Techmeme
March 4, 2021, 4:25 PM

Top News

Katherine Rosman / New York Times:
Square acquires a majority stake in Jay-Z's streaming service Tidal for $297M; Jay-Z will join Square's board  —  What did Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey talk about when they went yachting around the Hamptons together last summer?  Perhaps only Beyoncé knows.  —  Maybe now we do, too.
Bloomberg:
UK antitrust authorities say they plan to investigate Apple's App Store to probe whether it is abusing its market power to restrict competition  —  - CMA taking into account Apple's ‘dominant’ position in apps  — Apple probe prompted by complaints from some developers
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Sources: EU is set to press antitrust charges against Apple over App Store rules for competing music streaming services, following a complaint by Spotify  —  Brussels set to formally press charges alleging tech company used its dominance to squeeze out App Store rivals
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple clarifies that users can't actually set a default music service in iOS 14.5 but has a feature that lets Siri attempt to learn preferred listening apps  —  Apple has clarified that the iOS 14.5 beta is not actually allowing users to select a new default music service, as has been reported.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Leaked images show Sonos Roam, the company's smallest portable speaker, expected to ship on April 20 for $169  —  You're looking at the first images of the next speaker from Sonos.  Set to be priced at $169, the new device — it's called the Sonos Roam — is much smaller than the Sonos Move …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft rolls out new features for Edge, including vertical tabs and a feature that it says can improve startup times by 29% to 41% after a device reboots  —  Microsoft Edge gets some new features for March  —  Microsoft is rolling out some new improvements to its Edge browser this month.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Facebook adds one-to-one voice and video calling to the WhatsApp desktop app, but the browser version, WhatsApp Web, is not getting this feature at the moment  —  WhatsApp is rolling out support for voice and video calling to its desktop app, the Facebook-owned messaging service said Thursday …
Gilad Edelman / Wired:
Study: far-right pubs get 65% more engagement on Facebook when they publish fake news; liberal and centrist pubs get less engagement if they publish misinfo  —  Far-right pages that publish misinformation get the most interactions by far compared to other news sources, new research shows.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
In the past month, three of the longest-running Russian cybercrime forums have been hacked, leaking their users' email addresses, login metadata, and more  —  Over the past few weeks, three of the longest running and most venerated Russian-language online forums serving thousands of experienced cybercriminals have been hacked.
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Virtual events startup Hopin raises $400M at a $5.65B valuation, more than double its valuation in its November round  —  - Hopin says it's raised $400 million at a $5.65 billion valuation, more than double what it was worth in a November investment round.  — The latest financing round …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Stream, which lets developers build chat and activity streams into apps and other services with a few lines of code, raises $38M Series B  —  A lot of our communication these days with each other is digital, and today one of the companies enabling that — with APIs to build chat experiences into apps …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
After two Black Salesforce staff pointed to workplace issues in resignation letters, Salesforce's LinkedIn account posted a now-deleted message supporting BLM  —  - A person who gained access to Salesforce's LinkedIn account published a post saying that “BLACK LIVES STILL F—  G MATTER.
Tweets: @caseynewton
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Facebook says its new AI model SEER, which was trained with self-supervision on a billion public Instagram images, outperformed advanced fully supervised models  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Facebook today announced …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Nintendo plans to unveil a new Switch model in 2021 that will come with 7-inch 720p Samsung OLED display, and support 4K graphics when docked with TVs  —  - Samsung Display will start production of 7-inch panels in June  — Gaming giant aims to propel Switch against the Xbox and PS5
Ashley Gold / Axios:
Sources: Microsoft president Brad Smith will testify before a House antitrust subcommittee hearing next Friday about tech antitrust and the news media  —  Microsoft president Brad Smith will testify before a House antitrust subcommittee hearing next Friday about tech antitrust and the news media …
More: OnMSFT.comTweets: @b_fung
Samantha Hissong / Rolling Stone:
Kings of Leon to be one of the first bands to debut an album as part of an NFT package, with tokens unlocking perks like limited-edition vinyl and concert seats  —  The band's revolutionary tokens will unlock special perks like limited-edition vinyl and front row seats to future concerts
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
Qualcomm announces Snapdragon Sound, an initiative to enhance the wireless sound experience by lowering latency and improving connection issues  —  Just days after it unveiled its project to bring  —  advanced haptics to Android, Qualcomm has announced another ambitious venture aimed at bridging the gaps in device performance.

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