Techmeme
February 17, 2021, 12:30 PM

Top News

Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Epic Games files a formal antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission, claiming that Apple imposes commercially unviable burdens on rivals  —  Filing is latest shot in escalating feud between ‘Fortnite’ developer and Silicon Valley giant  —  Epic Games has filed …
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Internal docs: Amazon India has secretly favored big sellers, misrepresented its ties with them, and used them to circumvent tough foreign investment rules  —  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It was early 2019, and senior Amazon.com Inc executive Jay Carney was preparing for an important meeting.
Karen Weise / New York Times:
NY AG sues Amazon, alleging it inadequately protected workers from COVID-19 in Staten Island and Queens, and retaliated against employees who raised concerns  —  The case focuses on two of the company's facilities in New York.  —  New York's attorney general, Letitia James …
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
DOJ announces charges against three North Korean hackers for conspiring to steal and extort over $1.3B in cash and cryptocurrencies from banks and businesses  —  The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed charges against three North Korean hacker spies accused of conspiring to steal …
Babu Mohan / Android Central:
Twitter starts testing voice DMs, which can be up to 140 seconds long, on iOS in India, Brazil, and Japan  —  Twitter is giving its users “more options to express themselves” in conversations.  —  What you need to know  — Twitter is testing a voice messaging feature for direct messages.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Researcher finds one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 chips; the GoSearch22 adware installs itself as a Safari extension  —  A security researcher found one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 processors.  —  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
YouTube says it will expand Shorts, its TikTok rival in beta, to the US soon, add 4K and DVR to YouTube TV, expand in-video shopping, and more in 2021  —  YouTube has a host of big product updates coming this year, and it just detailed a lot of them in a blog post from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Google Maps now lets users pay for public transportation and parking by integrating Passport and ParkMobile services into its app, available in 400+ US cities  —  Fill your meter or get a train ticket  —  Google Maps is adding a couple of new useful features: the ability to pay for parking or buy a train ticket right from the app.
Emil Protalinski / GeekWire:
IDC: Chrome OS market share passed macOS for the first time in 2020, up 4.4 points YoY to 10.8%; Windows fell 4.9 points to 80.5%, macOS rose 0.8 point to 7.5%  —  New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows.
Cathy Applefeld Olson / Forbes:
20 music streaming services have paid $424M+ in historical unmatched royalties to Mechanical Licensing Collective; Apple paid $163M, Spotify $153M, Amazon $42M  —  The Mechanical Licensing Collective has received a total of $424.38 million in accrued historical unmatched royalties …
Kotaku:
Sources: Google's Stadia VP Phil Harrison sent an email to Stadia's game studios lauding their “great progress”, despite knowledge of its impending shutdown  —  Developers at Google's recently formed game studios were shocked February 1 when they were notified that the studios would be shut down …
Phil Muncaster / Infosecurity Magazine:
YouTube takes down nearly 3,000 channels and accounts that were part of Chinese state coordinated influence operation  —  UK / EMEA News Reporter , Infosecurity Magazine  —  YouTube has taken down almost 3000 channels and accounts deemed to part of separate Chinese and Russian state coordinated influence operations.
More: The Keyword and ZDNet
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
North Dakota state Senate blocks bill that would have required app stores to allow devs to use their own payment systems; Epic lobbied in favor of the bill  —  - The North Dakota state senate voted 36-11 on Tuesday not to pass a bill that would have required app stores to enable software developers …
Jeremy Burge / Emojipedia:
A look at the new 217 new emojis coming in iOS 14.5, including a syringe without blood, couples with a mix of skin tones, AirPod Max headphones, and more  —  New emojis have arrived on iOS as part of the latest iOS 14.5 beta.  These include a heart on fire, exhaling face, and gender options for the people with beards.
Sean Endicott / Windows Central:
Microsoft begins testing a Kids Mode for Edge, with Bing SafeSearch on and tracking prevention set to strict by default, plus other safety features  —  Kids Mode helps parents provide a more child-friendly browsing experience on Edge.  —  What you need to know
Wall Street Journal:
A hacker claims to have stolen and posted files from global law firm Jones Day on the dark web; Jones Day says a file-sharing company it used was compromised  —  Firm disputes network breach, says its file-transfer company was compromised  —  A hacker claims to have stolen files belonging …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI safety, robotics, stablecoins, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 50 topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Zoho:
Understanding the U.S. overtime policy in Zoho People  —  The importance of tracking overtime working hours cannot be overstated.  It has to be done carefully to stay compliant, keep your HR operations efficient, and pay employees accurately.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:
Joe Liemandt - Building Alpha School, and The Future of Education
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Tech Brew Ride Home:
Uncle Sam's Intel Stake
Tech news headlines every day. 15 minutes and you're up to date. From Tech Brew, Morning Brew's tech hub.
Subscribe to Tech Brew Ride Home.
Grit:
How Dropbox Beat Big Tech in the Cloud Wars
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
Inside the expert network training every frontier AI model | Garrett Lord (Handshake CEO)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
The Big GPT-5 Debate, Sam Altman's AI Bubble, OnlyFans Chatbots
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.
The Social Radars:
Founder Mode: Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:30 PM ET, February 17, 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

Earlier Picks

Adriana Hamacher / Decrypt:
Times Now:
Micah Singleton / Billboard:
The Markup:
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Taylor Soper / GeekWire: