Techmeme
August 3, 2021, 1:50 PM

Top News

Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Activision Blizzard says president J. Allen Brack is leaving the company, replaced by Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, as the fallout from CA lawsuit continues  —  Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra will take over as co-leaders  —  In the last week or so, we've learned about the state of California filing …
Chong Koh Ping / Wall Street Journal:
After Chinese state media criticized online gaming as “opium for the mind” in a now-deleted article, Tencent announces stricter rules for young users  —  Shares of NetEase and Bilibili also suffer steep falls  —  Shares of Tencent Holdings Ltd. and rivals plummeted Tuesday …
Bloomberg:
Q&A with SEC chair Gary Gensler on protecting cryptocurrency investors from fraud, regulating the industry, Bitcoin ETFs, and other SEC priorities like GameStop  —  It's become a parlor game in Washington, on Wall Street, and in Silicon Valley to figure out where U.S. Securities …
The Information:
Facebook confirms it is building a team of AI researchers to study ways of analyzing encrypted data without decrypting it, potentially helping better target ads  —  Facebook is bulking up a team of artificial intelligence researchers, including a key hire from Microsoft …
Rainey Reitman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The confusing language in the infrastructure bill's crypto provision suggests that nearly any entity in crypto is a broker and must collect their users' data  —  The forthcoming Senate draft of Biden's infrastructure bill—a 2,000+ page bill designed to update the United States' roads …
Andrew Kersley / Wired UK:
Sources: well over 100 UK-based employees at Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery unit have lost their jobs since 2019, as the company scales back its ambitions  —  Amazon has triggered mass redundancies and transfers as it winds down a huge part of its UK drone delivery business
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Spotify is testing Spotify Plus, a low-cost tier that includes ads but doesn't impose limits on track skipping and lets users pick specific songs to play  —  Spotify Plus is being piloted with a ‘limited number’ of users  —  Spotify Plus is a new $.99 subscription tier being piloted …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple rolls out three new AMD Radeon Pro graphic card modules for Intel-based Mac Pros; the options range from $2,400 to $5,600 in build-to-order configurations  —  Apple has rolled out three new graphics card modules for the Intel-powered Mac Pro today.  The new graphics card modules include …
Antoine Gara / Forbes:
How Michael Dell oversaw Dell's expansion after taking it private, growing the company to $75B, by focusing on providing infrastructure to businesses and others  —  After years battling Silicon Valley skeptics and Wall Street adversaries, Michael Dell has pulled off the deal of the century …
Boris Metodiev / Strategy Analytics:
Xiaomi became Europe's top smartphone vendor in Q2 with 12.7M units shipped, up 67.1% YoY, followed by Samsung with 12M, down 7% YoY, and Apple with 9.6M  —  According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Europe smartphone shipments grew a strong +14% YoY to 50.1 million units in Q2 2021 …
Martin Matishak / The Record:
A bipartisan Senate investigation finds that, despite years of warnings, many US government agencies have not established effective cybersecurity programs  —  Several major federal agencies continue to fail to address recurring cybersecurity vulnerabilities or implement basic standards …
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Citizen launches Protect, a $20/month service that offers access to a Citizen operator and other features, after a 100,000-user beta test  —  After months of testing with upwards of 100,000 beta testers, Citizen today is launching its premium Protect offering for all users.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers were able to quickly circumvent security protections of a laptop that followed virtually all NIST recommendations, including TPM and UEFI SecureBoot  —  Sometimes, locking down a laptop with the latest defenses isn't enough.  —  Let's say you're a large company that has just shipped …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Google unveils Pixel 6, with 6.4" 90Hz display, and Pixel 6 Pro, with 6.7" 120Hz display and 4x optical zoom, with a Google-designed Tensor SoC, coming in fall  —  Google's new Tensor SoC is the heart of its next phone  —  Google is announcing the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro today …
Sam Rutherford / Gizmodo:
Dmitry Smilyanets / The Record:
Interview with BlackMatter, a new ransomware group that only targets companies with $100M+ revenue and says it will avoid certain industries like healthcare  —  Editor's Note: In July, a new ransomware gang started posting advertisements on various cybercrime forums announcing that it was seeking …
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Apple makes Magic Keyboard with Touch ID available as a standalone product for $149; the keyboard is only compatible with Apple silicon Macs  —  Apple has made the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, which previously was only available with the purchase of the new 24-inch iMac, available for purchase individually for $179.

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:
App Spotlight: Grow Payments for Zoho CRM  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
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:
OpenAI Finally Ships Its Superapp, Meta's AI Price War, ChatGPT Cheating At Brown
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Radical AI's Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The 'Waymo' Lab For New Materials
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.
Hard Fork:
Do Social Media Bans Work? + A Conversation About A.I. Consciousness + Tool Time
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
The AI writing app fighting AI slop
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity
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.
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 1:50 PM ET, August 3, 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

Yael Eisenstat / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Kim Willsher / The Guardian:
Taylor Lorenz / New York Times:
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet: