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:
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:
Simplifying benefits management in Zoho People  —  Let's consider a new hire on their first day of orientation.  They receive a brief introduction to the benefits plans, and almost immediately, questions start to surface …
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

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.
Invest Like the Best:
John Kim - How to Raise a Few Billion Dollars
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
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 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: