Techmeme
July 15, 2021, 10:00 PM

Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Valve announces Steam Deck, its long-rumored Switch-like handheld gaming device with a 7" touchscreen display, available in December from $399  —  It starts at $399  —  Valve just announced the Steam Deck, its long-rumored Switch-like handheld gaming device.  It will begin shipping in December.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Microsoft and Citizen Lab say government hackers from several countries have used spyware from Israeli vendor Candiru that uses two 0-day exploits in Windows  —  Microsoft and Citizen Lab found a new kind of spyware made by the mysterious Israeli vendor Candiru, and targeting someone in Europe based on their political beliefs.
David Priest / CNET:
Facebook Messenger adds Soundmojis, which add audible expressions to emoji, accessible through a loudspeaker icon  —  Messenger chats are about to get louder. … Facebook on Thursday launched “Soundmojis” for its Messenger app.  The new feature adds the audible expressions to emoji …
Dave Gershgorn / The Verge:
The maker of a new documentary about Anthony Bourdain says he used AI to re-create Bourdain's voice and synthesized the audio of three quotes from the TV host  —  ‘We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later’  —  In a new documentary, Roadrunner, about the life and tragic death …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
Some tech workers who quit the Bay Area during the pandemic are trickling back, as Twitter reopens its SF HQ and, along with Google, plans to expand in the area  —  Critics said the pandemic would make the industry flee San Francisco and its southern neighbor, Silicon Valley.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Intel is exploring a deal to buy GlobalFoundries, valuing the company at about $30B; GlobalFoundries itself says it isn't aware of any talks  —  GlobalFoundries, owned by an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government, has been planning an IPO  —  Intel Corp. is exploring a deal …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Dorsey says Square is creating a new business line with the aim of helping devs build decentralized financial services products, primarily focused on Bitcoin  —  Square Inc. is creating a new business line to help developers build financial services products focused on Bitcoin …
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
White House says it is alerting Facebook about posts that spread COVID-19 misinfo; US surgeon general calls on social media companies to tackle health misinfo  —  As the rate of Covid-19 vaccination slows and cases rise again, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on tech platforms …
Wall Street Journal:
TSMC says it expects shortage of chips used in cars to start easing in the next few months but broader semiconductor shortage could persist until 2022  —  A dearth of semiconductors has stymied manufacturing activity in the auto industry  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. …
Frank Bajak / Associated Press:
US announces anti-ransomware measures, including rewards of up to $10M for information about foreign state-sanctioned hackers targeting critical infrastructure  —  BOSTON (AP) — The State Department will offer rewards up to $10 million for information leading to the identification …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Facebook says it stopped a campaign by Iranian hackers, targeting about 200 defense and aerospace personnel, primarily from the US, using fake online personas  —  Social media group says fake online personas were created to trick victims into clicking malicious links
Jennifer Broxmeyer / About Facebook:
Facebook publishes its first quarterly Oversight Board update, noting it fully or partially implemented 14 of 18 board recommendations across 6 cases in Q1 2021  —  When we launched the Oversight Board, we committed to consider and transparently respond to all of the board's recommendations.
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
PayPal increases weekly cryptocurrency purchase limit fivefold to $100,000 and scraps its annual purchase limit of $50,000  —  - PayPal users can now buy $100,000 of bitcoin and other digital assets per week, up from a previous limit of $20,000.  — PayPal is also scrapping its annual purchase limit of $50,000.
Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review:
Facebook discontinues a project to build an interface that uses brain signals to type, will instead focus on a wrist controller for VR that reads muscle signals  —  The spring of 2017 may be remembered as the coming-out party for Big Tech's campaign to get inside your head.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Revolut raises $800M Series E from SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global at a valuation of $33B; Revolut was last valued at $5.5B in 2020  —  The fintech funding continues to roll in at a rapid pace, a result of the huge shift underway in how consumers spend and manage their money.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Scribd is in talks to go public as soon as this year, via an IPO in Q4 or through a merger with a SPAC, and could be valued at about $1B  —  Scribd Inc., an online platform for e-books, podcasts and audio books, is in discussions to go public as soon as this year, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Tweets: @katie_roof

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:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 10:00 PM ET, July 15, 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

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Alex Heath / The Verge: