Techmeme
February 11, 2021, 10:55 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: Microsoft made an offer to acquire Pinterest in recent months; talks are not active right now  —  Microsoft approached Pinterest in recent months about a potential deal to acquire the $51bn social media company popular with hobbyists posting home decor, food and wedding collages, people briefed on the matter said.
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Starting with iOS 14.5, Apple will proxy the Safe Browsing service in Safari through its own servers instead of Google's to protect user data  —  Starting with iOS and iPadOS 14.5, Apple will proxy Google's “Safe Browsing” service used in Safari through its own servers instead of relying …
Daniel Goldblatt / The Wrap:
Facebook says Instagram has removed Robert F Kennedy Jr's account for making false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines  —  Move comes as the company is expanding efforts to crack down on conspiracy theory content  —  Instagram removed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account on Wednesday …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Europol, working with US, UK, and others, says 10 people have been arrested for allegedly stealing $100M in cryptocurrency from celebrities via SIM-swap attacks  —  Eight men were arrested in England and Scotland as part of an investigation into a series of SIM swapping attacks targeting US celebrities.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Labelbox, which develops data annotation and labeling software, raises $40M Series C led by B Capital Group, bringing its total raised to $79M  —  Labelbox, a startup developing a data annotation and labeling platform, today announced that it's raised $40 million, bringing its total raised to $79 million.
Amy Lewin / Sifted:
Dublin-based food ordering service Flipdish raises €40M round from Tiger Global Management  —  Pre-Covid, says McCarthy, lots of restaurants relied on platforms like Deliveroo for a small portion of orders, but when everything moved online, “they realised they weren't making a whole load …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Sources: Facebook is building an audio chat product, currently in the earliest stages of development, that is similar to Clubhouse  —  The social network, which has a history of cloning its competitors, has started working on an audio chat product.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is building …
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:
Sweden-based digital bank Northmill raises $30M led by M2 Asset Management  —  Northmill Bank, the Sweden-based challenger that has around 200,000 customers across three European countries, has raised around $30 million in new funding.  —  Leading the round is M2 Asset Management …
Justine Calma / The Verge:
Tesla's $1.5B bitcoin purchase conflicts with its environmental goals, as mining the cryptocurrency consumes massive amounts of energy by design  —  Tesla's banking on a cryptocurrency that's inherently inefficient  —  Tesla just gave bitcoin a big boost that's likely to result …
Elena Schneider / Politico:
Political campaigns are shifting marketing dollars after ad bans by Facebook and Google, with email lists, influencers, and other ad platforms on the rise  —  Renting, swapping and selling campaign email lists to new candidates and causes is a booming political business, but it comes with risks.
The Information:
Internal data shows only 11.3M US households regularly watch NBCU's Peacock; sources: NBCU has pitched ViacomCBS about bundling their streaming services  —  As Netflix and Disney cement their leads over an array of rivals in the video-streaming market, top executives at Comcast and its NBCUniversal arm are in a quandary.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Modern Health, whose app helps employers provide digital mental health care to employees, raises $74M at a valuation of $1.17B, bringing total raised to $172M  —  Modern Health, a San Francisco-based mental health platform, says it has raised $74 million in a funding round that pushes its valuation to $1.17 billion.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Twitter says it has suspended 500+ accounts in India for violating rules but has not taken any action on accounts of journalists, activists, and politicians  —  Twitter said on Wednesday it has taken actions on more than 500 accounts and reduced visibility of some hashtags in India …
The Information:
Sources: Stir Money, whose software helps video and audio producers, writers, and performers manage their income, raises Series A led by a16z at $100M valuation  —  Andreessen Horowitz recently won a competitive deal to lead the Series A financing of Stir Money, a startup whose software helps video …
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Interview with Rob Monster, CEO of Epik, on serving sites like Gab, why his company severed ties with 8chan and The Daily Stormer, Parler shutdown, and more  —  Toggle more options  —  When websites flooded with hate speech or harmful disinformation become too radioactive for the Internet …
Tweets: @bobbyallyn, @wexler, @kuow, @fark, and @npr

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:55 AM ET, February 11, 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

Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
David Yaffe-Bellany / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Sky Sports:
Saqib Shah / Engadget:
New York Times:
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: