the Apple TV app to its newest Chromecast device with Google TV and has made it available on Sony and TCL smart TVs that have Google TV  —  Plugging a notable gap in its streaming lineup, Google has added the Apple TV app — the only way to get the Apple TV Plus service — to its newest Chromecast device.
Usman Pirzada / Wccftech:
Nvidia announces dedicated crypto mining GPUs and says RTX 3060 GPU will detect the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm and limit the hash rate by 50%  —  NVIDIA has finally conceded to the overwhelming mining demand facing the GPU market right now and launched a lineup …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google releases Android 12 developer preview, available for Pixel devices, with under-the-hood changes adding security, support for more media formats, and more  —  The big, consumer-facing changes will come later this year  —  Google is releasing a developer preview for the next version of Android …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Court filing says a Facebook manager warned that the company reported revenues it “should have never made” by overstating how many users advertisers could reach  —  Lawsuit cites product executive's qualms over figures provided to advertisers  —  A Facebook employee warned …
Noam Bardin:
Former Waze CEO reflects on his time at Google and the impact of the acquisition on autonomy, the brand, hiring and firing, distribution, compensation, and more  —  It's been two weeks since I left Google and I keep getting asked “why did I leave now”?  I think the better question is “why did I stay for so long”?
YouTube:
Livestream of House Financial Services Committee hearing on GameStop stock with CEOs of Robinhood, Citadel, and Reddit, and YouTube streamer “Roaring Kitty”  —  Executives from Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital, are headed to Washington for Thursday's highly anticipated GameStop hearing at the U.S. Congress.
Ben Geman / Axios:
Facebook says it will expand its program to fight climate lies to other regions, will debunk climate change myths, adds labels to climate change posts in the UK  —  Facebook is expanding the geographic reach of its recently launched online portal to counter misinformation about climate change …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google will restructure its Responsible AI teams to centralize them under a single Black executive, Marian Croak, in wake of Timnit Gebru's departure  —  - Company seeks to stabilize department amid internal rancor  — Responsible AI teams to be centralized under single executive
Mara Hvistendahl / The Intercept:
Docs: Oracle has been marketing its data analytics tools to Chinese police, touting its ability to mine DNA, vehicle records, and facial recognition databases  —  Police in China's Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records …
Tim Anderson / The Register:
Microsoft releases version 1.0 of Dapr, one of its open-source projects to simplify app development for Kubernetes  —  API now stable, more on the way  —  Microsoft has released version 1.0 of its Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr), aimed at providing building blocks to simplify application development for Kubernetes.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Job listings show Apple is looking to hire engineers to start work on 6G, which industry watchers don't expect will be rolled out broadly until about 2030  —  - Company wants to rely less on others for new technology  — Job listings posted for positions in San Diego, Silicon Valley
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters:
Sources: Apple is lobbying to participate in a new scheme to boost India's computer exports, as part of plans to bring iPad manufacturing to the country  —  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Apple Inc is angling to participate in a new scheme to boost India's exports of computer products …
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Dropbox beats Q4 expectations with revenue of $504.1M, up 14% YoY, vs. estimates of $498M, says it has 15.48M paying users, up from 14.31M YoY  —  The company said paying users now sit at 15.48 million, as compared to 14.31 million for the same period last year.
More: Dropbox
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
CrowdStrike announces plans to acquire UK-based log data analysis startup Humio for $400M; Humio had raised $30M+ to date from backers including Dell and Accel  —  CrowdStrike, a cloud-native cybersecurity company focused on endpoint protection and threat intelligence for enterprises …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
App Annie: Clubhouse grew from over 3.5M global downloads on February 1, 2021, to reach 8.1M by February 16, 2021  —  Social audio app Clubhouse has now topped 8 million global downloads, despite still being in a prelaunch, invite-only mode, according to new data released today by mobile data and analytics firm App Annie.
Bloomberg:
Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the US, raises $150M, sources say at a $1B+ valuation  —  Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S., raised $150 million …
Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
US federal judge rules that Citibank isn't entitled to be returned $500M it accidentally sent to creditors early via Flexcube software, which had a confusing UI  —  Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments.  It sent $900M instead.  —  A federal judge has ruled that Citibank …

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