Techmeme
August 21, 2021, 12:00 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Facebook shelved its content transparency report in Q1 fearing public criticism, as the most-viewed link suggested a doctor died due to a COVID-19 vaccine  —  The company praised itself this week for being “the most transparent platform on the internet.”  —  When Facebook this week released …
Jeong Park / Sacramento Bee:
A California superior court judge rules that Prop 22 is unconstitutional because it infringes on the Legislature's power to set workplace standards  —  A California judge on Friday ruled that a 2020 ballot measure exempting rideshare and food delivery drivers from a state labor law …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
OnlyFans shares new TOS for “sexually explicit conduct”: no intercourse, masturbation, exhibition of genitals; any such content must be removed before Dec. 1  —  Sex and masturbation, whether simulated or real, aren't allowed  —  On Thursday the video and image sharing site …
Noel Titheradge / BBC:
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo:
FTC's updated suit against Facebook incorrectly claims that Facebook has driven up ad prices via monopoly control over the personal social networking market  —  re-filed its antitrust lawsuit against Facebook  —  after a federal judge deemed that the agency failed to prove …
Matthew Hutson / New Yorker:
Profile of Cerebras, which made the world's largest chip by using a “wafer-scale” approach that offers one possibility for AI chips to keep up with Moore's law  —  In the race to accelerate A.I., the Silicon Valley company Cerebras has landed on an unusual strategy: go big.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
Chainalysis: global cryptocurrency adoption grew 881% YoY, led by Vietnam, India, and Pakistan, according to metrics such as P2P exchange trading volume  —  - Global crypto adoption has taken off in the last year, up 881%, with Vietnam, India and Pakistan firmly in the lead, according to new data from Chainalysis.
April Glaser / NBC News:
Facebook rolls out new security features for people in Afghanistan, including a one-click tool to quickly lock accounts and limit account discoverability  —  Facebook said Thursday it is rolling out new user controls for people in Afghanistan who are rushing to delete their digital footprints …
Biz Carson / Protocol:
Q&A with Nick Shenkin, an SF-based FBI special agent, on warning big tech companies about economic espionage and IP theft by Russian and Chinese spies and more  —  When FBI special agent Nick Shenkin starts talking about spies in Silicon Valley, he's not describing a James Bond movie …
Bloomberg:
CEO of South Korea's online retail giant Coupang is facing renewed criticism about working conditions after a fire damaged one of its main fulfillment centers  —  - Coupang CEO Kim under fire for worker treatment in South Korea  — Company says it takes safety and health of employees seriously
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Cloudflare says it mitigated a 17.2M rps DDoS attack last month, ~3x larger than any previous DDoS attack, targeting a customer in the financial industry  —  Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare disclosed today that it mitigated the largest volumetric distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that was recorded to date.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Google says it's shutting down the standalone Android Auto for Phone Screens app with Android 12, in favor of Google Assistant driving mode in Google Maps  —  Android 12 will mark the end of the stopgap app  —  Google has confirmed it's shutting down the standalone “Android Auto for Phone Screens” app with Android 12.

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:
Turn every support session into a data point that works for you  —  Most support teams close a session and move on.  The issue gets resolved, the ticket gets marked done, and whatever insight that session generated quietly disappears.
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

Access:
This AI will push back if you're rude to it
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber: AI Already Feels Pain, Loves, and Is Self-Aware
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Inside Podcasting's Fight Over Netflix, YouTube, and Creator Control
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.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Sam Blond from Monaco
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Training Data:
Anthropic's Katelyn Lesse & Angela Jiang: Building an Ecosystem, not a Walled Garden
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
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 12:00 PM ET, August 21, 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

Washington Post:
Mike Peterson / AppleInsider:

Earlier Picks

Kate Beioley / Financial Times:
Josh Horwitz / Reuters:
Sean O'Kane / The Verge: