Techmeme
February 8, 2021, 10:50 PM

Top News

Jason Koebler / VICE:
Police say a computer in a water treatment plant in FL, set up for remote access, was breached; the intruder tried raising sodium hydroxide levels in the water  —  The hacker tried to drastically increase sodium hydroxide levels in the water, Pinellas County, Florida, officials said on Monday.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Twitter is building subscription products to ease its dependence on ads, including “tipping” for exclusive content and charging for TweetDeck  —  - Internal groups are researching options users might pay for  — Social network says ‘revenue durability’ is now top priority
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Sources: Mark Cuban is co-founding Fireside, a podcast app where hosts can talk to fans live and monetize their conversations, with plans to launch this year  —  Fireside is launching this year  —  Mark Cuban is getting in on the audio and podcasting hype.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
A developer is exposing scam lookalike apps that are flourishing on the App Store, fueled by lax enforcement and fake reviews, after his own app was targeted  —  Over the last several weeks, developer Kosta Eleftheriou has been highlighting many apparent scam applications on the App Store.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Reddit has raised a Series E of over $250M led by Vy Capital at a $6B valuation, doubling in value since its last funding round in February 2019  —  Its WallStreetBets community played a prominent role in recent stock-trading frenzy  —  Reddit Inc. doubled its valuation to $6 billion …
Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Programming language Rust is now backed by the Rust Foundation, a new independent organization that will make it easier to accept financing beyond Mozilla  —  The Rust programming language now has its own foundation that's independent from Mozilla.  —  Programming language Rust now has the backing …
Taha Broach / The 8-Bit:
In the iOS 14.5 beta, Apple has finally added the ability to set a default music streaming service, including Spotify, when using Siri to play songs  —  Apple launched the initial beta versions of iOS 14.5 to developers and public beta testers last week.  Among the list of new features …
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
Filing: Tesla has bought $1.5B worth of bitcoin and says it will start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products in the future  —  - Tesla announced in an SEC filing Monday that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.  — The company also said it would start accepting bitcoin as a payment method for its products.
TechCrunch:
Clubhouse is now blocked in China after an uncensored period during which it grew rapidly  —  Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Facebook expands policies to take down more posts with vaccine-related misinformation, including assertions that vaccines cause autism  —  Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's Dan Riccio is focusing on future VR and AR devices, and the group working on in-house screens and cameras is now under chip chief Johny Srouji  —  - Apple moves team working on own screens, cameras to Srouji  — Riccio left top hardware job recently to work on ‘new project’
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Documents show Binance dropped the defamation lawsuit against Forbes it filed in November 2020, but did not give a reason for the withdrawal  —  The exchange did not say in its latest filing why it withdrew the case, at least for now.  —  Binance Holdings, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange …
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Electronic Arts to acquire Glu Mobile, best known for its popular game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, in $2.4B deal, a 36% premium to Glu's closing price on Friday  —  The videogame giant looks to expand its presence in mobile gaming, where it has had mixed success
Financial Times:
EU lawmakers are considering regulations that would force Facebook and Google to pay for news content on their platforms, echoing a similar move in Australia  —  Move by MEPs would strengthen hand of publishers against Google and Facebook  —  EU lawmakers overseeing new digital regulation …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Sources: TikTok has briefed advertisers on new e-commerce tools launching in 2021, including letting popular users add links and earn commission  —  Viral video app set to unveil a suite of new online shopping tools  —  TikTok is planning an aggressive expansion into ecommerce in the US …
Emily Birnbaum / Protocol:
A CA bill aims to let workers under NDA gags speak out about any discrimination, not just sexual harassment; ex-Pinterest employee Ifeoma Ozoma helped draft it  —  Ifeoma Ozoma took a huge risk last year when she publicly alleged that she faced racist and sexist discrimination during her time at Pinterest.
More: TechCrunch

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Sara Fischer / Axios:
Bloomberg: