Techmeme
September 5, 2021, 3:50 PM

Top News

Ryan Mac / New York Times:
Facebook apologizes after its AI recommendation feature categorized a video of Black men as “about Primates”; Facebook disabled the feature and is investigating  —  Facebook called it “an unacceptable error.”  The company has struggled with other issues related to race.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Apple made an unforced error by trying to tackle CSAM and child safety issues inside the Apple Park vacuum while adhering to its annual iOS release schedule  —  Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review.  —  Last week, we dove into the truly bizarre machinations of the NFT market.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Harvard's Willy Shih on the global chip shortage, supply chains, and why Biden's $52B for chip manufacturing may not be enough for the US to catch up to TSMC  —  Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for microchips has far exceeded supply, causing problems in every industry that relies on computers.
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Following Texas' abortion law, tech companies could face suits over providing on-demand rides to clinics, subpoenas requesting user data, and more  —  With the Supreme Court deciding not to block Texas' effective ban on abortion this week, fears have been rightly focused on the people in Texas …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Texas Right to Life whistleblower site is now using Epik for its name servers and as its domain registrar, as Digital Ocean appears to have cut off service  —  GoDaddy gave website “24 hours to move to a different provider.”  —  The Texas Right to Life group will have to find a new hosting provider …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple Watch Series 7 will be announced alongside the new iPhone, but production issues may cause the new models to ship late or in limited quantities  —  This is the free version of Power On.  If you like it, consider subscribing to Bloomberg.com — you'll receive …
New York Times:
Regulators rush to catch up with DeFi startups and crypto-backed lenders like BlockFi, which now touts $10B+ in assets, 450K+ clients, and licenses in 28 states  —  The boom in companies offering cryptocurrency loans and high-yield deposit accounts is disrupting the banking industry and leaving regulators scrambling to catch up.
Carrie Mihalcik / CNET:
#AppleToo publishes an open letter to Tim Cook, asking for transparent and fair compensation, reinvestigation of discrimination and harassment cases, and more  —  Among the requests in the open letter are transparent compensation and a reinvestigation of reports of discrimination and harassment.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Profile of Alvy Ray Smith, a Pixar co-founder who created the algorithms fundamental to animated movies and left after severe disagreements with Steve Jobs  —  Alvy Ray Smith helped invent computer animation as we know it—then got royally shafted by Steve Jobs.  Now he's got a vision for where the pixel will take us next.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Interview with Dom Hofmann on how and why he created Loot, the communities, creativity, and NFT speculation it spawned, and the future of the project  —  Loot (and Vine) creator Dom Hofmann on creating an open-source, decentralized game / financial asset / art project / metaverse (?)
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Source: Google has temporarily locked an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts, as the Taliban seeks to acquire former officials' emails  —  Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts, according to a person familiar with the matter …

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.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 3:50 PM ET, September 5, 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

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Yinka Adegoke / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks