Techmeme
November 15, 2020, 9:30 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
A look at Parler, which is backed by Rebekah Mercer, has doubled its user base to 10M in a week, but unlike Facebook and Twitter, leaves moderation to users  —  The libertarian-minded platform aims to challenge tech giants through a focus on free speech; surge in users since the election
Phil Vachon / Security Embedded:
A deep dive into OCSP responder Apple uses to verify integrity of Mac apps, which is a critical part of macOS security, but could benefit from more transparency  —  On November 12, 2020 Apple released macOS Big Sur.  In the hours after the release went live, somewhere in Apple's infrastructure …
Max Weinbach / Android Police:
Cyrus Farivar / NBC News:
Report: most major tech companies in Silicon Valley have kept paying their thousands of unionized blue-collar workers for now, but future remains uncertain  —  Nora Morales, 57, an overnight janitor at Google's main campus in Mountain View, California, knows better than anyone else how empty Silicon Valley's offices have become.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sales readiness service MindTickle raises $100M in a round of debt and equity led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2; source: MindTickle is now valued at ~$500M  —  MindTickle, a startup that is helping hundreds of small and large firms improve their sales through its eponymous sales readiness platform …
Whitney Kimball / Gizmodo:
Airbnb says 1.4M users have rejected its non-discrimination agreement, foregoing their use of the platform, since it implemented the policy in 2016  —  In the four years since it implemented an agreement to promote equitable treatment of its users, Airbnb claims that 1.4 million individuals …
Frank McShan / MacRumors:
Results uploaded to Geekbench show that Apple Silicon M1 scores higher than every previous Mac in the single core benchmark, even when the M1 is emulating x86  —  The first native benchmarks of Apple's M1 chip appeared on the Geekbench site last week showing impressive native performance.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Researchers: flaws in Bumble exposed info of ~95M Bumble users, including Facebook data of some, and it took over 200 days after being notified to fix the bug  —  Bumble prides itself on being one of the more ethically-minded dating apps.  But is it doing enough to protect the private data of its 95 million users?
FinSMEs:
Thoughtexchange, which hosts large group conversations while shielding participants' identities to reduce gender and ethnicity biases, raises $34M Series B  —  Thoughtexchange, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based advanced platform for scaling conversations, received an investment from HarbourVest Partners.
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Qualcomm has received a US license to sell some 4G smartphone chips to Huawei  —  (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc on Friday received a license from the U.S. government to sell 4G mobile phone chips to China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, an exemption to U.S. trade restrictions imposed amid rising tensions with China.
Owen Hughes / TechRepublic:
Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, who first began work on the language in 1979 and still remains very much involved in its development  —  Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it remains one of the most widely used programming languages today.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Meta & Microsoft's Claude Slowdown, His Agent Leaked His Banking Info, Don't Bully Your AI
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
 

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Earlier Picks

Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: