Techmeme
December 11, 2020, 10:05 PM

Top News

Gizmodo:
Public records show school districts across the US are purchasing phone hacking tools from companies like Cellebrite to search students' personal devices  —  In May 2016, a student enrolled in a high-school in Shelbyville, Texas, consented to having his phone searched by one of the district's school resource officers.
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Oracle says it is moving its corporate headquarters from Redwood City, CA to Austin, TX and will implement “a more flexible employee work location policy”  —  - Oracle is the latest tech company to relocate from California to Austin, Texas.  — HPE announced its move to Houston earlier this month.
BuzzFeed News:
Four key Facebook staffers who dealt with hateful or violent speech have left in recent weeks, calling out leadership for lack of action in their farewell posts  —  On Wednesday, a Facebook data scientist departed the social networking company after a two-year stint, leaving a farewell note for their colleagues to ponder.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it has acquired screen-sharing social app Squad whose team will join Twitter, and it will shut down the app tomorrow  —  Today, Twitter announced that it is acquiring Squad and that the team from the screen-sharing social app will be joining Twitter's ranks.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Some iPhone users say iOS 14 is not showing notifications when receiving SMS texts and iMessages  —  An iOS 14 bug doesn't show notifications when some new messages arrive  —  If you've noticed that you're receiving SMS texts and iMessages from people but aren't getting any notifications about them, you're not alone.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Kyunghee Park / Bloomberg:
Hyundai buys an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in a deal that values the robot company at $1.1B  —  - SoftBank, affiliates to retain 20% interest in U.S. company  — South Korean group develops robots for practical use  —  Hyundai Motor Group agreed to buy a controlling stake …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Filing: California is seeking to join the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against Google, making it the first Democratic state to request to join 11 GOP AGs in the suit  —  - California is seeking to join the Justice Department in its antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to a court filing the state submitted on Friday.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Text inside Twitter's app code suggests that live broadcasting app Periscope may get shut down  —  Twitter has been doubling down on video services within its app, building out Twitter Live and recently launching Fleets so that users can share more moving media alongside their pithy 180-word observations, links and still photos.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
AirPods Max sound great and are very well made, but they're expensive, heavy, and make Apple TV's lack of support for spatial audio that much more glaring  —  What a fascinating product Apple's new AirPods Max are.  At $550, they are indisputably expensive, and at 385 grams, they are undeniably heavy.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Sources: Israeli surveillance vendors like Bsightful, backed by the US public company Verint, hook into ad exchange systems to siphon app location data  —  This year has seen a rush amongst government snoops for a new and sometimes contentious data set: location data grabbed by smartphone popular apps.
New York Times:
Legal experts say FTC and state AGs will find it challenging to prove their allegations against Facebook because the standards of proof are formidable  —  The U.S. and states cases against the social network are far from a slam dunk because the standards of proof are formidable.
Washington Post:

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More News

Kayleigh Barber / Digiday:
Yunan Zhang / The Information:

Earlier Picks

Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Megan Rose Dickey / TechCrunch:
The Daily Beast:
Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge: