Techmeme
November 22, 2021, 11:40 AM

Top News

Jennifer Meierhans / BBC:
Spotify removes shuffle play as the default option on albums for premium users, so tracks play in the order artists intended, after Adele requests the change  —  Adele has persuaded Spotify to take the shuffle button off all album pages so tracks play in the artist's own order.
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Google is rolling out a Messages update that shows iMessage reactions as Emojis  —  The latest update to Google Messages prepares for a new way to handle the annoying iMessage reaction messages often seen in mixed group chats.  —  Update: This feature has already begun rolling out for some, allowing us to see it in action.
Washington Post:
Sources and internal docs show Facebook's race-blind policies around hate speech left minorities more likely to see derogatory and racist language on the site  —  Last year, researchers at Facebook showed executives an example of the kind of hate speech circulating on the social network …
Tom Matsuda / The Block:
Crypto payments service MoonPay, which lets users buy with card, Apple Pay, and more, raises $555M led by Coatue and Tiger Global at a $3.4B valuation  —  Quick Take  — MoonPay has closed a $555 million raise led by Coatue and Tiger Global.  Existing investor Blossom Capital and new investors NEA …
Sujeong Lim / Counterpoint Research:
Global smartwatch shipments in Q3 2021: Samsung's share rose to 17% with Galaxy Watch 4 series launch, retaking #2 behind Apple, whose share dropped 10% YoY  —  - Samsung achieved its highest quarterly shipments with the launch of the Galaxy Watch 4 series, narrowing the gap with Apple.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Nreal Light review: compact design and relatively affordable, but limited device and app support, inconsistent UX, and the mixed-reality mode is patchy  —  Through a glass, darkly  —  Nreal has sold me on the appeal of watching TV with a pair of glasses, and I wish I could recommend buying the glasses that did it.
More: Tom's Hardware and CNET
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Use of shopping bots that scour retail sites for hard-to-find items soared during the pandemic; one developer is selling such bots for $40 plus a $30/month fee  —  Use of programs that scour retail sites for hard-to-find items has soared since the start of the pandemic
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Jay Last, a pioneer who founded Fairchild Semiconductor, which laid the technical, financial, and cultural foundation for Silicon Valley, dies at 92  —  He and seven others left the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to create their own silicon company, Fairchild Semiconductor …
Martha Muir / Financial Times:
Analysis: 14 of the world's biggest crypto mining companies moved 2M+ machines out of China following the country's ban in May, with a majority going to Russia  —  China's ban on cryptocurrency mining in May triggered an exodus of miners and a global race to relocate millions of the clunky …
Anita Ramaswamy / TechCrunch:
Render, which offers cloud-based DevOps tools, raises a $20M Series A led by Addition, following a $4.5M seed in October 2020  —  DevOps cloud platform Render, which won our Disrupt SF 2019 Startup Battlefield, announced today that it closed a $20 million Series A funding round led …

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Adam Minter / Bloomberg:
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
Andrés Engler / CoinDesk:
Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review: