Techmeme
May 21, 2021, 10:10 PM

Top News

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
In his Epic v. Apple trial testimony, Tim Cook offered a carefully tended ignorance that left many of the lawsuit's key questions unanswered, or unanswerable  —  Apple CEO Tim Cook took his first turn in the witness chair this morning in what is probably the most anticipated testimony of the Epic v. Apple antitrust case.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says the company is happy to pay Apple's 30% IAP commission as “Snapchat wouldn't exist without the iPhone”  —  - Snap CEO Evan Spiegel on Friday said the social media company is happy to pay Apple's 30% commission rate on in-app transactions.
The Information:
Sources: Netflix is looking to hire an executive to oversee an expansion into video games, as it considers options including an Apple Arcade-like games bundle  —  Netflix is looking to hire an executive to oversee an expansion into videogames, a sign it is stepping up its efforts …
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Leaked emails show that Citizen app is testing an on-demand private security service that will respond to “incidents” as requested by app users  —  Citizen would deploy private security forces at the request of app users, according to documents and sources.  —  Joseph Cox
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Spotify adds offline playback for playlists, albums, and podcasts on Apple Watch for Premium subscribers; available on Watch Series 3 running WatchOS 6 and up  —  The announcement comes a few days after a similar feature was announced for Wear devices  —  Spotify is adding the ability …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Snap has agreed to acquire WaveOptics, the supplier of the AR displays used in its new Spectacles glasses, for more than $500M  —  WaveOptics made the display in Snap's new Spectacles glasses  —  Snap has agreed to acquire WaveOptics, the supplier of the augmented reality displays that power …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Twitter will soon let US users with 1,000+ followers who've hosted three Spaces in the past 30 days apply to host Ticketed Spaces, with Twitter taking a 20% cut  —  After Apple and Google's cut  —  Twitter's getting ready for the launch of its Ticketed Spaces feature, and today …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon is shutting down its standalone Prime Now app and website by the end of the year and moving the fast delivery service to the Amazon app and website  —  - Amazon will discontinue its standalone Prime Now app and website by the end of this year, the company announced Friday.
Engadget:
Facebook's wav2vec Unsupervised, a way to build speech recognition systems that require no transcribed data, may bring automatic translations to more countries  —  Big Tech's AI machinery.  The tech powers the digital assistants on our  —  phones, in  —  cars and in the  —  smart speakers in our homes.
New York Times:
Biden administration says it will partner with popular dating apps including Tinder, OkCupid, Hinge, BLK, and Chispa to promote vaccinations against COVID-19  —  With a non-zero amount of awkwardness, the Biden administration on Friday highlighted a new plan to encourage more people to get vaccinated …

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:
Mon. 11/25 - Return Of The Vita?
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 10:10 PM ET, May 21, 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

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Parmy Olson / Wall Street Journal:

Earlier Picks

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
The Verge: