Techmeme
November 19, 2021, 9:15 PM

Top News

Kelly Crow / Wall Street Journal:
ConstitutionDAO, which crowdfunded over $40M, loses Sotheby's US Constitution auction to a $43.2M bid from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin  —  The 53-year-old billionaire paid $43.2 million for the historic document; he plans to lend it to a museum in Arkansas  —  Chicago hedge-fund billionaire …
Matt Burgess / Wired UK:
DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android, a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers from Google and Facebook  —  The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.  —  At the end of April …
Reuters:
Internal documents describe how Amazon's lobbying helped it kill or undermine privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 US states  —  The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, speaking in 2018 after Amazon picked the state as the site of its new headquarters.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Defense Department solicits bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle for cloud contracts; DoD canceled its $10B JEDI contract in July  —  - The U.S. Defense Department expects to dole out cloud contracts to multiple companies.  — The new push comes after Pentagon scrapped its plans …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Alphabet X's Everyday Robots says it now has a fleet of 100+ robot prototypes that are autonomously performing tasks like wiping tables around its offices  —  Plus: The man behind a famous paradox, the laws that will govern the metaverse, and a deadly swarm of scorpions.  —  Hi, everyone!
Matthew Gault / VICE:
An artist and programmer in Australia creates The NFT Bay, a torrent website where anyone can download 15TB of NFT JPEGs  —  An artist and programer in Australia has uploaded 15 Terabytes of NFTs to a server.  Here's the torrent for them.  —  Matthew Gault
Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Thinkarete Lifestyle, cited by Facebook as Q3's most widely viewed Page in the US, seems to be a barely active drop-shipping scheme with stolen content  —  Read to the end for a fascinating thread about why music sucks now  —  Unmasking The Most Viral Page On Facebook
Catie Keck / The Verge:
A look at Open Connect, Netflix's in-house CDN that launched a decade ago and spans 17,000 servers across 158 countries  —  As hundreds of thousands of households worldwide tapped into Netflix's Squid Game last month, viewers may have taken something fairly extraordinary for granted.
Tim Starks / CyberScoop:
US regulators approve a rule requiring banks to report cyberattacks that disrupt operations or impact the US financial system within 36 hours, starting May 2022  —  Banks must report major cybersecurity incidents to federal officials within 36 hours under a rule that U.S. financial regulators finalized on Thursday.
Michelle F Davis / Bloomberg:
Benchling, which makes cloud-based software to manage biotech R&D, raises a $100M Series F at a $6.1B valuation; Benchling was last valued at $4B in April  —  - New investor Franklin Templeton leads round with Altimeter  — Companies using firm's software include Regeneron, Eli Lilly
Gilad Edelman / Wired:
Q&A with Integrity Institute's Jeff Allen on how Facebook's algorithm gives preference to engagement baiting, and how to address that from a design perspective  —  Jeff Allen, cofounder of the Integrity Institute and a former data scientist at Facebook, says social media companies need missions beyond “giving everyone a voice.”
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
A writer created a politically bland Facebook profile to test the app's algorithm for extreme content, and ended up being shown low-quality, clickbait posts  —  In 2019, a researcher at Facebook conducted an experiment to see whether the platform really has a tendency to send users …
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Disney adds Disney+ and ESPN+ to Hulu + Live TV, and will raise its monthly price by $5 to $70 for the ad-supported tier and $76 for ad-free, starting Dec. 21  —  Softening the blow of a monthly price hike, Disney is offering subscribers to Hulu's live TV service access to Disney+ and ESPN+ at no extra charge.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Environmental impact of remote support: Reducing carbon footprints in IT  —  Information technology is essential for powering core business processes and facilitating communication.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Magatte Wade, Unlocking Prosperity in Africa (#53)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 04/18 - Game Emulators On iOS And The Atlas Robot Lives!
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 PM ET, November 19, 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

Earlier Picks

Shannon Bond / NPR:
The Information:
Dallas Morning News:
Henry Powderly / Search Engine Land:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Wall Street Journal:
Mark Di Stefano / The Information: