Techmeme
December 20, 2020, 10:45 PM

Top News

Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Profile of Dina Srinivasan, who is helping Texas AG's antitrust investigation of Google after her treatises on Facebook and Google reframed antitrust thinking  —  Regulators are relying on insiders like Dina Srinivasan, who left her digital ad job after concluding that “Facebook and Google …
More: Slate.  Tweets: @ashkan, @fboversight, @lutherlowe, and @daiwaka
Andrés Arrieta / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Facebook is attacking privacy with its anti-Apple campaign and has locked SMBs into a surveillance-powered advertising model that's invasive of customers  —  Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses.  This is a laughable attempt from Facebook …
Matt Stoller / BIG:
Google and Facebook may continue predatory behavior for years as antitrust cases play out, which can be deterred by filing criminal charges against their execs  —  Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai need to be indicted.  —  1 hr ago  —  Welcome to BIG, a newsletter about the politics of monopoly and finance.
The Citizen Lab:
Citizen Lab: NSO's zero-day, zero-click exploit chain, active in at least iOS 13.5.1, was used to hack ~36 Al Jazeera reporters via iMessage in summer of 2020  —  Summary & Key Findings  — In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group's Pegasus spyware …
Microsoft Security:
Microsoft details the Solorigate DLL file that was used to install a backdoor in SolarWinds Orion and reveals it discovered additional malware affecting Orion  —  - Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team  — Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)  —  We, along with the security industry …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Wall Street Journal:
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
Apple has closed nearly 100 stores globally since December 14, including in London, California, and Tennessee, as COVID-19 cases surge  —  New COVID-19 restrictions and worsening outbreaks have compelled Apple to temporarily close nearly one fifth of its retail stores during one of the busiest shopping weeks of the holiday season.
Lingling Wei / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: in an early November meeting, Jack Ma offered concessions to Chinese regulators, including handing over parts of Ant Group if “the country needs it”  —  Trying to salvage his relationship with regulators in a Nov. 2 meeting, the Chinese billionaire said he was ready to do what the country needed
Katie Bo Williams / Defense One:
WH officials propose ending the “dual-hat” leadership arrangement of NSA and Cyber Command, renewing debate over splitting up the agencies amid recent attacks  —  An end to the “dual hat” arrangement has been debated for years — but the timing raises questions.
Jacob Knutson / Axios:
Trump downplayed the massive cyberattack on the US government, claiming that China may be responsible and the “Fake News Media” is exaggerating its extent  —  President Trump downplayed a massive cyberattack on U.S. government departments and agencies and private companies on Twitter Saturday …
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Associated Press:
New York Times:
How a years-long effort to create Cyberpunk 2077, marred by infighting, incompetence, and poor planning, brought the Polish studio CD Projekt Red to its knees  —  Nearly a decade of hype led to a troubled release riddled with glitches, a livid fan base, refunds for potentially millions of players and a possible class-action lawsuit.
Ilya Khrennikov / Bloomberg:
JetBrains, maker of the language Kotlin, which never raised any VC funding is now valued at an estimated $7B, and says it will have $200M in revenue this year  —  - Google picked JetBrains for key coding language for Android  — Founders shunned VCs, bootstrapped to billion-dollar fortunes

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Cheap code, precious trust: Code modernization at scale  —  The promise—and challenges—of agentic software engineering, from large-scale code migration to language modernization.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Your Linkthread page just leveled up!  Better analytics, bolder designs, bigger teams.  —  Since we launched Linkthread in March 2025, over 10,000 businesses have signed up to make their one bio link work harder.
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

Invest Like the Best:
Cliff Sosin - Owning the Complements to Intelligence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Big Technology Podcast:
Emergency Pod: Anthropic's S-1 IPO Filing — With Dan Primack
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Lubricate the Inside of the Hinge', With Joanna Stern
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.
Lenny's Podcast:
An 86-minute guide to finding PMF | Rob Snyder (Author, The Power of Pull)
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.
Machine Gods:
Fired OpenAI Safety Researchers Speak Out + We Look Inside Pandora's Box
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Parking Startup That Swallowed A 100-Year-Old Giant | Metropolis CEO Alex Israel
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:45 PM ET, December 20, 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

Li Jin / Li's Newsletter:

Earlier Picks

ProPublica:
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters: