Techmeme
August 4, 2021, 4:15 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Facebook says it has disabled the accounts, apps, Pages, and access to its APIs for researchers running NYU's Ad Observatory Project, citing TOS violations  —  - Company says researchers of political ads were scraping data  — NYU's Ad Observatory got cease-and-desist letter last October
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Sony beats estimates with Q1 operating profit of $2.6B and says the PS5 is no longer selling at a loss; PS Plus subscribers declined to 46.3M from 47.6M  —  - Sony expecting more from music streaming and digital cameras  — PlayStation software sales and subscriber additions slowed
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft pauses free trials of its new Windows 365 service, which lets users stream Windows 10 or 11 via web browser, after “significant demand”  —  Windows 365 lets you stream a cloud PC to a web browser  —  Microsoft launched its new cloud PC Windows 365 service earlier this week …
Maggie Fitzgerald / CNBC:
Robinhood shares surged as much as 80% on Wednesday, reaching $85, with trading halted several times, and closed the day at $70.39 up 50.41%  —  Robinhood shares soared again on Wednesday, extending a wild rally in the newly public stock trading app's stock.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Internal document: Google fired dozens of engineers between 2018 and 2020 for abusing their access to data and tools  —  Some allegations potentially center around accessing Google user or employee data.  —  Joseph Cox  —  Google has fired dozens of employees between 2018 and 2020 …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Email service Superhuman, which charges $30/month and hasn't formally launched, raises $75M Series C led by IVP, source says at a $825M valuation  —  Covering venture capital, software and startups  —  When Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra agreed to meet with former Dropbox CFO Ajay Vashee's …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Instacart hires longtime Facebook ads chief Carolyn Everson, who left in June, as president, starting Sept. 7, following other high-profile hires from Facebook  —  - Weeks after poaching Facebook's Fidji Simo as CEO, Instacart hires Carolyn Everson as president.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Activision beats expectations in Q2 with revenue of $2.29B, up 19% YoY, and net bookings of $1.92B, down only 7% YoY, notes risks of the sexual harassment suit  —  Activision Blizzard reported earnings today that beat Wall Street's and its own expectations with 19% revenue growth to $2.29 billion for the second quarter ended June 30.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Sam Shead / CNBC:
After a report showed Amazon destroying millions of unsold items in the UK, Amazon introduces two programs to reduce waste, including reselling used items  —  - The so-called Fulfilment by Amazon programs, announced in a blog post on Wednesday, will help to build a circular economy, the company said.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
WhatsApp is rolling out a View Once feature for photos and videos that disappear from the chat after the recipient opens it  —  There and gone  —  WhatsApp is rolling out its “View Once” feature today, which deletes photos or videos from your chat after they've been opened by the recipient.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
On-demand movie and TV service FandangoNOW has merged with video streaming service Vudu, which will become Roku's official movie and TV store  —  Last year, movie ticketing and discovery business Fandango, a division of NBCUniversal, bought the on-demand video streaming service Vudu from Walmart …
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Zeni, which offers AI-powered tools to startups to manage finances for a flat monthly fee starting at $299, raises $34M Series B led by Elevation Capital  —  Zeni, a Palo Alto fintech company providing real-time financial services data to venture-backed startups, raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital.
Kate Kaye / Digiday:
California AG's case examples of CCPA enforcement seem to indicate that companies can't rely on trade groups' blanket opt-out tools not tailored to CCPA  —  For more than a year advertisers and publishers had few clues for detecting how California regulators would enforce the state's privacy law.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Human Interest, a 401(k) provider for SMBs that promises zero transaction fees, raises $200M at a $1B valuation, less than six months after its $55M Series C  —  Less than six months after raising $55 million in a Series C round of funding, SMB 401(k) provider Human Interest today announced …
Bloomberg:
A look at Amazon's dilemma around mandating worker vaccinations, which could alienate the many virus skeptics in its warehouse ranks, amid a tight labor market  —  While much of Corporate America scrambled to adjust Covid-19 policies this summer in response to a surge of cases …
Josh Ye / South China Morning Post:
After criticism from China, Tencent says it will limit playing time on flagship Honor of Kings for under 18s to one hour per day and not between 10PM and 8AM  —  Gamers under the age of 18 will have their playing time limited to one hour on regular days and two hours on public holidays Honour …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
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.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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.
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 4:15 PM ET, August 4, 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

Liana Baker / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Lauren Kaori Gurley / VICE:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch: