Techmeme
April 20, 2021, 8:55 AM

Top News

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Venmo adds support for buying, holding, and selling four types of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash  —  Venmo is adding support for cryptocurrency, starting today.  The company says it will begin to roll out the ability for Venmo's more than 70 million users to buy …
About Facebook:
Facebook says it will start testing Live Audio Rooms in Groups and expects to roll out the feature to everyone on the Facebook app by the summer  —  Storytelling helps people build meaningful bonds: we all have stories to share with our friends, our communities, and the world at large.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Octopus Deploy, which develops a deployment automation tool, raises $172.5M from Insight Partners  —  Founded almost a decade ago, Octopus Deploy has grown to serve 25,000 organizations, including Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney and Stack Overflow, through bootstrapping.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says xCloud game streaming service will launch on iOS and PC Tuesday as an invite-only beta via browsers, available to Game Pass Ultimate subscribers  —  An invite-only beta begins for xCloud via the web  —  Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) will officially arrive on iOS and PC tomorrow, April 20th.
Sean Burch / The Wrap:
Sensor Tower: Clubhouse was downloaded 2.7M times in March, a 72% decline from February's 9.5M+  —  After pulling in 9.5 million downloads in February, Clubhouse only had 2.7 million downloads in March, according to new data from Sensor Tower  —  Is the party on Clubhouse already dying out?
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Sony backtracks on removing PS3 and Vita digital stores, saying it was “the wrong decision”; PSP store will still shut down on July 2  —  The PSP store is still shutting down on July 2nd  —  Sony has announced that it'll be keeping its PS3 and PlayStation Vita digital storefront open “for the foreseeable future.”
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Nextdoor is introducing an anti-racism notification, which asks users to reconsider posting content if the app thinks it may be offensive  —  It calls the feature the anti-racism notification  —  Nextdoor is introducing a new anti-racism notification, which asks users to reconsider posting content …
John Seabrook / New Yorker:
As NYC selects Bird, Lime, and Veo for its e-scooter pilot program, a look at why NYC is seen as an invaluable proving ground for the scooter-sharing concept  —  Fleets of electric scooters have taken over city streets worldwide.  With New York finally climbing aboard, do they represent a tech hustle or a transit revolution?
Brian Fung / CNN:
In a letter to Congress, Apple says it has approved Parler's return to the App Store, following moderation improvements by Parler  —  Washington (CNN Business)Apple has approved Parler's return to the iOS app store following improvements the social media company made to better detect …
Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Fitbit unveils Luxe, a $150 fashion-focused fitness tracker coming this spring with a wide range of bands, up to 5 days of battery life, and an OLED touchscreen  —  It features up to five days of battery life per charge  —  Fitbit has announced its new Luxe fitness tracker that looks like a more fashion-focused take on the Inspire 2.
Kat Tenbarge / Insider:
YouTube says it has temporarily demonetized James Charles' channel, which has 25.5M+ subscribers, after 15+ sexual misconduct accusations from men and boys  —  - James Charles' channel has been demonetized, YouTube confirmed.  — YouTube told Insider Charles had been “temporarily removed” from the Partner Program.
Rachel Levin / Outside Online:
As a disproportionate number of people who purchased homes in Tahoe in 2020 were tech employees from the Bay Area, locals worry about “Aspenification of Tahoe”  —  Rachel Levin is a San Francisco-based journalist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
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:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:55 AM ET, April 20, 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

Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Reuters:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC: