Techmeme
December 26, 2020, 11:40 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting iCloud Account and Sign In services  —  Apple's system status webpage indicates that the company has resolved an outage affecting “iCloud Account and Sign In” services.
Julia Alexander / The Verge:
2020 has been the beginning of major streaming exclusivity plays, forcing users to pay for four or five services as big studios prioritize their own platforms  —  End-of-year turnover is always rough, and it's going to get worse  —  Two of the biggest movies people want to talk about this week …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
2020 political campaigns secured emails with physical security keys from a nonprofit working with Google and Microsoft; source says Biden's campaign used keys  —  - Keys from the likes of Google and Yubico became a hit among campaign workers this year, including in Joe Biden's campaign.
Will Knight / Wired:
David Silver, a principal research scientist at DeepMind, on AlphaGo, AlphaZero, and MuZero, applying reinforcement learning to real world problems, and more  —  David Silver of DeepMind, who helped create the program that defeated a Go champion, thinks rewards are central to how machines—and humans—acquire knowledge.
Sarah Fallon / Wired:
Profile of Ray Holt, who in the 1960s jointly developed the F-14 Tomcat's Central Air Data Computer, considered by some to be the first microprocessor  —  In a weird way, I've known Ray Holt all my life, but I never knew what he had accomplished—or how his inventions wove their way into my own family.
Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft's patch for a zero-day privilege escalation Windows bug in June did not fix the vulnerability, which could still be exploited with some adjustments  —  Back in June, Microsoft released a fix for a vulnerability in the Windows operating system that enabled attackers to increase …
Ankit Malhotra / Counterpoint Research:
With 31% market share, MediaTek becomes the biggest smartphone SoC vendor globally in Q3, surpassing Qualcomm, which remains the largest 5G chipset vendor  —  - More than 100 million smartphones were sold globally with MediaTek chipsets in Q3 2020.  — Qualcomm led the market for 5G chipsets in Q3 2020.
Steven Overly / Politico:
Facebook critics say a general animosity toward Facebook in Washington may push the Biden administration into taking more proactive measures against the company  —  Joe Biden has said he's no fan of Facebook.  Now he has an opportunity to show it as he assumes landmark policy and legal battles against the company.
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
As streaming platforms like Netflix have grown, political films they used to seek out, like The Dissident, on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, are being shunned  —  Bryan Fogel's examination of the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi had trouble finding a home among the companies …

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More News

Sara Morrison / Vox:
Yuan Yang / Financial Times:
Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Dipayan Ghosh / Wired:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet: