Techmeme
December 14, 2021, 10:15 PM

Top News

Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
CISA orders US federal civilian agencies to patch systems affected by the Log4j vulnerability by December 24  —  The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has told federal civilian agencies to patch systems affected by the Log4Shell vulnerability by Christmas Eve.
Tal Eisner / Check Point Software:
Analysis: Log4j attacks rose from a few thousand on December 10 to 800K+ within 72 hours; exploits have been attempted on ~44% of corporate networks globally  —  Precisely one year after the SolarWinds Hack, the groundbreaking supply chain attack the world experienced, and while organizations …
Tim Starks / CyberScoop:
Bloomberg:
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Oppo unveils Air Glass, a 30g “assisted reality” wearable that projects 2D info into the user's FoV with a claimed three-hours usage, coming to China in Q1 2022  —  Coming to China early next year  —  Oppo has announced the Air Glass, an AR device that'll go on sale early next year.
Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
The UK's CMA issues an interim report voicing concerns over Apple and Google's “vice-like grip” on the mobile ecosystem, hinting at future antitrust action  —  The UK's antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
LogMeIn plans to spin out password management tool LastPass; LogMeIn acquired LastPass, now used by 30M people and 85K businesses, for $125M in 2015  —  LastPass has more than 30 million users  —  LogMeIn plans to spin out password management tool LastPass as a standalone company, it announced Tuesday.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
A look back at tech's three eras, from Bell Labs to Facebook, and why the metaverse is the fourth, defined by its bifurcation with the physical world  —  For the first several years of Stratechery I would write a year end article about “The State of Consumer Technology”; the last one I wrote …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
PwC report details the ransomware attack on Ireland's public health system in May 2021 and finds that IT admins failed to respond to multiple warning signs  —  The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers recently published lessons learned from the disruptive and costly ransomware attack in May 2021 on Ireland's public health system.
Source: HSEMore: ZDNet
CoinDesk:
Institutional bitcoin broker and custody services provider NYDIG raises $1B led by WestCap, valuing the startup at $7B+  —  NYDIG said Tuesday it raised a stunning $1 billion in a funding round that will value the firm at over $7 billion - and potentially expand bitcoin's reach into …
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Sources: Instagram passed 2B monthly active users this fall, up from 1B in June 2018, the last time it publicly disclosed the metric  —  - Instagram now has more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to employees with knowledge of the key metric.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
US OSHA is investigating the collapse of an Amazon warehouse in Illinois caused by a tornado, where six workers died, one was injured, and 45 were rescued  —  - OSHA is investigating a collapse at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois.  — The facility collapsed Friday as a tornado rolled through, killing six employees.
Eva Dou / Washington Post:
Internal Huawei marketing slides show a broader role in surveilling China's population than it has admitted to, including using voice ID and tracking shoppers  —  The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has long brushed off questions about its role in China's state surveillance, saying it just sells general-purpose networking gear.
Charmaine D'Silva / The Keyword:
Google details Android 12 Go edition, coming to low-end phones in 2022 with faster app launches, longer battery life, better sharing, and more privacy controls  —  Android (Go edition) launched in 2017 with the goal to help more people access the best of Android and Google through affordable, entry-level phones.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Twitter rolls out automatic video captions, with support for over 30 languages, but not for previously uploaded videos  —  Starting today, Twitter is rolling out auto-generated captions on videos.  This feature will make videos more accessible for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users.
Bloomberg:
Sources: the NSO Group is considering shuttering its Pegasus unit or selling it, amid US restrictions and the danger of defaulting on $450M in debt  —  - Moelis tapped to advise on talks with investment funds  — One plan would repurpose product for strictly defensive use
Emily Birnbaum / Politico:
Sources: the Internet Association plans to announce it's dissolving as soon as Wednesday, amid financial struggles  —  The Internet Association, once branded as Silicon Valley's most important trade group in Washington, plans to announce it is dissolving as soon as tomorrow, two people familiar with the situation told POLITICO.
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Course Hero, an online class study materials provider that acquired CliffsNotes and QuillBot in August, raises a $380M Series C at a $3.6B valuation  —  Course Hero, a Silicon Valley provider of online class study materials, has raised $380 million in Series C funding at a $3.6 billion valuation led by Wellington Management.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Nike acquires RTFKT, an NFT studio founded in 2020, for an undisclosed sum; RTFKT raised an $8M seed in May led by a16z at a $33.3M valuation  —  Nike is taking a plunge deeper into the world of crypto collectibles, announcing that they're acquiring the NFT studio RTFKT (pronounced “artifact").
John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Cosmic rays and radioactivity may present a challenge for scalable quantum computing, as researchers find they interfere with error correction  —  For quantum chips, the problems they cause are too big for error correction.  —  Recently, when researchers were testing error correction …
More: Nature

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