Techmeme
October 12, 2021, 10:15 AM

Top News

Ivana Saric / Axios:
Bruce Haring / Deadline:
New York Times:
Katrina Manson / Financial Times:
Ex-Pentagon software chief Nicolas Chaillan, who recently resigned, says China is headed for global dominance due to advances in AI, ML, and cyber capabilities  —  Nicolas Chaillan speaks of ‘good reason to be angry’ as Beijing heads for ‘global dominance’ through technological innovation
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Twitter now lets web users remove followers without having to block them, after testing the option for over a month  —  All Twitter users can now remove a follower without having to block them.  The company started testing this option last month, and starting today, everyone will have access to it.
Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:
Microsoft makes a preview version of Windows Subsystem for Linux for Windows 11 available in the Microsoft Store, decoupling the app from the Windows image  —  Microsoft is taking the first step toward making WSL available as a decoupled app available via the Microsoft Store via a first preview release.
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Instagram says it is testing Activity Feed notifications in the US that will alert users of service outages and technical issues  —  One week after a massive Facebook outage that took all of the social network's apps offline for more than six hours, Instagram says it's testing notifications …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Microsoft says it mitigated a 2.4Tbps DDoS attack on an Azure customer at the end of August, breaking AWS' record of mitigating a 2.3Tbps attack in Feb. 2020  —  Microsoft said its Azure cloud service mitigated a 2.4 terabytes per second (Tbps) distributed denial of service attack this year …
Victoria Song / Gizmodo:
Tile revamps its lineup with IP67 water resistance, longer ranges, and safety features to avoid unwanted tracking, and announces Tile Ultra with UWB support  —  Tile adds a new lost and found feature, safety from unwanted tracking, and a new ultra-wideband tracker.  Sound familiar?  —  Alerts
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Magic Leap raises another $500M and says its second-gen AR headset will arrive in 2022 with a slimmer form factor and twice the field of view  —  Augmented reality startup Magic Leap has raised a new $500 million round of funding at a $2 billion valuation, CEO Peggy Johnson told CNBC on Monday.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Fairphone 4 review: water and dust resistant, five-year warranty, and years of software support, but camera is so-so and performance can be sluggish  —  It's been hard to fault Fairphone's sustainable credentials over the years, whether it's the company's lengthy support periods, easy repairability, or ethically sourced materials.
More: YouTube
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Canva announces Canva Video, a suite of video editing tools available as part of its free tier  —  Canva, the $40 billion software startup looking to make design accessible to everyone, has today announced a video editing suite.  —  Launched in 2013, Canva emerged during the design rennaissance …
More: ZDNet and Business Wire
Megan Graham / Wall Street Journal:
DoorDash introduces an ad platform, letting restaurants buy ads atop search results through a bidding system  —  Food-delivery apps are making deeper plays in advertising as they battle for revenue  —  DoorDash Inc. has started selling restaurant ads that appear atop the search results in its app …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
In an email to employees, Andy Jassy says Amazon will leave remote work decisions to team leaders, instead of having everyone return by January  —  [Updated below with additional details from internal FAQ.]  —  Amazon no longer plans to bring corporate employees back to the office en masse …

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Earlier Picks

Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Renée DiResta / The Atlantic:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: