Techmeme
November 20, 2020, 6:40 PM

Top News

Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
Congressional staffers say Apple is among companies trying to weaken a bill that would hold US companies accountable for using Uighur forced labor in China  —  Apple wants to water down key provisions of the bill, which would hold U.S. companies accountable for using Uighur forced labor, according to two congressional staffers
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is enticing Zoom users to Teams with new free 24-hour meetings, allowing up to 300 people to join calls via the web without an account  —  Microsoft Teams is now free to use for 24-hour video calls all in a browser  —  Microsoft is making a big push to entice fans of Zoom …
Michael del Castillo / Forbes:
Crypto analytics startup Chainalysis raises $100M Series C led by Addition at a $1B valuation, says its revenue grew by around 96% over the past year  —  A new bitcoin unicorn is about to be born.  After days of rumors flying around the cryptocurrency industry, investigation firm Chainalysis …
Scott Stein / CNET:
Apple's AR execs on how iPhones and iPads are becoming world-mapping, object-scanning tools that are laying the groundwork for the arrival of AR headsets  —  Sometime in the not-too-distant future, Apple will reportedly unveil an augmented- or mixed-reality headset.  Apple hasn't discussed any headgear yet.
Wall Street Journal:
TechCrunch:
a16z closes two new funds totaling $4.5B, focused on early and later-stage investments, bringing total assets under management to $16.5B  —  Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has closed a pair of funds totaling $4.5 billion, the firm confirmed in a blog post this morning.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Trump admin is providing only limited cybersecurity assistance to Biden's transition team, which now relies on a standard, paid Google Workspace  —  The incoming administration is working remotely, operating on a standard, paid Google network  —  WASHINGTON—When it comes …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Snap has reportedly acquired Voisey, a UK startup that lets users create short music tracks and videos using their own voice overlayed on custom instrumentals  —  Snapchat helped pioneer the use of lenses on faces in photos and videos to turn ordinary picture messages into fantastical creations …
BBC:
YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter say they will join forces with fact-checkers, governments, and researchers to tackle COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies from January  —  Three of the largest social networks have said they will join forces with fact-checkers, governments and researchers to try to come …
Peter Guest / Rest of World:
Facebook created country-specific community standards for the first time ahead of Myanmar's general election, and seemingly reduced hate speech and misinfo  —  Accused of enabling genocide, the social media giant has temporarily changed its rules in Myanmar to prevent abuse and misinformation.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Frank Konkel / Nextgov:
The CIA awards its Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract to AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM; the project's expected value is in the “tens of billions”  —  The agency has awarded a contract to bring foundational cloud services from multiple cloud service providers into the intelligence community.
More: C4ISRNET and FedScoop
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:
Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt steps down as co-CEO, leaving Vlad Tenev as sole CEO ahead of a rumored IPO  —  Robinhood, creator of the popular stock-trading app of the same name, announced on Friday that Vlad Tenev will be the company's sole chief executive, ending an arrangement …
Arielle Waldman / SearchSecurity:
CrowdStrike survey of 2,200 organizations reveals 56% were hit by ransomware at least once in the past 12 months, 27% paid the ransom at an average of ~$1.1M  —  A new survey from CrowdStrike revealed more than half of 2,200 respondents' organizations were hit with a ransomware attack at least once in the past 12 months.
Bloomberg:
Facebook responds to Apple's defense of IDFA, saying Apple is using its “dominant market position to self-preference their own data collection”  —  Apple Inc. on Thursday slammed Facebook Inc. and other internet giants for their ad-targeting practices in response to a letter questioning …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:

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More News

James Pearson / Reuters:
Michal Lev-Ram / Fortune:
Dan Primack / Axios:
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
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Abner Li / 9to5Google:
John Gruber / Daring Fireball: