Techmeme
December 7, 2021, 9:35 PM

Top News

Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Amazon resolves the underlying issues that caused an AWS outage that started around 10:45am ET and is “working towards recovery of any impaired services”  —  Amazon says “many services have already recovered”  —  Problems with some Amazon Web Services cloud servers …
Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Delivery companies and hundreds of Amazon workers say the company's Flex and Dolphin apps for logistics and time tracking are down, halting some deliveries  —  There's a mix of frustration and joy from workers as AWS outages cause chaos with Amazon's delivery infrastructure during its busy season.
Wayne Ma / The Information:
Sources: Tim Cook brokered a secret five-year deal with China in 2016, paving the way for Apple's success by promising to invest $275B+ in the country's economy  —  Interviews and internal Apple documents provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the company made concessions to Beijing and won key legal exemptions.
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
Ubisoft will add NFT items into its games, starting with Ghost Recon Breakpoint on the Tezos blockchain, becoming the first major gaming company to do so  —  In brief  — Major game publisher Ubisoft will implement in-game NFT items into its games, starting with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
David McCabe / New York Times:
Ahead of a congressional hearing, Adam Mosseri outlines Instagram parental controls coming in March, including monitoring time spent and bulk deleting posts  —  Adam Mosseri, the head of the company, is expected to face questions from lawmakers this week about whether social media harms children.
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Twitter acquires messaging app Quill, which will shut down and delete all user data on December 11 after launching in February to challenge Slack  —  In February 9to5Mac reported on the launch of a focus-focused Slack competitor called Quill.  Today Twitter is bringing Quill under its wing …
Jamie Tarabay / Bloomberg:
Google sues two Russians it claims help run a botnet that has infected 1M+ devices and uses command-and-control server addresses stored on Bitcoin's blockchain  —  - Complaint says the two created a sophisticated ‘botnet’  — Glupteba sells stolen logins, credit cards, Google says
Bloomberg:
Crypto critic Saule Omarova, who was Biden's pick to lead the OCC, withdraws her name from consideration following Senate fights over her background  —  President Joe Biden's pick to lead a key U.S. banking regulator has withdrawn her name from consideration, according to a statement from the White House.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Hands-on with Snap Spectacles, announced in May: lightweight, bold design, and impressive AR, but overheating and a 30-minute battery is why they aren't on sale  —  Mainstream AR glasses are still years away  —  It doesn't take long to realize why Snap's first true AR glasses aren't for sale.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
The Senate confirms Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the FCC, the first female chair in the agency's history, in a 68 to 31 vote  —  She will be the first female chair in FCC history  —  On Tuesday, the Senate voted 68 to 31 to confirm Jessica Rosenworcel's re-appointment to the Federal …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Stan Chudnovsky, Meta's Messenger chief who is also leading the integration of Meta's messaging services, will leave the company, plans to stay until Q2 2022  —  The executive has been overseeing efforts to integrate the company's messaging services  —  Stan Chudnovsky, the Meta Platforms …
Axios:
Seventeen groups representing ~150 newspapers quietly filed antitrust lawsuits in the past year against Google and Meta for monopolizing the digital ads market  —  Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord begins testing Premium Memberships, letting creators monetize servers through tiered perks, make channels or servers exclusive to paying users, and more  —  You'll soon be able to subscribe directly to Discord servers  —  Discord is starting to test a new Premium Memberships feature …
Lizzy Lawrence / Protocol:
Q&A with Julien Codorniou, the outgoing head of Meta's Workplace, on expanding into enterprise services, maintaining privacy, the future of Workplace, and more  —  As a parade of executives have announced plans to leave Meta (formerly known as Facebook), employees know exactly where to look …
More: Insider
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Switzerland's federal data protection and information commissioner opens a probe into text message provider Mitto after a report alleged it surveilled users  —  Switzerland's federal data protection and information commissioner opened an investigation focusing on a company …

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 9:35 PM ET, December 7, 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

Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Ryan Browne / CNBC: