Techmeme
January 18, 2021, 9:40 AM

Top News

Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
GitHub apologizes to the employee it fired for using the term “Nazis” on January 6, offers him his job back, and says the company's head of HR has resigned  —  The company is offering the employee his job back  —  GitHub is admitting that a Jewish employee was fired in error and is offering him his job back.
Reuters:
Sources: in a flurry of parting actions against China, Trump's admin has notified Huawei suppliers including Intel that it's revoking licenses to sell to Huawei  —  NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration notified Huawei suppliers, including chipmaker Intel …
New York Times:
A look at the incentives, like guaranteed auction win percentages, that Facebook got from Google in the ad partnership that is now a focus of an antitrust suit  —  Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.
Joan Donovan / HBR.org:
The dominant business model of social media platforms, which emphasizes scale over everything else, makes them particularly vulnerable to disinformation  —  Summary.  —  The attack on the U.S. Capitol building was the culmination of years of disinformation and conspiracy theories that had been weaponized on social media networks.
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
Samsung Electronics heir Jay Y. Lee was sentenced to 30 months in prison over bribery charges; Lee still faces a second prosecution related to succession  —  - Lee sentenced to two and a half years in jail after court case  — Samsung succession scandal has rocked South Korea for years
Sebastian Sinclair / CoinDesk:
Maps.me, an offline mobile map for travelers, raises $50M seed led by Alameda Research, aims to launch “yield earning” DeFi tools inside the app  —  The funding will go toward the launch of a multi-currency wallet on Maps.me, enabling decentralized finance (DeFi) features for 140 million users.
Medium:
A look at the shady aspects of Tether, the stablecoin being probed by SDNY for over a year, widely used to buy BTC and other cryptocurrencies on many exchanges  —  This is the story of a Bitcoin trade — the most financially impactful trade I've ever made in my life.

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Featured Podcasts

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Fired OpenAI Safety Researchers Speak Out + We Look Inside Pandora's Box
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Sources:
Sundar Pichai on Gemini 4 and the AI compute crunch
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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Earlier Picks

Alex Danco:
Miriam Berger / Washington Post:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Washington Post:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: