Techmeme
December 15, 2020, 10:50 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 …
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
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.
Reuters:
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
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.
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
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 …
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 …
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.
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
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Ireland's Data Protection Commission fines Twitter €450K for failing to promptly declare and document a data breach, in the DPC's 1st cross-border GDPR decision  —  Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has issued Twitter with a fine of €450,000 (~$547k) for failing …

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Build vs Buy Embedded Analytics: The Decision That Defines Your Product Roadmap  —  Every SaaS product team eventually hits the analytics wall.  Your customers want insights inside your app.  Your roadmap has no room to spare.
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

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Apple at 50', With John Siracusa
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI President Greg Brockman: AI Self-Improvement, The Superapp Bet, Path To AGI, Scaling Compute
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brad Lightcap from OpenAI
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Why We Need to Pay Attention to Elon Musk Again
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.
Cheeky Pint:
Compliance at scale and why TAM is a distraction with Christina Cacioppo of Vanta
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 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

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Theodore Schleifer / Vox:
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Fortune:

Earlier Picks

Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Jason Nelson / Decrypt:
Financial Times: