Techmeme
January 22, 2021, 8:20 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: thinner and lighter, higher-end 13" MacBook Air with MagSafe charging to launch as soon as this year; redesigned MacBook Pros to get SD card slot back  —  Apple Inc. is working on a thinner and lighter version of the MacBook Air, the company's mass-market laptop, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft is increasing the prices of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions, up $1 to $10.99 per month and up $5 to $29.99 for a three-month membership  —  Xbox Live Gold prices are going up for monthly subscribers  —  Microsoft is increasing the prices of its Xbox Live Gold subscription soon.
Charlie Savage / New York Times:
Unclassified memo: Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have used commercial databases of location data from smartphone apps to track Americans without warrants  —  The disclosure comes amid growing legislative scrutiny of how the government uses commercially available location records.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Ex-ADT technician pled guilty to computer fraud and invasive visual recording for viewing home security camera feeds he installed in ~200 homes over 9,000 times  —  Employee for ADT accessed ~200 customer cams on more than 9,600 occasions.  —  A home security technician has admitted …
Dara Kerr / CNET:
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
Sources: data analytics service Databricks is in talks to raise a private funding round, potentially valuing it at ~$27B; Databricks was valued at $6.2B in 2019  —  The Andreessen Horowitz and NEA-backed company is raising a private round.  —  Databricks — a data and AI platform …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Samsung is considering building a $10B chipmaking plant in Texas, a major investment it hopes will help it catch up with industry leader TSMC  —  - It's looking to build a cutting-edge wafer fab in the U.S.  — It would follow TSMC's decision to build a new site in Arizona
Nick Clegg / About Facebook:

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
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.
Great Chat:
Would you let a robot do it?
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.
Training Data:
A Model For Everyone: How Ronak From Trajectory Is Building Products For Continual Learning
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
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.
Machine Gods:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
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 8:20 PM ET, January 22, 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.

More News

Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Tom Krazit / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Steven Levy / Wired:
Alex Kantrowitz / OneZero :
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
April Glaser / NBC News:
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg: