Techmeme
August 24, 2021, 9:30 PM

Top News

Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Microsoft says that Xbox Cloud Gaming will expand beyond PC and mobile to its Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One consoles this holiday season  —  - Microsoft said its Xbox Cloud Gaming service will arrive on console this holiday.  — Cloud gaming lets people stream games over the internet rather than install them locally.
Michael Finnegan / Los Angeles Times:
FBI says a man phished thousands of iCloud accounts via an email scam where he impersonated customer support, stealing 620K photos and 9K videos until mid-2018  —  A Los Angeles County man broke into thousands of Apple iCloud accounts and collected more than 620,000 private photos and videos …
The Citizen Lab:
Investigation details ForcedEntry, an iMessage “zero-click” attack used by NSO Group that circumvents iOS 14's BlastDoor, likely used by the Bahraini government  —  Summary & Key Findings  — We identified nine Bahraini activists whose iPhones were successfully hacked …
Sascha Segan / PCMag:
Testing of carriers across the US shows T-Mobile with a commanding lead in 5G, winning speed tests in 24 cities and rural regions to AT&T's eight, Verizon's two  —  For our 12th annual test, we drove more than 10,000 miles, speed-testing AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon 4G and 5G in cities, towns, and rural regions all over the US.
Erin Woo / New York Times:
TikTok partners with Shopify to launch a pilot program letting merchants add a shopping tab to their profiles and link to products in their posts  —  TikTok and Shopify, the e-commerce platform, said on Tuesday that they were working together to add the ability for consumers to shop directly in the TikTok app for the first time.
Patricia Nilsson / Financial Times:
OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely blames banks, including BNY Mellon, Metro Bank, JPMorgan, for its porn ban, but says Mastercard's rules had no bearing on the ban  —  Tim Stokely says Bank of New York Mellon ‘flagged and rejected’ all interbank wires linked to website
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Spotify says all US-based podcasters using Anchor can sell subscriptions to episodes available on RSS and Spotify, expanding internationally later  —  Plus new price tiers and email addresses  —  Spotify is broadening the number of people who can offer subscription podcasts and have their shows play on its service.
Axios:
California expands lawsuit against Activision Blizzard to include temp workers and says the game maker interfered with investigation by shredding pertinent docs  —  California has expanded its anti-discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, adding temporary workers to the female full …
Jessica Guynn / USA Today:
Researchers: Trump tweets with fact-check labels spread further on Twitter than those without; messages blocked by Twitter remained popular on Facebook, Reddit  —  Twitter blocked and labeled some Donald Trump's claims of election fraud in the run-up and aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Charles Riley / CNN:
Brian Chesky says Airbnb will provide free housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees without specifying for how long  —  London (CNN Business)Airbnb has pledged to provide free housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees.  —  CEO Brian Chesky said Tuesday that the program would begin immediately, and that Airbnb would pay for the stays.
Will Knight / Wired:
Cerebras Systems claims its hardware can now run a neural network with 120 trillion parameters, targeting a nascent market for massive NLP AI algorithms  —  Cerebras says its technology can run a neural network with 120 trillion connections—a hundred times what's achievable today.
New York Times:
Apple and Google call on the White House to oppose a South Korean bill, set to face a vote this week, that would mandate multiple payment systems for IAPs  —  A proposal in the South Korean legislature is an early test of how forcefully the Biden administration will defend the companies abroad while trying to trim their power at home.
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
NoRedInk, which aims to improve students' writing through a curriculum that pairs adaptive learning with Mad Libs-style prompts, raises $50M Series B  —  “In order to become a better writer, read your written words out loud.”  —  That's one of the first, and best, writing tips I ever received.
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, raises $300M Series C at a $3.9B valuation, up from $1.6B after raising $115M in April  —  Less than five months after raising $115 million, spend management startup Ramp announced today it has raised $300 million …
Matt Phillips / New York Times:
Profile of Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest, which manages $85B, whose aggressive bets on Tesla and others have earned her admiration from Reddit traders  —  Ms. Wood says the Holy Spirit moved her to strike out on her own after an up-and-down career in money management.
Joshua Brustein / Bloomberg:
Shield AI, which develops AI and self-driving tech for military and commercial aircraft, raises $210M as part of its Series D at a valuation of about $1.25B  —  Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL who served in Afghanistan and other overseas deployments, developed the idea for his startup Shield AI …
More: Shield AI

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Featured Podcasts

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How AIG Is Reinventing Insurance With AI | Peter Zaffino
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Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
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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.
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Varsha Bansal / Rest of World:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget: