Techmeme
February 14, 2021, 5:35 PM

Top News

Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
The NYT overstated the influence of both Slate Star Codex and the Rationalist community on Silicon Valley, and falsely portrayed the tech industry as right-wing  —  Stereotyping the tech industry as a bunch of secretive right-wingers isn't correct, and it isn't helpful.  —  11 hr ago
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Examining the links between the Rationalist community, with Slate Star Codex blog as its epicenter, and influential leaders in tech, including OpenAI's founders  —  Slate Star Codex was a window into the psyche of many tech leaders building our collective future.  Then it disappeared.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources shed light on the increasingly personal battle between Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg, who in private reportedly said “we need to inflict pain” on Apple  —  Animosity between CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook erupts over privacy and dueling visions of internet
Will Oremus / OneZero :
Stanford Internet Observatory:
After researchers raised data privacy concerns, Clubhouse says it is taking steps “to prevent Clubhouse clients from ever transmitting pings to Chinese servers”  —  The audio chat app “Clubhouse” went viral among Chinese-speaking audiences.  Stanford Internet Observatory examines …
Rest of World:
Inside “PGM” Facebook groups, the largest of which has 160,000+ members, where Brazilians collect, share, and memorialize the accounts of the recently deceased  —  Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazilian Facebook users were gathering to memorialize total strangers.
Tom Simonite / Wired:
Microsoft's quantum computing ambitions suffer a setback after its researcher, who claimed to have found the Majorana particle, prepares to retract his findings  —  In a 2018 paper, researchers said they found evidence of an elusive theorized particle.  A closer look now suggests otherwise.
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Germany-based Lengoo, which offers customised AI-powered translation service to enterprise clients, raises $20M Series B  —  Most people who use AI-powered translation tools do so for commonplace, relatively unimportant tasks like understanding a single phrase or quote.
Angel Au-Yeung / Forbes:
Following Bumble's IPO, CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who is 31, became the youngest female CEO ever to take a company public in the US  —  [Update 7 pm ET: Whitney Wolfe Herd ended the day Thursday with a net worth of $1.5 billion based on Bumble stock closing at $70.55.]

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Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:

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