Techmeme
August 26, 2021, 11:55 AM

Top News

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
After White House meeting, Google will spend $10B over five years and train 100K IT and data workers, Apple pledges supply chain security improvements, and more  —  - The White House hosted a cybersecurity summit with CEOs in sectors ranging from tech to insurance.
Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: TSMC plans to increase prices by ~10% for advanced chips and ~20% for less advanced chips, starting later this year or early next  —  TSMC to increase prices of most advanced chips by roughly 10%; less advanced chips will cost about 20% more  —  The world's largest contract chip maker …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple launches News Partner Program, which lowers commissions on in-app purchases to 15% for news publishers who participate in Apple News  —  Apple today is launching a new program that will allow subscription news organizations that participate in the Apple News app and meet certain requirements …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
A history of Google's messaging apps and how a lack of any kind of top-down messaging leadership has led to a decade and a half of failed messaging platforms  —  Sixteen years after the launch of Google Talk, Google messaging is still a mess.  —  Google Talk, Google's first-ever instant messaging platform …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Microsoft has promoted Chief Product Officer Panos Panay to executive vice president role and has added him to its senior leadership team  —  Microsoft Corp. promoted Chief Product Officer Panos Panay to the role of executive vice president and added him to the senior leadership team …
Wall Street Journal:
Q&A with John Binns, a 21-year-old American living in Turkey, who claims responsibility for the recent T-Mobile hack and says its security is “awful”  —  A 21-year-old American said he used an unprotected router to access millions of customer records in the mobile carrier's latest breach
Joan E. Solsman / CNET:
YouTube says it has removed over 1M videos related to COVID misinformation since Feb. 2020 and removes 10M videos per quarter, most of which have <10 views  —  But the 1 million coronavirus-related takedowns since the start of the pandemic are difficult to put in context, because of YouTube's gigantic scale.
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
UK government says it will move away from EU's GDPR after Brexit, including possibly ending cookie consent popups, and names John Edwards as preferred ICO head  —  Culture secretary says move could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests online
Ian Carlos Campbell / The Verge:
Adam Mosseri says Instagram plans to more prominently feature photos and videos in search results in the future along with traditional accounts and hashtags  —  How search works and what it will be able to do next  —  Instagram plans to more prominently feature photos and videos in search results …
Reuters:
DOJ and SEC charged ex-HeadSpin CEO Manish Lachwani with allegedly defrauding investors out of $80M from 2018 to 2020 in an effort to boost HeadSpin's valuation  —  U.S. authorities on Wednesday charged a co-founder and former chief executive of HeadSpin with defrauding investors …
New York Times:
Sources: Facebook has approached experts about forming an advisory body for how it handles global election matters, including political ads and misinformation  —  The social network has contacted academics to create a group to advise it on thorny election-related decisions, said people with knowledge of the matter.
New York Times:
A look at China's evolving approach to state-sponsored hacking, which borrows from Russia and Iran and increasingly relies on private sector hackers  —  The state security ministry is recruiting from a vast pool of private-sector hackers who often have their own agendas and sometimes use …
Anna Edgerton / Bloomberg:
Study: lobbying dollars spent by US tech companies have increased with market concentration; the pattern is similar to pharmaceutical and oil & gas industries  —  - Pattern is similar to pharma and oil and gas industries  — Study says antitrust laws should consider impact on democracy
Insider:
In an abrupt reversal, OnlyFans suspends its October 1 policy change banning porn after securing “assurances” and aims to provide “a home for all creators”  —  - OnlyFans is reversing its recent decision to ban porn.  — It had planned to prohibit sexually explicit …
FinSMEs:
Utah-based Aumni, which provides a data analytics service for private capital investors, raises $50M Series B led by JP Morgan  —  Aumni, a Salt Lake City UT-based investment analytics platform, raised $50M in Series B funding.  —  The round was led by J.P. Morgan with participation …
More: Finextra
Sujeong Lim / Counterpoint Research:
Apple Watch active user base crossed 100M globally in Q2, as the smartwatch market grew 27% YoY and the sub-$100 segment grew 547% YoY  —  - The market grew a healthy 27% YoY, thanks to strong demand for sub-$100 smartwatches.  — Samsung and Garmin posted remarkable YoY growth even as Apple maintained its lead.
More: 9to5Google and phonearena.comTweets: @neiltwitz

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Kevin C. Tofel / About Chromebooks:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch: