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January 20, 2021, 10:30 PM
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Top News

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon says it wants to help the Biden administration's vaccination efforts, says non-WFH Amazon staff should be vaccinated “at the earliest appropriate time”  —  Amazon says it is ready to turn its facilities into COVID-19 vaccination sites and is offering other resources to the U.S. government.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
The Biden administration updates WhiteHouse.gov with several new accessibility features, including dark mode, a large text mode, and more  —  From dark times to dark mode  —  The official website of the White House, WhiteHouse.gov, has been completely replaced with a new version …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8M for restricting cross-border game sales in EU's Digital Single Market  —  ZeniMax, Capcom, and Bandai Namco were among the publishers fined  —  Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8 million …
Chainalysis Blog:
Chainalysis releases initial estimates showing that ~$10B worth of crypto transfers in 2020 were related to criminal activity, compared to ~$21.4B in 2019  —  2020 was an incredible year for cryptocurrency.  In spite of the devastation wrought by the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic …
Drew FitzGerald / Wall Street Journal:
Interview with Ajit Pai, who outlasted many senior officials in the Trump administration, on 5G, internet access, and FCC's independence over his tenure  —  Ajit Pai says he focused on fostering investment while maintaining independence  —  Ajit Pai's four years atop the Federal Communications …
Dan De Luce / NBC News:
USAGM CEO Michael Pack, who oversaw the Open Technology Fund, has resigned at the request of the Biden administration  —  WASHINGTON — The Trump appointee overseeing the Voice of America and other U.S.-funded broadcasters resigned on Wednesday at the request of the Biden administration …
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Donald Trump pardons ex-Waymo and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski; Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey were among those supporting a pardon for Levandowski  —  Last year Anthony Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google, where he was an engineer for its self-driving car efforts …
Bloomberg:
Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, addressing teachers on an online conference, quashing intense speculation about his fate  —  Alibaba and Ant co-founder Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view, quashing intense speculation about the plight …
Mallory Hackett / MobiHealthNews:
Oregon-based virtual healthcare startup Conversa has added $8M to its Series B after raising $12M last June, bringing its total raised to $34M  —  The automated care platform has been deployed at several health systems to remotely monitor, analyze and communicate with patients across a range of conditions.
More: TechCrunch
Rob Walker / Marker:
An in-depth look at the PDF file format, a staple since the 1990s, as Adobe says 303B PDFs were opened using its services in FY2020, a 17% rise YoY  —  How has the low-fi 30-year-old innovation reigned for so long?  —  When is the last time you downloaded, opened, printed, or created a good old-fashioned PDF?
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Opera acquires YoYo Games for $10M and launches Opera Gaming division to monetize its gaming efforts; Opera GX gaming browser had 7M MAUs in Dec., up 350% YoY  —  Web browser maker Opera has acquired YoYo Games, maker of the GameMaker Studio 2 game engine, for $10 million, and it has also launched its Opera Gaming division.
Dylan Byers / NBC News:
Sources: Facebook has no plans to lift Trump's indefinite suspension following his departure from the White House  —  Facebook has no plan in place to lift the indefinite suspension on President Donald Trump's Facebook account following his departure from the White House on Wednesday, sources familiar with the company's plans said.
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Brave becomes the first major browser to natively support IPFS protocol, useful for accessing censored content; Wikipedia and other sites offer IPFS versions  —  Brave users will now be able to seamlessly access ipfs:// links.  —  With the release of Brave 1.19 today …
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Netflix reports Q4 revenue of $6.64B vs. $6.63B est., up 21.5% YoY, and global streaming paid memberships of 203.7M, up 8.5M vs. 6.5M est.; stock up 16%+  —  - Netflix reported fourth quarter 2020 earnings Tuesday that beat analyst expectations on revenue and net subscriber additions but fell below EPS estimates.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Netflix says its “Shuffle Play” feature, which lets Netflix's algorithm choose what you watch next, will roll out globally to all users in H1 2021
Zoë Bernard / The Information:
Sources: Andreessen Horowitz to launch an opinion section on its website that will publish articles related to technology and business from outside contributors  —  Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, which once courted attention from the news media, is ramping up its own media efforts.
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
A look at a16z's communication efforts over the years, as the firm expands its own media operations and has largely stopped cooperating with reporters

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:30 PM ET, January 20, 2021.

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.

From Mediagazer

Max Tani / Semafor:
AP Senior Product Manager for AI Aimee Rinehart told staff that many editors preferred an AI-written article to a human one, and resistance to AI is “futile”

Todd Spangler / Variety:
SEC filing: David Zaslav is selling ~4M shares of WBD stock, with an aggregate market value of just over $114M; Zaslav's 2024 pay rose 4.4% YoY to $51.9M

Committee to Protect Journalists:
Myanmar releases at least four journalists as part of an amnesty of 7,300+ prisoners convicted of terrorism after the military's 2021 coup

More News

Varsha Bansal / WIRED UK:
A look at the aggressive recovery methods used by dodgy loan apps plaguing the Play Store in India, including social shaming, primarily via WhatsApp groups
Ina Fried / Axios:
Google is investigating why Margaret Mitchell, who helps lead its ethical AI team, downloaded and shared a large number of files with people outside the company

Earlier Picks

Alexandra Alper / Reuters:
Trump signs an executive order that seeks to thwart foreign use of cloud computing products or services for malicious cyber operations against the US
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Malwarebytes says it was hacked by group that breached SolarWinds, via Azure and Office 365 exploits, but attackers only accessed a subset of internal emails
Meagan Simpson / BetaKit:
South Korean search engine company Naver Corp. has acquired online self-publishing platform Wattpad for an estimated ~$600M
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
FireEye releases a free tool that audits networks to determine whether certain techniques, known to be employed by SolarWinds hackers, were used
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