Techmeme
March 30, 2021, 8:30 PM

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google announces upgrades to Maps, including indoor AR directions, a new directions interface with eco-friendly driving routes, and new weather map layers  —  Indoor AR directions, a new directions interface, and more  —  Google is announcing a bunch of new features planned for Google Maps …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Spotify buys app developer Betty Labs, creator of Locker Room, a live social audio app where fans can talk about sports, which Spotify plans on expanding  —  The acquisition will allow creators of all kinds to host anything from debates to live concerts.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn adds Creator mode for influencers, launches video Cover Stories, and extends free career training tools in partnership with Microsoft  —  LinkedIn, the social network now with 740 million users around the world, has carved out an identity for itself as the place online where professionals …
Anna Irrera / Reuters:
PayPal says it has started letting US customers use cryptocurrency holdings to pay all 29M of its online merchants globally  —  LONDON (Reuters) - PayPal Holdings Inc will announce later on Tuesday that it has started allowing U.S. consumers to use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Source: in January, IoT manufacturer Ubiquiti downplayed a “catastrophic” breach, which gained root access to its AWS accounts and access to countless devices  —  On Jan. 11, Ubiquiti Inc. [NYSE:UI] — a major vendor of cloud-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as routers …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a virtual WWDC 2021 from June 7 to June 11, where iOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8, and more are expected  —  Apple has officially announced WWDC 2021.  This year, the conference will take place completely virtually starting June 7.  This marks the second year in a row that Apple …
Sebastian Pellejero / Wall Street Journal:
Dapper Labs, maker of NFT-focused NBA Top Shot, raises $305M, sources say at $2.6B valuation; investors include several pro athletes including Michael Jordan  —  Dapper Labs draws investors that include basketball legends Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant, seeking to cash in on the digital-collectibles craze
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: Snap plans to unveil new Spectacles aimed at AR developers and creators in May and has begun a years-long project to make a camera drone  —  Snap is readying a new push into hardware with a more advanced version of its Spectacles smart glasses that feature displays capable …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Arm unveils Armv9, its next gen chip architecture that adds features for security, AI, and more, as it expects ~300B Arm-based chips to ship in the next decade  —  Arm today announced Armv9, the next generation of its chip architecture.  Its predecessor, Armv8 launched a decade ago …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google has started to roll out a limited developer origin trial of FLoC, as part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome  —  Google today announced that it is rolling out Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial.
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Xiaomi announces Mi Mix Fold, its first folding phone, with an 8.01-inch 4:3 OLED display, Snapdragon 888, 5,020mAh battery, and four Harman Kardon speakers  —  The Mi Mix series returns  —  Xiaomi has resurrected its Mi Mix series with the Mi Mix Fold, the company's first commercial folding phone.
Matt Binder / Mashable:
iOS 14.5 beta seems to fix a longstanding bug affecting Safari's adult content blocking option that would block any search containing the word “Asian”  —  Do you have adult content blocked on your iPhone or iPad?  —  If so, it's likely that your iOS device is currently blocking web searches using the word “Asian.”
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Epic Games says it has filed a complaint in support of UK antitrust watchdog's ongoing investigation into Apple's alleged anti-competitive behavior  —  Epic Games today said it had filed a complaint to the UK's antitrust watchdog in support of the government department's ongoing investigation …
Jim Salter / Ars Technica:
Intel's new 11th-gen Rocket Lake-S gaming CPUs are yet another 14nm offering and don't seem to match Intel's claim of 19% performance increase over 10th-gen  —  Rocket Lake-S doesn't look like a very compelling gen-on-gen upgrade.  —  Today marks the start of retail availability …
Hamish McKenzie / Substack Blog:
Substack raises $65M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz  —  When we started Substack to build an alternative media economy that unlocks the full potential of the internet and gives more power to writers and readers, we didn't know if the model would work.  A lot of people told us that no one would pay for newsletters.
Brandon Katz / Observer:
LightShed Partners: SVOD subscribers will nearly double by 2024 to 1.25B from 650M at the end of 2020  —  Of the 11 major legacy media and tech companies that have a direct hand in Hollywood, all but one house some sort of over-the-top (OTT) streaming service.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Indian fintech startup MobiKwik is investigating after a dark web site claimed to have private info on ~100M users and “know your customer” docs of 3.5M users  —  MobiKwik said on Tuesday it was investigating claims of data breach after a website claimed to have exposed private information …
NBC News:
Filings: at least 37 charges have been filed by workers against Amazon to the NLRB since February 2020, up 3x from 2019 and 6x from 2018  —  The day after Jonathan Bailey organized a walkout over Covid-19 concerns at an Amazon warehouse in Queens, New York, he was, he said, “detained” …

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