Techmeme
February 18, 2021, 3:10 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google releases the Android 12 developer preview, available for Pixel devices, with under-the-hood changes adding security, support for more media formats, more  —  The big, consumer-facing changes will come later this year  —  Google is releasing a developer preview for the next version of Android …
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 …
Nicholas McElroy / 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.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Benedict Evans:
William Easton / About Facebook:
More: Washington Post, The Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald, TechCrunch, BBC, BBC, Insider, New York Times, New York Times, Facebook, CNN, Ars Technica, Vox, Fast Company, The Irish Times, New York Post, The Independent, ConsumerAffairs.com, London Evening Standard, The Guardian, NBC News, Reason, The Ararat Advertiser, Infinity World News …, Australian Financial Review, SBS News, 9News, The National, Verdict, KIIS 1065 Sydney, Nikkei Asia, Marketing Land, Android Central, Financial Times, ABC, Sky News, The Guardian, WebProNews, The Verge, Politico, Light Reading, AppleInsider, news.com.au, Hollywood Reporter, Telecoms.com, Axios, Search Engine Roundtable, diginomica, iMore, Reuters, Fortune, Wccftech, MediaNama, and Variety
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 …
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
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.
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Palantir's stock drops over 7% after nearly all shares are unlocked for trading; the company's September IPO restricted sales to one-fifth of shares  —  - Two longtime investors said they will hold; Soros to exit  — Stock restriction was an unusual condition of direct listing
João Carrasqueira / Neowin:
Facebook adds multi-user support and app sharing to Oculus Quest  —  Facebook is making Oculus Quest headsets easier to share with others with a couple of new features being rolled out starting today.  Support for multiple user accounts as well as app sharing are coming to the more recent Quest 2 first …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Job listings show Apple is looking to hire engineers to start work on 6G  —  - Company wants to rely less on others for new technology  — Job listings posted for positions in San Diego, Silicon Valley  —  Apple Inc. launched its first iPhones with 5G wireless speeds a few months ago.
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 …
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 …
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 …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
CrowdStrike to acquire log data analysis startup Humio for $400M  —  CrowdStrike, a cloud-native cybersecurity company focused on endpoint protection and threat intelligence for enterprises, has announced plans to acquire U.K.-based log-analysis and observability startup Humio in a mostly-cash deal worth approximately $400 million.

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