Techmeme
March 11, 2021, 4:50 PM

Top News

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:
How Facebook leadership sidelined AI experts and weakened initiatives to clean up misinfo, because doing so would undermine Zuckerberg's desire for growth  —  Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook, was apologizing to his audience.  —  It was March 23, 2018 …
The Markup:
Citizen Browser project's Split Screen tool shows Facebook's different News Feeds for Trump and Biden voters, based on data from 2,500+ users across the US  —  Facebook's recommendation algorithm shows different news, groups, and hashtags to different users.  But who sees what?
Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, sold an NFT of his work for $69M, through a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie's  —  Through a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie's  —  Until October, the most Mike Winkelmann — the digital artist known as Beeple — had ever sold a print for was $100.
Jason Gurwin / The Streamable:
Netflix is running a test cracking down on password sharing, prompting some users to get their own account if they don't live with the owner of the account  —  Earlier this week, some Netflix subscribers began to notice that it might be a bit harder to “borrow” someone's password.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Facebook is making in-stream ads available on one-minute videos and is testing ads that look like stickers in Stories  —  Ads integrated into content  —  Facebook introduced Stories to its platform four years ago, mostly as a way to encourage people to post content that wasn't highly produced or necessarily photogenic.
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Kuo: all four iPhone 13 models will feature larger batteries with higher capacities, making them heavier than iPhone 12 models  —  Apple appears to be improving the iPhone's battery life with the iPhone 13 lineup, using a number of design changes, bigger batteries, and efficiency improvements.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Crypto lending and borrowing service BlockFi raises $350M Series D at a valuation of $3B, bringing its total raised to around $450M  —  If there were any doubt about a cryptocurrency boom, we need look no further than at the explosion of growth of certain companies in the space.
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
House and Senate Democrats announce a $94B proposal to make broadband internet access more accessible and affordable  —  Thirty House and Senate Democrats unveiled a new $94 billion proposal Thursday to make broadband Internet access more accessible and affordable nationwide …
Justin Bariso / Inc.com:
Google's new efforts to help job seekers include three new certificate programs and a Search feature that lets people find jobs for their education level  —  This morning, Google is announcing the next steps in its plan to disrupt the world of education, including the launch of new certificate programs …
Asha Barbaschow / ZDNet:
Australia's government has put out a call for submissions on internet browser defaults, following its media bargaining code, with a focus on Apple and Google  —  The ACCC is concerned with the choice of browser options afforded to Australians.  —  With the News Media Bargaining Code out of the way …
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon has opened 11 Amazon Fresh stores around the US, with plans for at least 28 more  —  As many businesses struggled to survive the pandemic, Amazon.com Inc. was quietly building a national grocery chain.  —  The first Amazon Fresh store opened to the public in Los Angeles in September.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: China is considering a record fine, exceeding Qualcomm's $975M fine, against Alibaba, which may face softer treatment if it distances from Jack Ma  —  E-commerce company to face softer treatment than its Ant affiliate, provided it distances itself from founder Jack Ma
Stephen Warwick / iMore:
Twitter says it is testing displaying large images, instead of cropped previews, on iOS and Android and will add support for 4K photo uploads  —  “Sometimes it's better said with a picture or a video.”  —  What you need to know  — Twitter is testing new features that will let you see a single image in full on your timeline.
Reuters:

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Turn every support session into a data point that works for you  —  Most support teams close a session and move on.  The issue gets resolved, the ticket gets marked done, and whatever insight that session generated quietly disappears.
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

Access:
This AI will push back if you're rude to it
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI Already Feels Pain, Loves, and Is Self-Aware
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Inside Podcasting's Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Sam Blond from Monaco
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Training Data:
Anthropic's Katelyn Lesse & Angela Jiang: Building an Ecosystem, not a Walled Garden
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM ET, March 11, 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

Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:

Earlier Picks

Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer: