Techmeme
October 31, 2021, 6:45 AM

Top News

Gene Park / Washington Post:
Meta is just playing catch-up as Roblox, Steam VR, VRChat, and other platforms have already developed metaverse-like experiences  —  In addition to announcing Facebook's rebranding to Meta on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg delivered a number of lofty promises about the metaverse and its features.
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In 2018, Oculus' Jason Rubin sent a paper to Facebook executives laying the foundation for Meta's ambitions and detailing the need to own the VR market  —  - In 2018, an Oculus executive named Jason Rubin wrote a 50-page document headlined “The Metaverse” that he sent to a Facebook board member and some top execs.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Facebook's metaverse is designed to solve several problems: an aging userbase, dependence on Google and Apple, regulatory risk, and reputational damage  —  If his new strategy works — a big if — it could help address several of Facebook's biggest problems.
Ethan Zuckerman / The Atlantic:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Roblox has been down since about 7PM ET on October 28, with some speculating the outage may be related to a Chipotle promotion, but the company denies a link  —  Roblox is having some major server issues  —  Roblox has been down for more than two days, with the game and its related website offline for millions of players.
Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia:
Beijing-based Huice, a SaaS provider that helps e-commerce businesses manage orders and more, raises a $312M Series D led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2  —  Huice, which develops software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to enable smart retail, has raised $312 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund 2.
Delia Cai / Vanity Fair:
Q&A with EIC Nilay Patel on The Verge's 10th anniversary, tech media's advance from early breathless gadget reviews, subject-source relationships, and more  —  After a decade covering the Zucks, Googles, and Ubers of the scene, the Verge editor in chief reflects on tech's troublesome relationship with the rest of the world.
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Apple's $19 Polishing Cloth has become its most back-ordered new product with shipments delayed until January; source: the company isn't surprised by the demand  —  It's a $19 cloth.  —  OAKLAND, Calif — Apple this month unveiled an array of new gadgets: more powerful MacBook laptop computers …
Foreign Affairs:
How the rhetoric surrounding techno-globalism has shifted, from countries advocating for a free, open internet to imposing limits to protect national interests  —  Two key words were missing from the statements that followed the inaugural in-person summit in September of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue …
Bloomberg:
A look at student activity monitoring software GoGuardian, whose usage in US schools exploded during lockdowns as some say it adds to kids' psychological strain  —  The pandemic caused schools to embrace laptops, tablets, Zoom, and an app called GoGuardian that tracks everything students (and, sometimes, parents) do online.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Meta acquires Within, the company behind VR fitness game Supernatural; Within will continue working on the game and help Meta improve future VR hardware  —  The company already owns Beat Saber  —  Meta has announced that the studio behind VR workout game Supernatural will be joining the company …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
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

Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Insane Hidden AI Spending, Ranking Anthropic vs. OpenAI, AI For Travel Debate
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.
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 6:45 AM ET, October 31, 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 Glasner / Crunchbase News:
Damon Beres / Wired:

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
New York Times:
The Verge:
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record: