Techmeme
February 18, 2021, 3:00 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google releases the developer preview of Android 12, available for Pixel devices, with many developer-focused features and changes  —  The big, consumer-facing changes will come later this year  —  Google is releasing a developer preview for the next version of Android, Android 12, for Pixel devices today.
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Facebook's refusal to pay a misguided media tax, pushed by Rupert Murdoch, is a defense of the open web and criticizing it for rejecting a link tax is bizarre  —  None of this should have been a surprise.  Back in September we wrote about Facebook publicly saying that if Australia went forward …
Nicholas McElroy / ABC:
Australian authorities in public health, weather, and other areas say Facebook has removed posts from their feeds following Facebook's news ban  —  Facebook has restricted access to news in Australia, and so far the tech giant seems to have taken a pretty broad definition of news.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Benedict Evans:
William Easton / About Facebook:
Usman Pirzada / Wccftech:
Nvidia announces dedicated crypto mining GPUs and says RTX 3060 GPU will detect the Ethereum cryptocurrency mining algorithm and limit the hash rate by 50%  —  NVIDIA has finally conceded to the overwhelming mining demand facing the GPU market right now and launched a lineup …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Court filing says a Facebook manager warned that the company reported revenues it “should have never made” by overstating how many users advertisers could reach  —  Lawsuit cites product executive's qualms over figures provided to advertisers  —  A Facebook employee warned …
Noam Bardin:
Former Waze CEO reflects on his time at Google and the impact of the acquisition on autonomy, the brand, hiring and firing, distribution, compensation, and more  —  It's been two weeks since I left Google and I keep getting asked “why did I leave now”?  I think the better question is “why did I stay for so long”?
YouTube:
Livestream of House Financial Services Committee hearing on GameStop stock with CEOs of Robinhood, Citadel, and Reddit, and YouTube streamer “Roaring Kitty”  —  Executives from Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital, are headed to Washington for Thursday's highly anticipated GameStop hearing at the U.S. Congress.
Ben Geman / Axios:
Facebook says it will expand its program to fight climate lies to other regions, will debunk climate change myths, adds labels to climate change posts in the UK  —  Facebook is expanding the geographic reach of its recently launched online portal to counter misinformation about climate change …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Google will restructure its Responsible AI teams to centralize them under a single Black executive, Marian Croak, in wake of Timnit Gebru's departure  —  - Company seeks to stabilize department amid internal rancor  — Responsible AI teams to be centralized under single executive
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Palantir's stock drops over 7% after nearly all shares are unlocked for trading; the company's September IPO restricted sales to one-fifth of shares  —  - Two longtime investors said they will hold; Soros to exit  — Stock restriction was an unusual condition of direct listing
João Carrasqueira / Neowin:
Facebook adds multi-user support and app sharing to Oculus Quest  —  Facebook is making Oculus Quest headsets easier to share with others with a couple of new features being rolled out starting today.  Support for multiple user accounts as well as app sharing are coming to the more recent Quest 2 first …
Tim Anderson / The Register:
Microsoft releases version 1.0 of Dapr, one of its open-source projects to simplify app development for Kubernetes  —  API now stable, more on the way  —  Microsoft has released version 1.0 of its Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr), aimed at providing building blocks to simplify application development for Kubernetes.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Job listings show Apple is looking to hire engineers to start work on 6G  —  - Company wants to rely less on others for new technology  — Job listings posted for positions in San Diego, Silicon Valley  —  Apple Inc. launched its first iPhones with 5G wireless speeds a few months ago.
Sankalp Phartiyal / Reuters:
Sources: Apple is lobbying to participate in a new scheme to boost India's computer exports, as part of plans to bring iPad manufacturing to the country  —  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Apple Inc is angling to participate in a new scheme to boost India's exports of computer products …
Mara Hvistendahl / The Intercept:
Docs: Oracle has been marketing its data analytics tools to Chinese police, touting its ability to mine DNA, vehicle records, and facial recognition databases  —  Police in China's Liaoning province were sitting on mounds of data collected through invasive means: financial records …
Bloomberg:
Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the US, raises $150M, sources say at a $1B+ valuation  —  Webull, the Chinese-owned brokerage that runs one of the fastest-growing retail trading platforms in the U.S., raised $150 million …
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
CrowdStrike to acquire log data analysis startup Humio for $400M  —  CrowdStrike, a cloud-native cybersecurity company focused on endpoint protection and threat intelligence for enterprises, has announced plans to acquire U.K.-based log-analysis and observability startup Humio in a mostly-cash deal worth approximately $400 million.

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Balaji S. Srinivasan:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: