Techmeme
December 21, 2020, 12:35 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Analysis finds 24+ organizations that installed SolarWinds code, including Cisco, Intel, Nvidia, VMware, Belkin, a CA hospital, and Kent State university  —  A Wall Street Journal analysis identified at least 24 organizations that installed software laced with malicious code by Russian hackers
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 …
Andrés Arrieta / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Matt Stoller / BIG:
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 …
Margaret Harding McGill / Axios:
Congress' COVID-19 relief deal includes $7B in broadband funding, with $1.9B to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment, $3.2B to low-income families, and more  —  The coronavirus relief package deal that Congressional leaders reached Sunday includes $7 billion in funding for broadband internet access.
Zach Dorfman / Foreign Policy:
Interviews with 36+ current and former US officials describe China's strategy of analyzing vast quantities of stolen US personal data to identify CIA operatives  —  Around 2013, U.S. intelligence began noticing an alarming pattern: Undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa …
Nandita Bose / Reuters:
Sources: executives and employees at Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and others are seeking to place allies in senior roles at government agencies under Biden  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Silicon Valley is working behind the scenes to secure senior roles for tech allies in lesser-known …
Aislinn Keely / The Block:
Personal information of 270K+ customers of hardware wallet Ledger has been leaked online, including emails, home addresses, and phone numbers  —  A database containing the personal information of over 270,000 Ledger customers has been published on RaidForums, a marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing hacked information.
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Wired:
Cyberpunk 2077's developer hamstrung reviewers by forcing NDAs and sending copies just days before launch to prevent players from seeing the buggy mess  —  Video game companies are increasingly putting restrictions on what reviewers can show, widening the gap between expectations and reality.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok launches its first personalized annual recap feature, “Year on TikTok”, which highlights what sort of videos were watched the most, favorite tracks, more  —  Spotify users have Wrapped and Instagram users have their Top 9.  And now TikTok users will have their own year-in-review feature, too.
More: TikTok and 9to5Mac
Isabel Woodford / Sifted:
Study: the number of neobanks worldwide has tripled since 2017, climbing to nearly 300; in 2019, more than 70 neobanks went live  —  The number of neobanks worldwide has tripled since 2017, climbing from 100 to nearly 300 worldwide.  —  That means, over the last three years …
The Economic Times:
Pine Labs, which makes POS software and provides last-mile retail transaction tech for merchants, raises $75M-$100M at a $2B valuation  —  Pine Labs is currently India's third largest fintech startup after Paytm and PhonePe.  It counts Lone Pine Capital, Sequoia India, Temasek, Mastercard, Paypal and Actis LLP as among its investors.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
The best time to become a Zoho Partner  —  The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt.  Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
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.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:35 PM ET, December 21, 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

Pranshu Verma / New York Times:
Nico Grant / Bloomberg:
Rene Ebersole / National Geographic:

Earlier Picks

Owen Thomas / San Francisco Chronicle:
Lingling Wei / Wall Street Journal:
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
Katie Bo Williams / Defense One: