Techmeme
July 18, 2021, 12:45 AM

Top News

Guy Rosen / About Facebook:
Facebook says their data shows a 50% decline in vaccine hesitancy among US users, refuting Biden's claim that it's “killing people” by allowing COVID-19 misinfo  —  At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Biden says platforms like Facebook are “killing people” with the way they are handling COVID-19 vaccine misinfo, as White House calls on Facebook to do more  —  - President Joe Biden on Friday said platforms like Facebook are killing people by allowing Covid-19 vaccine misinformation on their services.
Gigi Sukin / Axios:
Facebook says it won't be “distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts” in response to Biden's comment that social media is “killing people”  —  Facebook fired back on Friday evening after President Biden earlier said that social media platforms are …
Flavia Rotondi / Bloomberg:
An Italian museum is using cameras to monitor people looking at artwork, to define a work of art's “attraction value” and accordingly change museum layouts  —  As Italy's museums and galleries welcome back tourists and try to recoup some of the 190 million euros ($225 million) …
Bloomberg Law:
TurboTax developer Intuit will leave the IRS Free File Program, which drew scrutiny in recent years after an investigation found Intuit hid free-filing options  —  Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax, is leaving an IRS program that offers millions of Americans the ability to file their taxes for free.
Sophia Kunthara / Crunchbase News:
US startups led by Black women raised ~$494M so far in 2021, surpassing the $484M raised in all of 2020 but just 0.34% of the total US venture funding in 2021  —  Editor's note: This article is part of Something Ventured, an ongoing series by Crunchbase News examining diversity and access …
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Current and former insiders shed light on IBM's missteps with Watson, as IBM takes a less ambitious approach to commercializing Watson in the corporate market  —  IBM's artificial intelligence was supposed to transform industries and generate riches for the company.  Neither has panned out.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Sony Xperia 1 III review: nice design with a 120Hz display and several manual camera modes, but expensive at $1,300, will get just two years of security updates  —  A good camera system and top-notch features, but it's priced too high to recommend  —  The Sony Xperia 1 III is a great phone that I won't recommend to many people.
Wall Street Journal:
How decision-making by Masayoshi Son, who estimated WeWork would be worth $10T by 2028 and wanted Adam Neumann to be “crazier”, led to WeWork's implosion  —  Adam Neumann and Masayoshi Son pushed WeWork to new heights as they challenged each other to think big and bet billions.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Report: Apple tapped VP of technology Kevin Lynch to help lead its car project; Lynch had a major role in development of Watch and associated health features  —  As Apple continues its work on self-driving car technology, it is shifting one of its most well-known executives to the Project Titan team.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Pro Tips: 4 tips to overcome data problems in your CRM  —  Most CRM data problems don't look like problems.  At a glance, your CRM looks fine: records exist, fields are filled, and reports run.
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:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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.
Sources:
Satya Nadella on Microsoft's agent bet and AI's trust problem
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:45 AM ET, July 18, 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

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Ashley Carman / The Verge: