Techmeme
September 7, 2021, 11:25 AM

Top News

ProPublica:
Investigation finds Facebook has over 1,000 contractors moderating WhatsApp, including private messages and media, undermining assurances of WhatsApp's privacy  —  When Mark Zuckerburg unveiled a new “privacy-focused vision” for Facebook in March 2019, he cited the company's global messaging service, WhatsApp, as a model.
Muyao Shen / CoinDesk:
President of El Salvador says the country bought 400 bitcoins on Monday, as the law making bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador goes into effect  —  El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter his government bought 200 BTC on Monday, a day before the country's Bitcoin Law …
Financial Times:
Crypto adoption is accelerating in the developing world, especially in regions with a history of financial instability, like sub-Saharan Africa and Asia Pacific  —  In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, a software coder bills her client in London and is paid in bitcoin …
Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:
Crypto exchange Bitso says it is the core service provider for El Salvador's Chivo wallet and will work with Silvergate Bank to facilitate USD transactions  —  Crypto platform Bitso said it's a core service provider for Chivo, the Bitcoin wallet developed by El Salvador's government …
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
A look at Freedom Phone, a $500 device aimed at right-wing users and created by a 22-year-old bitcoin millionaire, who admitted it was made by China's Umidigi  —  A 22-year-old Bitcoin millionaire wants Republicans to ditch their iPhones for a low-end handset that he hopes to turn into a political tool.
TechCrunch:
ProtonMail is under fire for disclosing a French activist's IP address to Swiss authorities; ProtonMail had claimed to only log IPs in “extreme criminal cases”  —  ProtonMail, a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden reveals he left due to burnout, and says the industry has a sustainability problem due to rising game development costs  —  This week: a game about ancient history and a massive video game company investment.  But first: the former boss …
Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:
A look at Microsoft's M12 venture arm: 107 investments in total, focused on financial returns rather than acquisitions, expansion into seed rounds, and more  —  From the outside, M12's mission likely seems simple to most: Invest money from the second-most valuable technology company in the world …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Deep dive on AWS, with margin estimates for specific services including S3, EC2, and EBS, as AWS has made up over half of Amazon's operating profit since 2014  —  - Amazon's cloud division doesn't break out gross margins by services, but some outsiders estimate that storage and network offerings could be highly lucrative.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Generate Sample Data the Way You Want It Using AI, for Free  —  Finding good sample data is harder than it should be.If you've ever tried to test a dashboard, build a demo, or train a team on an analytics tool, you know the drill.
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Cloudflare CEO: We're Ready To Block Millions of Websites From AI — With Matthew Prince
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:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
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.
Access:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brian Singerman from GPx
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Training Data:
Making Cities Awesome: Peregrine's Nick Noone & Ben Rudolph
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 11:25 AM ET, September 7, 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

Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Liza Lin / Wall Street Journal:
Kathryn Dill / Wall Street Journal: