Techmeme
July 23, 2021, 12:10 PM

Top News

James Vincent / The Verge:
Alphabet announces Intrinsic, a new company to build software for industrial robots, as part of its “other bets” that includes Waymo, Wing, and Verily  —  Intrinsic is one of Alphabet's other bets, like Waymo and Wing  —  Google's parent-company Alphabet has a birth to announce …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Researchers: Apple and Google should provide more access to iOS and Android system internals to help catch more attacks by Pegasus-like spyware in real time  —  Amnesty International sheds alarming light on an NSO Group surveillance tool—and the gaps in Apple and Google's defenses.
Kent Duke / Android Police:
Google is rolling out a fix for a bug in Chrome OS 91, apparently caused by a single typo, which locked Chromebook owners out of devices upon restarting  —  Google can't seem to catch a break when it comes to Chrome OS 91.  First we saw many users reporting their devices using an egregious amount …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Twitter beats with Q2 revenue of $1.19B, up 74% YoY, vs $1.07B est., ad revenue of $1.05B, up 87% YoY, and mDAUs of 206M, up 11% YoY  —  - Twitter's revenue growth accelerated and surpassed analysts' expectations.  — The social-media company introduced its first subscription service in the quarter.
Jay Greene / Washington Post:
Amazon says it has opened an investigation into AWS' culture after a popular internal petition criticized it for discrimination against women and others  —  The probe comes as more than 550 workers in a cloud-computing unit supported a petition, citing “an underlying culture of systemic discrimination, harassment, bullying and bias.”
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple MagSafe Battery Pack review: well integrated with iOS and can charge Qi devices, like AirPods, but doesn't provide full iPhone 12 charge and is expensive  —  Apple's new MagSafe Battery Pack is a white rectangle you can stick to the back of an iPhone 12 to charge it.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Facebook brings its cloud gaming service to iPhones and iPads through a progressive web app, with games using Facebook Pay to accept in-game purchases  —  But will people know how to find it?  —  Starting Friday, Facebook is bringing its nascent cloud gaming service to iPhones and iPads through …
More: MacRumors and iMore
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Paystand, which is building an Ethereum blockchain-based service to enable B2B payments with zero fees, raises $50M Series C, bringing its total raised to $85M  —  It's pretty easy for individuals to send money back and forth, and there are lots of cash apps from which to choose.
More: Finextra
Matthew Gault / VICE:
Old stories on news sites including WaPo are displaying embedded porn videos after the domain for the defunct video service Vidme was bought by a porn company  —  Stories on major news sites like ‘The Washington Post,’ and ‘New York Magazine’ currently have porn embedded in them.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Two Democratic senators introduce a bill to strip away social media platforms' Section 230 liability shield if they amplify harmful public health misinformation  —  A new bill would make Facebook liable for misinformation  —  As coronavirus cases rise in unvaccinated populations …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Snap reports Q2 revenue of $982M, up 116% YoY, DAUs up 23% YoY to 293M, as its net loss shrinks 53% YoY to $152M; stock is up 22%+  —  - Snap on Thursday reported its second-quarter earnings, beating expectations across the board for earnings, revenue and user growth.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: EU antitrust regulators are likely to launch an investigation into Facebook's acquisition of Kustomer after an initial review ends next month  —  EU antitrust regulators are likely to kick off a full-scale investigation into Facebook's (FB.O) acquisition of U.S. customer service startup Kustomer …
More: Slashdot
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Twitter is testing a way to downvote replies on iOS to understand the types of replies users find relevant to a conversation; downvotes won't be public  —  Last year, Twitter's chief product officer Kayvon Beykpour confirmed that the social network was “exploring” the idea of adding a dislike button to the app.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Kaseya says it obtained a universal decryptor for the REvil ransomware and is helping customers recover their data; it is unclear if Kaseya paid the ransom  —  Remote management software vendor Kaseya said today it obtained a universal decryptor for the REvil ransomware and is now in the process …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Intel reports Q2 revenue of $18.5B, up 2% YoY, vs. $17.8B est., Data Center Group revenue of $6.5B, down 9% YoY, while PC unit sales were up 33% YoY  —  - Intel reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday in CEO Pat Gelsinger's second earnings report at the helm of the American chip giant.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Several major websites and services, including Amazon, Steam, and Airbnb, were down for about an hour on Thursday due to issues with Akamai's Edge DNS service  —  Update 12:48 p.m. ET: Akamai says it has implemented a fix for the issue.  “We have implemented a fix for this issue …

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Earlier Picks

Michael Corkery / New York Times:
Nature:
James Vincent / The Verge: