Techmeme
March 31, 2021, 9:05 AM

Top News

Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Facebook announces News Feed changes, including a Most Recent mode that will show posts in chronological order, available on Android now and iOS in coming weeks  —  Facebook today announced a slew of new changes coming to its app on iOS and Android, making it easier for users to turn off …
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:
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 …
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 …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google says it is rolling out FLoC, its alternative to 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.
Ben Gilbert / Insider:
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 …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Sources: Google plans to release “Pixel Buds A” in 2021, which will almost be visually indistinguishable from current Buds and offered in white and green colors  —  For a few years now, Google has offered affordable variants of its Pixel phones with the Pixel 3a and Pixel 4a.
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 …
Reed Albergotti / Washington Post:
User had ~$600K worth of bitcoin 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 …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Spotify buys app developer Betty Labs, creator of Locker Room, a live social audio app where fans can talk about sports, which Spotify plans on expanding  —  The acquisition will allow creators of all kinds to host anything from debates to live concerts.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a virtual WWDC 2021 from June 7 to June 11, where iOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8, and more are expected  —  Apple has officially announced WWDC 2021.  This year, the conference will take place completely virtually starting June 7.  This marks the second year in a row that Apple …
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Chinese grocery app Nice Tuan, which focuses on community group buying and claims to have 15M orders per day, raises $750M led by Alibaba and DST Global  —  - D.E. Shaw, Anatole, Jeneration Capital invest in grocery app  — Nice Tuan also attracts backing from CDH, GGV, Kunlun Capital
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.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Source: in January, IoT manufacturer Ubiquiti downplayed a “catastrophic” breach, which gained root access to its AWS accounts and access to countless devices  —  On Jan. 11, Ubiquiti Inc. [NYSE:UI] — a major vendor of cloud-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as routers …
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: Snap plans to unveil new Spectacles aimed at AR developers and creators in May and has begun a years-long project to make a camera drone  —  Snap is readying a new push into hardware with a more advanced version of its Spectacles smart glasses that feature displays capable …
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 …

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More News

Eric Geller / Politico:

Earlier Picks

Matt Binder / Mashable:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Hamish McKenzie / Substack Blog: