Techmeme
February 24, 2021, 5:25 PM

Top News

Nick Clegg / About Facebook:
Facebook defends its stance in Australia, says it invested $600M since 2018 to support the news industry and plans at least $1B more over the next three years  —  Last week, in a move that will have felt abrupt and dramatic to many, Facebook announced it was stopping the sharing of news on its service in Australia.
Scott Chipolina / Decrypt:
Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy buys 19,452 Bitcoin, worth $1.0261B, and now holds ~90K Bitcoin, worth ~$4.5B at current prices  —  Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has purchased 19,452 Bitcoin, worth $1.026 billion, at an average price of $52,765.
ProPublica:
Emails show how Facebook responds to requests by authoritarian governments to censor content, as happened in Turkey during its military offensive against Kurds  —  Amid a 2018 Turkish military campaign, Facebook ultimately sided with Turkey's demand to block the page of a mostly Kurdish militia.
Taylor Lyles / The Verge:
HP says it is acquiring gaming peripheral company HyperX for $425M, giving the company a major foothold in the gaming accessory market  —  The acquisition means HP owns the HyperX brand  —  HP has announced that it is acquiring gaming peripheral company HyperX for $425 million.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube to roll out a “supervised” account option in beta in the coming months in more than 80 countries, aimed at kids that are too old for YouTube Kids  —  YouTube is launching a PG version of the internet's biggest video service.  —  A new “supervised” YouTube account option …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Amazon says its Luna cloud gaming service is available to try for free in the US on select Fire TV devices, after launching as invite-only last year  —  And anyone in the US can also buy a Luna Controller  —  Amazon's cloud-gaming service, Luna, is now available to try for free in the US …
Jeff Cox / CNBC:
US Federal Reserve's systems that let banks send money back and forth went down for several hours, impacting its automated clearinghouse system and more  —  Fed operational error brings down payment system  —  The Federal Reserve's system that allows financial institutions to send money …
New York Times:
Myanmar's draconian draft cybersecurity law follows a yearslong effort to build out Myanmar's surveillance capabilities, following cues from China  —  As the military seized power again, the generals moved quickly to take the country offline, criminalize online dissent and block social media.
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Source: Dispo, a retro photo sharing app co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, raises $20M Series A led by Spark Capital at a $200M valuation  —  Dispo, a retro photo-sharing app co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, recently raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
California's 2018 net neutrality law, SB 822, can go into effect after a California judge declined to grant the telecom industry a preliminary injunction  —  It survived challenges from Trump's DOJ, and now one from telecom industry too  —  Net neutrality died a horrible death in 2017 …
Tim Anderson / The Register:
Google says it has been sponsoring two full-time Linux developers at the Linux Foundation for years to improve security and hopes other companies will follow  —  Plus: Why the Chocolate Factory only uses code it builds from source  —  Interview Worried about the security of Linux and open-source code …
Alfred Ng / The Markup:
Auditing of algorithms can help address bias but there needs to be industry standards/regulations to hold the auditors or the companies that use them to account  —  For more than a decade, journalists and researchers have been writing about the dangers of relying on algorithms to make weighty decisions …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
TikTok says it removed 300K+ videos in the US for election misinformation in H2 2020, and 441K videos from its For You recommendation page for misinformation  —  And another 400,000 were removed from the For You page  —  TikTok removed over 340,000 videos in the US for breaking …
Bloomberg:
Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, which controls 14% of the market, has recently expanded into France, Germany, Italy, and Spain  —  Winston Churchill, it's often said, quipped that you should never let a good crisis go to waste.  Tatyana Bakalchuk would agree.
Jane Wakefield / BBC:
Portland ends partnership with Sidewalk Labs to track mobility; Sidewalk spin-off Replica says it was unwilling to share granular data requested by the city  —  A smart city project started by Google's sister firm Sidewalk Labs to track mobility patterns in the US city of Portland has been shelved.
More: Insider
Chris Welch / The Verge:
LG says that it will license its webOS software to other TV brands, such as RCA, Ayonz, and Konka; LG's redesigned webOS 5.0 version will not be included  —  The modern webOS is no longer exclusive to LG's TV lineup  —  LG tonight announced that the company's webOS smart TV platform will soon be found on TVs from other brands.
Marcella McCarthy / TechCrunch:
Brazil-based RecargaPay, which lets users top up prepaid cell phones online, raises $70M Series C, bringing its total raised to over $100M  —  RecargaPay, a Brazil-based fintech that allows users to top off their prepaid cell phones online, announced this morning that they've closed …
More: FinSMEs and PYMNTS.com
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Facebook says it is testing more tools to combat child exploitation on its platform, including a measure warning users of “non-malicious sharing” of viral memes  —  Facebook says it is testing more tools to help the social network prevent people from sharing content that  —  exploits children.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
What will the next generation of developers do when AI writes the code?  —  Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are betting that the junior devs we train today will be the senior engineers of tomorrow.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
UK tax compliance with Zoho Books  —  The evolving tax landscape in the UK has added an additional responsibility to business owners, accountants, and bookkeepers to ensure their choice of accounting software supports compliance …
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

Big Technology Podcast:
Anthropic IPO Panic, A Spy At OpenAI?, The Great Food Slop Debate
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.
Great Chat:
What happened to tech's backbone?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $7B Startup Mapping Your Health In Just One Hour | Neko's Hjalmar Nilsonne
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building underwater drones for $50,000
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
BG2 Pod:
Jensen Huang | Does AI Revenue Justify Capex, '27 AI Bottlenecks, Singularity, Open vs Closed & more
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
How to Run a Political Campaign in the TikTok Era (And How Not To)
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 PM ET, February 24, 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

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Casey Newton / Platformer:
Selena Deckelmann / The Mozilla Blog:
Stephen Warwick / iMore:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Tim Copeland / Decrypt: