Techmeme
December 15, 2020, 11:50 PM

Top News

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft is rolling out native M1 support for many Microsoft 365 for Mac apps, iCloud account integration in Outlook, and updated collaboration capabilities  —  Microsoft's new ‘Universal’ Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote apps for Mac will work on both Apple's M1 Arm silicon and Intel processors.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Mozilla releases Firefox 84 with native support for Apple M1 Macs, saying the browser launches over 2.5 times faster and web apps are now twice as responsive  —  Mozilla today released Firefox version 84 with native support for Apple Silicon Macs with the M1 chip, touting …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Sources: Microsoft and industry partners seize key command and control domain used in SolarWinds hack  —  By seizing the domain, Microsoft and its partners hope to identify all victims, but are also preventing attackers from escalating intrusions in currently infected networks.
Washington Post:
SolarWinds' top investors Silver Lake and Thoma Bravo sold a combined $286M worth of stock in the company on Dec. 7, six days before the hack was made public  —  The timing of the trades raises questions about whether major shareholders used inside information to avoid stark losses after the attack.
Periscope:
Twitter says it will discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021, saying it's brought most of the core capabilities of Periscope into Twitter  —  Today, we're sharing that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021.
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
EU proposes two bills governing tech giants, focused on illegal content and anticompetitive behavior, to empower regulators to levy large fines or break them up  —  Proposed bills would be the bloc's most ambitious internet laws since GDPR  —  European officials want new powers …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook is building a video product called Super that will let people pay content creators or celebrities to interact with them during a live broadcast  —  - New product ‘Super’ is still being tested at social network  — Facebook is developing more video features during the pandemic
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
Facebook is working on an AI tool called TLDR, which would summarize articles in bullet points and which was announced in an end-of-year, company-wide meeting  —  Facebook told employees on Tuesday that it's developing a tool to summarize news articles so users won't have to read them …
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
Facebook says people linked to France's military used fake accounts to meddle in African politics, tangling with similar efforts by Russia's IRA in some nations  —  It's the first time Facebook has identified people affiliated with a Western government for sanction
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Photos expands Memories, adding new collage designs and 3D Cinematic photos that simulate depth in a scene by adding a smooth panning effect  —  Google Photos is rolling out a series of updates to its Memories feature, which surfaces your best photos from years past.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Neverware, which helps schools and enterprises resurrect old PCs with its Chromium-based CloudReady OS, gets acquired by Google, which invested in its Series B  —  Neverware lets you turn old PCs and Macs into Chromebook-esque devices through its CloudReady OS.
The Verge:
Google has restored service after a significant number of Gmail users saw “error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior” for a few hours  —  Stadia was experiencing issues, too  —  Google says that a “significant subset” of Gmail users ran into errors with the service Tuesday afternoon.
Joseph Menn / Reuters:
Facebook will shift its UK users into user agreements with its HQ in California, instead of its Irish unit, moving them out of reach of EU's privacy laws  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will shift all its users in the United Kingdom into user agreements with the corporate headquarters …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Facebook will allow ads targeting Georgia voters about the Jan. 5 runoffs, starting at 9am PT on Dec. 16, even as its broader political ad ban remains  —  Facebook said Tuesday it will begin letting advertisers run ads targeting Georgia voters about the state's Jan. 5 runoff elections …
Megan Graham / CNBC:
The ad industry is bracing for Apple's privacy-focused IDFA changes and attempting to adapt with new targeting methods  —  - Apple is making a huge change to settings on users' iPhones in the name of privacy, and it will fundamentally change mobile advertising on those devices.
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple plans to produce up to 96M iPhones for H1 2021, a nearly 30% YoY increase, and is also working on a new Apple TV for next year  —  Robust orders come as smartphone industry faces severe parts shortages  —  TAIPEI — Apple plans to produce up to 96 million iPhones for the first half of 2021 …
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Facebook and Twitter represent v1 of social networking, a bad copy of the analog world, whereas v2 is something unique to digital and a lot more promising  —  It's a rather motley crew.  One is a nurse, another a lawyer, a third an investment adviser.  There are three programmers, a soldier, and a data scientist.
Bloomberg:
Twitter says it has signed a multiyear deal to use AWS to power Twitter timelines, shifting away from its own infrastructure  —  - Deal may help speed service in certain parts of the world  — Twitter also relies on its own data centers and Google's cloud

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Environmental impact of remote support: Reducing carbon footprints in IT  —  Information technology is essential for powering core business processes and facilitating communication.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Magatte Wade, Unlocking Prosperity in Africa (#53)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 04/17 - Copilots Or The Biggest Model Wins? The Competing AI Visions.
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 11:50 PM ET, December 15, 2020.

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

Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Fortune:

Earlier Picks

Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Jason Nelson / Decrypt:
Financial Times: