Techmeme
August 9, 2021, 6:50 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Two groups of senators say they are nearing a last-minute deal on crypto oversight, but an agreement may come too late to get added to the infrastructure bill  —  - Senators say they are nearing last-minute crypto compromise  — The amendment may not get called up for a vote in Senate
Washington Post:
How the cryptocurrency industry gained influence in Washington and became one of the biggest stumbling blocks holding up the passage of the infrastructure bill  —  The infrastructure bill is in part stalled as negotiations proceed on how closely to regulate the crypto industry
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
An overview of Apple's three new “child safety” initiatives, what critics are getting wrong, and the completely legitimate slippery slope concerns from experts  —  Apple yesterday announced three new “Child Safety” initiatives: … (CSAM stands for Child Sexual Abuse Material —  a.k.a. child pornography.
More: The Hacker Factor Blog, BetaNews, MacRumors, ZDNet, Reason, TidBITS, iMore, OSnews, The Overspill, SlashGear, The Eclectic Light Company, Privacy International, Washington Examiner, AppleInsider, Mashable, and iPhone in Canada Blog
Alex Stamos / @alexstamos:
[Thread] Apple's child safety protections announcement hurt the effort to find a policy balance on safety and privacy aspects of e2e encrypted comms products  —  The chatter around Apple's recent announcement of new child safety protections is rather frustrating, as the amplification/knowledge ratio seems rather high on this one. Apple's docs: https://www.apple.com/... A discussion with friends: https://twitter.com/...
Apple Privacy Letter:
More than 5,500 individuals and organizations sign an open letter asking Apple to halt the implementation of its proposed content monitoring technology  —  Security & Privacy Experts, Cryptographers, Researchers, Professors, Legal Experts and Apple Consumers Decry Apple's Planned Move …
Olivia Solon / NBC News:
Call center operator Teleperformance, which counts Apple, Amazon, and Uber as clients, wants to monitor staff working from home in Colombia, via AI-powered cams  —  Colombia-based call center workers who provide outsourced customer service to some of the nation's largest companies …
Ankush Das / It's FOSS News:
Firefox for Desktop lost ~46M MAUs, dropping from ~244M MAUs in Dec. 2018 to ~198M MAUs in July 2021, as users moved to Chrome and Chromium-based browsers  —  Mozilla's Firefox is losing users big time since 2018, why are users moving away from it?  Is this something to be worried about?
Reuters:
China sues Tencent, claiming WeChat's “youth mode” does not comply with the country's laws protecting minors  —  Beijing prosecutors initiated a civil public-interest lawsuit against a Tencent (0700.HK) subsidiary on Friday, saying the “youth mode” on the company's popular social …
Bloomberg:
Despite claims of diversity and inclusion, Asian Americans in Silicon Valley still face racism and are least likely to break into leadership positions  —  Tech companies love to crow about diversity and inclusion.  Workers see a racist “bait and switch.”  —  Silicon Valley executives sometimes seem …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Kitchen automation has risen during the pandemic, with robots from Miso Robotics, Chowbotics, and other startups now replacing some jobs in fast food chains  —  Fast-food chains are working with a host of startups to bring automation to their kitchens  —  In a White Castle just southeast of Chicago …
Tweets: @wsj, @mileskimball, @mims, @mims, and @mims

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