Techmeme
July 14, 2021, 4:25 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple and Goldman Sachs are working on a “buy now, pay later” service to let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments, to rival Affirm  —  - Service to let users pay off any Apple Pay purchase over time  — Fresh partnership with Apple could boost Goldman consumer push
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a $99 MagSafe Battery Pack for the iPhone 12 lineup, with a total capacity of 1460mAh, arriving July 19  —  Apple today released the MagSafe Battery Pack accessory for iPhone 12 models.  Many months after the iPhone 12 series was unveiled, Apple has quietly released …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Inside the World Wide Web Consortium as members debate the future of online privacy, with browsers' engineers often at odds with companies that rely on tracking  —  James Rosewell could see his company's future was in jeopardy.  —  It was January 2020, and Google had just announced key details …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
REvil's infrastructure and websites are offline, including its data leak sites, less than two weeks after attacking 1,500+ businesses with ransomware via Kaseya  —  The infrastructure and websites for the REvil ransomware operation have mysteriously gone offline as of last night.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
The current version of Apple's Weather app won't show 69 degrees, rounding a degree, potentially due to sourcing data in Celsius and converting to Fahrenheit  —  It's not so nice  —  If you're an iPhone user, the weather is always a particularly nice 70 degrees.  Or 68 degrees.
Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook is rolling out the ability for Group administrators to designate “group experts”, partly in an effort to help Facebook combat misinformation  —  The social network has been trying to combat misinformation by elevating authoritative sources.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has asked suppliers to build up to 90M next-generation iPhones this year, up 20% YoY; this year's update will be more incremental than iPhone 12  —  - Company targets 90 million shipments of this year's new models  — Iterative iPhone upgrade to boost chips, cameras and displays
The Information:
In April, Amazon acquired over a dozen staff from Facebook to boost its own low earth orbit satellite internet efforts; Amazon paid Facebook to seal agreement  —  Amazon has acquired a team of more than a dozen wireless internet experts from Facebook in an effort to boost its multibillion-dollar effort …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Microsoft says the attacks targeting SolarWinds Serv-U software with a now-patched RCE exploit are the work of Chinese hacking group DEV-0322  —  Microsoft said today that the recent wave of attacks that have targeted SolarWinds file transfer servers are the work of a Chinese hacking group …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Discord buys Sentropy, which emerged from stealth last summer with AI-powered moderation software to fight online abuse and $13M in funding  —  The online chat platform Discord is buying Sentropy, a company that makes AI-powered software to detect and remove online harassment and hate.
Telegraph:
Excerpt from An Ugly Truth: from Jan. 2014 to Aug. 2015, Facebook fired 52 staffers for exploiting access to user data, prompting an overhaul of data governance  —  In an exclusive extract, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang reveal how an ethos of openness meant private information could be misused
New York Times:
Two GOP lawmakers are pointing to previously unreleased emails to allege that Amazon unfairly used its influence in competing for Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract  —  Newly released emails show particular praise of Amazon among top Defense Department officials during the Trump administration …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Microsoft fixes 13 critical flaws, four of which are under active attack, and updates a fix for the “PrintNightmare” RCE flaw impacting Windows Print Spooler  —  Microsoft today released updates to patch at least 116 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software.
Shannon Vavra / The Daily Beast:
Bitdefender says hackers behind TrickBot botnet, which was disrupted by US Cyber Command and Microsoft last year, have quietly rebuilt much of their operations  —  U.S. Cyber Command and Microsoft, among others, launched operations on the eve of the election meant to hobble a Russian-speaking hacking group.
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Google will now take a 15% cut on the first $3M in sales for “newly signed games” on Stadia from October through the end of 2023  —  Platform will take 15 percent cut on first $3 million in sales for new titles.  —  As part of a Stadia keynote presentation today …
Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg:
France fines Google $593M for failing to comply with a 2020 order to negotiate in good faith with publishers for displaying article snippets in Google News  —  - Tech giant penalized for not agreeing deal with publishers  — Fine is the second biggest French antitrust penalty so far

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