Techmeme
February 24, 2021, 7:00 PM

Top News

Nick Clegg / About Facebook:
Facebook defends its stance in Australia, says it invested $600M since 2018 to support the news industry and plans at least $1B more over the next three years  —  Last week, in a move that will have felt abrupt and dramatic to many, Facebook announced it was stopping the sharing of news on its service in Australia.
ProPublica:
Emails show how Facebook responds to requests by authoritarian governments to censor content, as happened in Turkey during its military offensive against Kurds  —  Amid a 2018 Turkish military campaign, Facebook ultimately sided with Turkey's demand to block the page of a mostly Kurdish militia.
Scott Chipolina / Decrypt:
Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy buys 19,452 Bitcoin, worth $1.0261B, and now holds ~90K Bitcoin, worth ~$4.5B at current prices  —  Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has purchased 19,452 Bitcoin, worth $1.026 billion, at an average price of $52,765.
Taylor Lyles / The Verge:
HP says it is acquiring gaming peripheral company HyperX for $425M, giving the company a major foothold in the gaming accessory market  —  The acquisition means HP owns the HyperX brand  —  HP has announced that it is acquiring gaming peripheral company HyperX for $425 million.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube to roll out a “supervised” account option in beta in the coming months in more than 80 countries, aimed at kids that are too old for YouTube Kids  —  YouTube is launching a PG version of the internet's biggest video service.  —  A new “supervised” YouTube account option …
Yimou Lee / Reuters:
Taiwanese chipmakers are buying water by the truckload for some of their foundries in drought-hit areas as the island widens restrictions on water supply  —  TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan chipmakers are buying water by the truckload for some of their foundries as the island widens restrictions …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Amazon says its Luna cloud gaming service is available to try for free in the US on select Fire TV devices, after launching as invite-only last year  —  And anyone in the US can also buy a Luna Controller  —  Amazon's cloud-gaming service, Luna, is now available to try for free in the US …
Bloomberg:
FCC reveals that for its 5G licenses auction, Verizon spent the most of any carrier with $45.5B, followed by AT&T with $23.4B, and T-Mobile with $9.3B  —  - AT&T is second at $23 billion in bids, followed by T-Mobile  — FCC releases results of so-called C-band airwaves sale
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Source: Dispo, a retro photo sharing app co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, raises $20M Series A led by Spark Capital at a $200M valuation  —  Dispo, a retro photo-sharing app co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, recently raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital …
Jeff Cox / CNBC:
US Federal Reserve's systems that let banks send money back and forth went down for several hours, impacting its automated clearinghouse system and more  —  Fed operational error brings down payment system  —  The Federal Reserve's system that allows financial institutions to send money …
Michael McSweeney / The Block:
Optimism, which plans to help scale the Ethereum blockchain with a Layer 2 protocol, raises $25M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz  —  Optimism, a startup focused on the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain network, has raised a $25 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
New York Times:
Myanmar's draconian draft cybersecurity law follows a yearslong effort to build out Myanmar's surveillance capabilities, following cues from China  —  As the military seized power again, the generals moved quickly to take the country offline, criminalize online dissent and block social media.
Tim Anderson / The Register:
Google says it has been sponsoring two full-time Linux developers at the Linux Foundation for years to improve security and hopes other companies will follow  —  Plus: Why the Chocolate Factory only uses code it builds from source  —  Interview Worried about the security of Linux and open-source code …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google Cloud unveils Autopilot, an operating mode for its Kubernetes Engine that turns over management of its clusters to Google's engineers and automated tools  —  Google Cloud today announced a new operating mode for its Kubernetes Engine (GKE) that turns over the management …
Alfred Ng / The Markup:
Auditing of algorithms can help address bias but there needs to be industry standards/regulations to hold the auditors or the companies that use them to account  —  For more than a decade, journalists and researchers have been writing about the dangers of relying on algorithms to make weighty decisions …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
TikTok says it removed 300K+ videos in the US for election misinformation in H2 2020, and 441K videos from its For You recommendation page for misinformation  —  And another 400,000 were removed from the For You page  —  TikTok removed over 340,000 videos in the US for breaking …
Bloomberg:
Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, which controls 14% of the market, has recently expanded into France, Germany, Italy, and Spain  —  Winston Churchill, it's often said, quipped that you should never let a good crisis go to waste.  Tatyana Bakalchuk would agree.
Jane Wakefield / BBC:
Portland ends partnership with Sidewalk Labs to track mobility; Sidewalk spin-off Replica says it was unwilling to share granular data requested by the city  —  A smart city project started by Google's sister firm Sidewalk Labs to track mobility patterns in the US city of Portland has been shelved.
More: Insider
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
California's 2018 net neutrality law, SB 822, can go into effect after a California judge declined to grant the telecom industry a preliminary injunction  —  It survived challenges from Trump's DOJ, and now one from telecom industry too  —  Net neutrality died a horrible death in 2017 …

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Tom Warren / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

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