Techmeme
July 14, 2021, 7:45 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple and Goldman Sachs are working on a “buy now, pay later” service to let consumers pay for any Apple Pay purchase in installments, rivaling Affirm  —  - Service to let users pay off any Apple Pay purchase over time  — Fresh partnership with Apple could boost Goldman consumer push
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has asked suppliers to build up to 90M next-generation iPhones this year, up 20% YoY; this year's update will be more incremental than iPhone 12  —  - Company targets 90 million shipments of this year's new models  — Iterative iPhone upgrade to boost chips, cameras and displays
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Inside the World Wide Web Consortium as members debate the future of online privacy, with browsers' engineers often at odds with companies that rely on tracking  —  James Rosewell could see his company's future was in jeopardy.  —  It was January 2020, and Google had just announced key details …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Microsoft says the attacks targeting SolarWinds Serv-U software with a now-patched RCE exploit are the work of Chinese hacking group DEV-0322  —  Microsoft said today that the recent wave of attacks that have targeted SolarWinds file transfer servers are the work of a Chinese hacking group …
Queenie Wong / CNET:
Facebook is rolling out the ability for Group administrators to designate “group experts”, partly in an effort to help Facebook combat misinformation  —  The social network has been trying to combat misinformation by elevating authoritative sources.
The Information:
In April, Amazon acquired over a dozen staff from Facebook to boost its own low earth orbit satellite internet efforts; Amazon paid Facebook to seal agreement  —  Amazon has acquired a team of more than a dozen wireless internet experts from Facebook in an effort to boost its multibillion-dollar effort …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
The current version of Apple's Weather app won't show 69 degrees, rounding a degree, potentially due to sourcing data in Celsius and converting to Fahrenheit  —  It's not so nice  —  If you're an iPhone user, the weather is always a particularly nice 70 degrees.  Or 68 degrees.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Discord buys Sentropy, which emerged from stealth last summer with AI-powered moderation software to fight online abuse and $13M in funding  —  The online chat platform Discord is buying Sentropy, a company that makes AI-powered software to detect and remove online harassment and hate.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
REvil's infrastructure and websites are offline, including its data leak sites, less than two weeks after attacking 1,500+ businesses with ransomware via Kaseya  —  The infrastructure and websites for the REvil ransomware operation have mysteriously gone offline as of last night.
Telegraph:
Excerpt from An Ugly Truth: from Jan. 2014 to Aug. 2015, Facebook fired 52 staffers for exploiting access to user data, prompting an overhaul of data governance  —  In an exclusive extract, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang reveal how an ethos of openness meant private information could be misused
New York Times:
Two GOP lawmakers are pointing to previously unreleased emails to allege that Amazon unfairly used its influence in competing for Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract  —  Newly released emails show particular praise of Amazon among top Defense Department officials during the Trump administration …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Microsoft fixes 13 critical flaws, four of which are under active attack, and updates a fix for the “PrintNightmare” RCE flaw impacting Windows Print Spooler  —  Microsoft today released updates to patch at least 116 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based YuLife, an insurance startup that offers gamified rewards, raises $70M Series B at a $346M valuation  —  Life insurance — financial protection you buy against your death — may not read like the liveliest of industries on paper.  But a life insurance startup that believes …
More: Tech.eu, FinSMEs, and Insider
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a $99 MagSafe Battery Pack for the iPhone 12 lineup, with a total capacity of 1460mAh, arriving July 19  —  Apple today released the MagSafe Battery Pack accessory for iPhone 12 models.  Many months after the iPhone 12 series was unveiled, Apple has quietly released …
Selina Xu / Bloomberg:
China-based AI chatbot developer Xiaoice, which spun off from Microsoft last year, raises $77M Series A at a $1B valuation and says it has over 660M users  —  - Chinese venture raises capital from Hillhouse, GGV, NetEase  — AI platform powers chatbots used in cars, digital assistants

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Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
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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.
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More News

Shannon Vavra / The Daily Beast:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Earlier Picks

Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg:
Mikael Thalen / The Daily Dot: