Techmeme
December 16, 2021, 7:35 AM

Top News

Reddit:
Reddit confidentially files its S-1 with the SEC for an IPO; the number of shares to be offered and the price range have yet to be determined  —  Reddit, Inc. today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Reddit, home to 100K+ active communities visited by 50M+ people every day, has raised $1B+ over its lifetime and was most recently valued at $10B+ in August  —  Reddit announced on Wednesday that it had confidentially filed paperwork for an eventual public offering of its stock …
Project Zero:
A deep dive into an NSO zero-click iMessage exploit, captured in the wild by Citizen Lab and one of the most sophisticated Google's Project Zero has seen  —  We want to thank Citizen Lab for sharing a sample of the FORCEDENTRY exploit with us, and Apple's Security Engineering and Architecture …
Reuters:
Eighteen Democratic lawmakers ask the Treasury and State Departments for Magnitsky rights abuse sanctions on four spyware firms, including NSO and DarkMatter  —  A group of U.S. lawmakers is asking the Treasury Department and State Department to sanction Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and three …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Memo: Apple delays its return to corporate offices to a “date yet to be determined”, after previously setting a February 1 return date  —  - Company had planned to bring corporate workers back by Feb. 1  — Delay comes in response to rising Covid-19 cases, new variant
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple closes three retail stores in Miami, Annapolis, and Ottawa, Canada after a rise in employee COVID-19 cases and exposures  —  - Company is closing locations in Miami, Maryland and Ottawa  — Cases and exposure among Apple's employees spurred the move
Dan Primack / Axios:
Katie Haun is leaving Andreessen Horowitz to start a new firm focusing on crypto and Web3 startups; Haun's deals at a16z included OpenSea and Coinbase  —  Katie Haun, one of the world's most influential crypto venture capitalists, is leaving Andreessen Horowitz to form her own firm.
Tanya Basu / MIT Technology Review:
Meta says a woman was groped on its Horizon Worlds platform on November 26; an internal review says she should have used its “Safe Zone” tool  —  A woman was sexually harassed on Meta's VR social media platform.  She's not the first—and won't be the last.
Henry Mance / Financial Times:
Interview with Nick Clegg, Meta's VP of global affairs, on moving from politics to Meta, the impact of Haugen's leaks, and the decision to ban Trump  —  Nick Clegg may be available in Berlin.  He has a slot in Paris.  He'll make time for lunch in Brussels.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon says it will reduce its Alexa skills commission from 30% to 20% for developers who earn less than $1M per year, starting in Q2 2022  —  Amazon is joining other tech giants by lowering its cut of developer revenue generated by voice apps, known as Alexa skills, which run on Amazon's smart speakers and other Alexa-powered devices.
Willem Marx / Bloomberg:
Malta's status as Europe's online gambling capital is under threat after it was added to the global money laundering watchdog FATF's “gray list” in June  —  One spring night in 2007, Joseph Borg and several colleagues from Malta's tiny gaming commission stayed late at their office to listen to the news from London.
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
ShareChat, a social network offered in 15 Indian languages, raises a $266M Series G led by Alkeon Capital at a $3.7B valuation  —  Indian content-sharing platform ShareChat on Thursday said it had raised $266 million in fresh funding from U.S.-based Alkeon Capital and some existing investors, pushing its valuation to $3.7 billion.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Hamburg-based Taxdoo, which offers API-based tools for e-commerce tax and accounting, raises a $64M Series B led by Tiger Global, bringing total funding to $84M  —  With e-commerce becoming increasingly globalized, a company called Taxdoo, which builds API-based tools to help e-commerce companies …
Rest of World:
Internal report: employees at Wildlife Studios, a Brazilian mobile game maker valued at $3B, have repeatedly alleged gender wage imbalances and discrimination  —  The free-to-play gaming company valued at $3 billion has struggled with allegations of gender discrimination and unequal pay, according to a 2020 report.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
IBM and Samsung say Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors, an alternative to FinFET chip designs, can offer 2x performance, amid similar claims from Intel  —  The next big advance in chips is looking up  —  IBM and Samsung have announced their latest advance in semiconductor design …

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Featured Podcasts

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Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
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Hard Fork:
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More News

Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Wall Street Journal:
Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss / Reuters:
Emily Birnbaum / Politico:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: