Techmeme
July 16, 2021, 12:05 PM

Top News

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 …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Automattic, owner of Tumblr, buys podcast app Pocket Casts from a public radio collective that includes NPR, which reportedly lost $800K on it last year  —  A new home for the popular podcast app  —  Pocket Casts has a new owner.  Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and recently purchased Tumblr …
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 …
Canalys:
Global smartphone shipments grew 12% YoY in Q2, with Xiaomi up 83% to take a 17% share and pushing past Apple to reach the second place for the first time ever  —  In Q2 2021, global smartphone shipments increased 12%, as vaccines rolled out around the world, and the new normal for economies and citizens started to take shape.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Paytm files for an IPO in India, looking to raise $2.2B  —  Digital payments giant Paytm, one of India's most valuable startups, plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in an initial public offering, it said in draft papers submitted to the country's market regulator on Friday.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitter rolls out auto-captions for voice tweets in 11 languages including English, Japanese, and Hindi, more than a year after launching voice tweets on iOS  —  Twitter was criticized for launching voice tweets without captions  —  Twitter is now rolling out captions for voice tweets, the company announced Thursday.
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.
Liam J. Kelly / Decrypt:
Binance is halting operations for its stock tokens offering, which launched in April and let users buy and sell tokenized stocks of popular stocks like Tesla  —  Editor's note: This article has been updated to include an announcement from Hong Kong's financial regulator.
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Reliance Retail says it has acquired a controlling stake in Indian search and discovery company Just Dial for $469M  —  Reliance Retail said on Friday it has acquired a controlling stake in 25-year-old Indian search and discovery firm Just Dial for $469 million.
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 …

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 12:05 PM ET, July 16, 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

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
Bloomberg: