Techmeme
April 16, 2021, 2:55 PM

Top News

Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal:
In a letter to artists, Apple says it pays a penny per stream, roughly double Spotify, which pays an average of about one-third to half a penny per stream  —  Music-streaming services, seeking to win credibility and subscribers, open up about artist payouts
Patrick Howell O'Neill / MIT Technology Review:
A look at Positive Technologies, a Russian cybersecurity firm sanctioned by the US, which sources say provides hacking tools and ops support for Russian spies  —  Washington has sanctioned Russian cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies.  US intelligence reports claim it provides hacking tools and runs operations for the Kremlin.
NBC News:
US sanctions Russia for 2020 election interference and SolarWinds hack, blacklisting six tech companies that provide support to Russian intelligence services  —  The United States is hitting Russia with fresh sanctions for interference in the 2020 presidential election …
Associated Press:
Microsoft removes Positive Technologies from a list of vendors it gives early access to vulnerability info; IBM also lists Positive as a security partner  —  The Treasury Department on Thursday slapped six Russian technology companies with sanctions for supporting Kremlin intelligence agencies engaged in …
Naaman Zhou / The Guardian:
Australian Federal Court rules Google misled Android users into thinking it would not collect their location data when they turned location history off  —  Google collected data on some Android and Pixel phones even when customers ticked ‘No’ or ‘Do not collect’
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Firefox and major Chromium browsers, including Edge, Brave, and Vivaldi, decline to join FLoC, Google's proposed ad technology to replace third-party cookies  —  Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, and Mozilla are all out  —  Google is going it alone with its proposed advertising technology to replace third-party cookies.
The Guardian:
Facebook planned to remove a network of fake accounts that artificially inflated the popularity of an MP in India, until it realized it was for a BJP politician  —  Whistleblower points to double standard in Facebook's enforcement of rules against powerful  —  Facebook allowed a network …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency that started out as a joke in 2013, now has a market cap of $40B after growing nearly 400% in the past seven days  —  - Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency based on the “Doge” meme, which rose to popularity in late 2013.  It started out as a joke.
David Priest / CNET:
Jeff Bezos says Amazon Prime now has 200M+ subscribers, up 50M from the beginning of 2020  —  A new letter to shareholders from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed that the tech giant's Prime service now has over 200 million subscribers.  That's up 50 million from the beginning of 2020.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Apple's App Store hosted kids' games that became crypto-based casinos if launched from some non-US locations  —  Kosta Eleftheriou has found another iOS scam  —  In popular culture, access to an illicit gambling den is as easy as stumbling into the right shop and saying the password — or greasing some palms.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Google's Project Zero updates its vulnerability disclosure policy to include a 30-day cushion before publishing bug details to give users time to apply patches  —  The Google Project Zero security team has updated its vulnerability disclosure guidelines today to add a cushion of 30 days …
Alex Heath / The Information:
Sources: group messaging app IRL is in talks to raise $50M+ at a $1B valuation; the company was last valued at $100M in September  —  Group messaging app IRL is in talks to raise more than $50 million at a $1 billion valuation, 10 times the level of its last round, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica:
Executives from Intel, Nvidia, and TSMC say the global chip shortage will likely continue at least into 2022 and maybe into 2023  —  Companies reeling from natural disasters and massive demand from OEMs, consumers.  —  How many years will the ongoing chip shortage affect technology firms across the world?

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Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Wall Street Journal:
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