Techmeme
March 31, 2021, 12:40 PM

Top News

Nick Clegg / Medium:
Nick Clegg defends Facebook, saying it is not in the company's interest, financially or reputationally, to push users towards ever more extreme content  —  In  —  a recent article for The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance compared Facebook to a Doomsday Machine: “a device built with the sole purpose of destroying all human life.”
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Apple is planning to announce a mixed reality headset “sometime” in the next several months, possibly at an in-person event  —  Hi everyone—it's Mark.  On Tuesday, Apple Inc. announced what will be at least its fifth virtual product launch in a row and one of its most important events …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Biden announces $2T American Jobs Plan focused on improving US infrastructure, with $100B allocated for high-speed broadband access over eight years  —  It sets aside $100 billion for the effort  —  President Biden plans to announce a sweeping infrastructure plan Wednesday that includes $100 billion …
Ken Klippenstein / The Intercept:
Leaked doc sheds light on “Veritas”, an Amazon FC Ambassador program conceived in 2018 that sought to train employees to defend Amazon and Bezos on social media  —  Amazon's small Twitter army of “ambassadors” was quietly conceived in 2018 under the codename “Veritas,” …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Deliveroo drops by as much as 30% on its LSE debut, after pricing shares at £3.90, valuing it at around £5.6B; poor debut likely due to labor practice issues  —  Update: It seems that the market is volatile indeed.  After pricing its shares at the lower end of the range …
Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:
Apple leads $50M Series B in music distributor UnitedMasters, with a16z and Alphabet participating; UnitedMasters enters a strategic partnership with Apple  —  Independent music distribution platform and tool factory UnitedMasters has raised a $50M series B round led by Apple.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Study: Android and iOS transmit telemetry even when devices are idle or users opt out; Google collects 20x more data from Android than Apple from iOS  —  Academic research published last week looked at the telemetry traffic sent by modern iOS and Android devices back to Apple and Google servers …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn confirms it's working on a Clubhouse rival and will begin beta testing soon, but doesn't have an exact timeframe for its launch  —  Clubhouse's list of competitors is growing.  LinkedIn has now confirmed it's also testing a social audio experience in its app which would allow creators …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google is rolling out FLoC, its alternative to third-party cookies and a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial  —  Google today announced that it is rolling out Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Huawei reports 2020 revenue of $136.7B, up 3.8% YoY but slower than the 19%+ growth it saw in 2019, and net profit of $9.9B, up 3.2% YoY  —  - Huawei's revenue for 2020 totaled 891.4 billion yuan ($136.7 billion), a 3.8% year-on-year rise in yuan terms.  That was slower than the more than 19% revenue growth Huawei saw in 2019.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Sponsor of Arizona's HB2005 bill, which allows alternative payment systems in app stores, says it won't get a hearing this year after being pulled last week  —  Arizona House Bill 2005, a hotly contested piece of legislation that would have imposed developer-friendly changes to Apple …
Eric Geller / Politico:
Interviews with 15 people show CISA is underfunded, short on talent, outmatched by adversaries, and overwhelmed by the fallout from two massive cyberattacks  —  The agency that protects the U.S. from hackers is hobbled by funding woes, a talent shortage and growing pains that are jeopardizing …
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
User says ~$600K of bitcoin was stolen after using a fake app for cryptocurrency hardware wallet Trezor downloaded from the App Store; app was rated five stars  —  Recent scams show there are holes in Apple's safety net  —  Phillipe Christodoulou wanted to check his bitcoin balance last month …
Politico:
Sources: suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of State Department officials' emails last year; the classified network doesn't appear to have been accessed  —  Suspected Russian hackers stole thousands of State Department officials' emails last year, according to two Congressional sources familiar …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Manticore Games, a Roblox-like platform to build and play games using Epic's Unreal Engine, raises $100M Series C led by XN Ventures  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Manticore Games has raised $100 million for user-generated games in the …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Productiv, which helps businesses manage SaaS apps, raises $45M Series C, bringing its total raised to $73M  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Productiv, a platform for aggregating real-time engagement data and insights for apps and management …
Emily Feng / NPR:
How Wuhan's HSMC created an unusable chip factory, becoming one of six multibillion-dollar Chinese chip project failures in the last two years  —  WUHAN, China — In 2019, the U.S. sanctioned two major Chinese telecom firms, temporarily cutting them off from a vital supply of semiconductor chips …
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Striim, which offers cloud integration, edge processing, and streaming analytics services, raises $50M Series C, bringing its total raised to $108M+  —  Join Transform 2021 for the most important themes in enterprise AI & Data.  Learn more.  —  Striim, a startup specializing in streaming data integration …

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Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Sara Fischer / Axios: