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February 23, 2021, 6:30 PM
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Top News

Georgia Hitch / ABC:
Australia says Facebook agreed to reinstate news content in Australia in the coming days after the government promised amendments to its proposed media bill  —  We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
Alex Barker / Financial Times:
Microsoft partners with EU publishing lobbyists to push for payment for news content amid Australia's effort to force Facebook and Google to share their revenue
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google announces new features for Android, including a way to schedule texts and a Password Checkup tool to notify users of compromised credentials  —  Google today announced the next set of features coming to Android, including a new password checkup tool, a way to schedule your texts …
Square - Investor Relations:
Square announces it spent $170M to acquire 3,318 bitcoins at an average price of $51,236, following its earlier $50M bet on the cryptocurrency  —  Square also announced a $170 million purchase in bitcoin as part of its ongoing commitment to the cryptocurrency
Selena Deckelmann / The Mozilla Blog:
New Firefox update adds support for multiple picture-in-picture windows and “Total Cookie Protection”, to prevent the use of cookies to track users across sites  —  Beginning last year, the internet began playing a bigger role in our lives than ever before.
Stephen Warwick / iMore:
Some M1 Mac owners report a worryingly large number of writes to their Macs' SSDs, though in some cases it could be explained by faulty monitoring tools  —  “If this is accurate, some of these machines aren't going to last half a year”  —  What you need to know
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Q&A with Spotify's Daniel Ek on growing the number of creators on the service and engaging with them, podcast success metrics, Clubhouse, and more  —  Spotify hosted an event on Monday to discuss its ambitions in audio, and one message came through loud and clear: the company wants to play …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Spotify says it will launch a subscription later this year called HiFi that will offer “CD-quality, lossless audio”; Spotify currently tops out at 320kbps audio
Nikkei Asia:
Draft executive order from Biden admin orders development of a US supply chain strategy less reliant on China, focused on chips, batteries, rare-earth metals  —  Exclusive: Biden to sign presidential order to bolster chip, battery and rare-earth industries  —  WASHINGTON/TAIPEI …
Tim Copeland / Decrypt:
Bitfinex and Tether agree to an $18.5M settlement with the New York AG and will stop operating in the state following a two-year probe  —  Bitfinex and Tether have agreed to stop all trading activity in the state of New York as part of a settlement announced today by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple plans to release two new MacBook Pro models with an HDMI port and an SD card reader in the second half of 2021  —  Apple plans to release two new MacBook Pro models equipped with an HDMI port and SD card reader in the second half of 2021, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo …
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
FCC proposes using $3.2B in emergency funds to subsidize broadband services for low-income families with $50/month discounts and $75/month on tribal lands  —  A proposal released by the acting chairwoman of the commission is an attempt to close the digital divide.
Gene Park / Washington Post:
Sony says it's developing a VR headset for the PlayStation 5 that will be much less cumbersome than its current PS VR setup, but the device won't launch in 2021  —  The PlayStation 5 will have its own virtual reality headset, however, consumers may face ongoing difficulties obtaining a PS5 console given a supply chain shortfall.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Quill, a messaging app that raised its Index Ventures-led $12.5M Series A in 2019, quietly comes out of stealth to take on Slack  —  Slack took the workplace communications landscape by storm after it launched its integration-friendly, GIF-tastic chat platform in 2013.
More: 9to5Mac
Hirsh Chitkara / Protocol:
Inside Chess.com's streaming success, with Twitch users watching 18.3M hours of chess content in January, nearly as much as they consumed throughout all of 2019  —  There's something inherently perverse in calling chess “open source.”  It's a bit like saying France “pivoted” …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Akamai finds a botnet using bitcoin transactions to put its control server's IP address on the blockchain, making it basically impossible to fully take down  —  Wallet transactions camouflage the IP address of the botnet's control server.  —  When hackers corral infected computers into a botnet …
More: The Akamai Blog.  Tweets: @stillinbeta
Mathieu Rosemain / Reuters:
A 93-page report from French antitrust investigators says Google breached government orders on how to negotiate with news publishers over copyright  —  PARIS (Reuters) - French antitrust investigators have accused Google of failing to comply with the state competition authority's orders …
The Information:
Source: ~40%, or 40M, of Disney+ subscribers are in the US, and Disney has said 30% are in India, so Europe and LatAm seem to make up less than a third of subs  —  Disney's flagship video-streaming service, Disney+, has quickly emerged as the only true competitor to Netflix …
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
Filing: Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116M to the financing event  —  Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116 million to the financing event, upping the round's most recent total to $367 million, according to a new SEC filing.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:30 PM ET, February 23, 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.

From Mediagazer

Andrew Marchand / The Athletic:
MLB finalizes deals with NBC/Peacock, Netflix, and ESPN; sources: NBC/Peacock pays ~$200M/year, Netflix pays $50M/season, ESPN maintains $1.65B over three years

Reuters:
The FCC opens a review of agreements between national networks and local TV stations, including about rules controlling how stations preempt network programs

Andrew Deck / Nieman Lab:
All four reporters at Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit news site, accused their EIC of using generative AI tools without disclosure; one reporter was fired

More News

Earlier Picks

Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:
TikTok's networks effects, driven by remixability of content and features that interconnect, can't be easily cloned by rivals who wish to recreate its ecosystem
Zachary Fryer-Biggs / Washington Post:
As autonomous war tech advances, the US military must confront complex ethical issues, like how much control to give machines to kill on the battlefield
Mickey Rapkin / Esquire:
Profile of Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, who has made millions of dollars by selling and auctioning his digital art on marketplaces for non-fungible tokens
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