Techmeme
March 31, 2021, 12:40 PM

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.”
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Apple is planning to announce a mixed reality headset “sometime” in the next several months, possibly at an in-person event  —  Hi everyone—it's Mark.  On Tuesday, Apple Inc. announced what will be at least its fifth virtual product launch in a row and one of its most important events …
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 …
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,” …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Sponsor of Arizona's HB2005 bill, which allows alternative payment systems in app stores, says it won't get a hearing this year after being pulled last week  —  Arizona House Bill 2005, a hotly contested piece of legislation that would have imposed developer-friendly changes to Apple …
Eric Geller / Politico:
Interviews with 15 people show CISA is underfunded, short on talent, outmatched by adversaries, and overwhelmed by the fallout from two massive cyberattacks  —  The agency that protects the U.S. from hackers is hobbled by funding woes, a talent shortage and growing pains that are jeopardizing …
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 …
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 …
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 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 …
Emily Feng / NPR:
How Wuhan's HSMC created an unusable chip factory, becoming one of six multibillion-dollar Chinese chip project failures in the last two years  —  WUHAN, China — In 2019, the U.S. sanctioned two major Chinese telecom firms, temporarily cutting them off from a vital supply of semiconductor chips …
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 …

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.
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.
Zoho:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 11/21 - What The DOJ Wants Google To Do
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 12:40 PM 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

Earlier Picks

Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Sara Fischer / Axios: