Techmeme
March 31, 2021, 10:40 AM

Top News

Nick Clegg / Medium:
Nick Clegg defends Facebook, saying it is not in the company's interest, financially or reputationally, to push users towards ever more extreme content  —  In  —  a recent article for The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance compared Facebook to a Doomsday Machine: “a device built with the sole purpose of destroying all human life.”
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google is rolling out FLoC, its alternative to third-party cookies and a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial  —  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.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Study: Android and iOS transmit telemetry even when devices are idle or users opt out; Google collects 20x more data from Android than Apple from iOS  —  Academic research published last week looked at the telemetry traffic sent by modern iOS and Android devices back to Apple and Google servers …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Deliveroo drops by as much as 30% on its LSE debut, after pricing shares at £3.90, valuing it at around £5.6B; poor debut likely due to labor practice issues  —  Update: It seems that the market is volatile indeed.  After pricing its shares at the lower end of the range …
Ken Klippenstein / The Intercept:
Leaked doc sheds light on “Veritas”, an Amazon FC Ambassador program conceived in 2018 that sought to train employees to defend Amazon and Bezos on social media  —  Amazon's small Twitter army of “ambassadors” was quietly conceived in 2018 under the codename “Veritas,” …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn confirms it's working on a Clubhouse rival and will begin beta testing soon, but doesn't have an exact timeframe for its launch  —  Clubhouse's list of competitors is growing.  LinkedIn has now confirmed it's also testing a social audio experience in its app which would allow creators …
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple leads $50M Series B in music distributor UnitedMasters, with a16z and Alphabet participating; UnitedMasters enters a strategic partnership with Apple  —  Independent music distribution platform and tool factory UnitedMasters has raised a $50M series B round led by Apple.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Biden announces $2T American Jobs Plan focused on improving US infrastructure, with $100B allocated for high-speed broadband access over eight years  —  It sets aside $100 billion for the effort  —  President Biden plans to announce a sweeping infrastructure plan Wednesday that includes $100 billion …
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Huawei reports 2020 revenue of $136.7B, up 3.8% YoY but slower than the 19%+ growth it saw in 2019, and net profit of $9.9B, up 3.2% YoY  —  - Huawei's revenue for 2020 totaled 891.4 billion yuan ($136.7 billion), a 3.8% year-on-year rise in yuan terms.  That was slower than the more than 19% revenue growth Huawei saw in 2019.
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
User says ~$600K of bitcoin was stolen after using a fake app for cryptocurrency hardware wallet Trezor downloaded from the App Store; app was rated five stars  —  Recent scams show there are holes in Apple's safety net  —  Phillipe Christodoulou wanted to check his bitcoin balance last month …
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 …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Manticore Games, a Roblox-like platform to build and play games using Epic's Unreal Engine, raises $100M Series C led by XN Ventures  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Manticore Games has raised $100 million for user-generated games in the …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Sources: Google plans to release “Pixel Buds A” in 2021, which will almost be visually indistinguishable from current Buds and offered in white and green colors  —  For a few years now, Google has offered affordable variants of its Pixel phones with the Pixel 3a and Pixel 4a.
Politico:
Sources: suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of State Department officials' emails last year; the classified network doesn't appear to have been accessed  —  Suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of State Department officials' emails last year, according to two Congressional sources familiar …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Striim, which offers cloud integration, edge processing, and streaming analytics services, raises $50M Series C, bringing its total raised to $108M+  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Striim, a startup specializing in streaming data integration …
Craig Trudell / Bloomberg:
IHS Markit: global chip shortage and Texas winter storm likely cost carmakers production of about 1.3M vehicles this quarter  —  The global shortage of semiconductors and winter storm that devastated Texas last month probably cost carmakers production of about 1.3 million vehicles this quarter, according to IHS Markit.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Windfall, which is developing an AI-based service to help nonprofits engage donors, raises $21M Series A, bringing its total raised to $30M  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Windfall, a startup developing an AI platform …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Productiv, which helps businesses manage SaaS apps, raises $45M Series C, bringing its total raised to $73M  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Productiv, a platform for aggregating real-time engagement data and insights for apps and management …
More: FinSMEs

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
Introducing AI Forms: Create optimized forms with AI in Zoho Forms  —  The future of form creation isn't coming, it's here.  Forget everything you thought you knew about building online forms.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:40 AM ET, March 31, 2021.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Eric Geller / Politico:

Earlier Picks

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sara Fischer / Axios: