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.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
The Future of Addictive Design + Going Deep at DeepMind + HatGPT
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Go touch some grass (but don't tweet about it)
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.
Lenny's Podcast:
An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
The future of AI might be on your finger
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Axiom's Carina Hong: Solving Math's Hardest Problems With AI, And AI's Problems With Math
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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Earlier Picks

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