Techmeme
December 28, 2021, 6:25 PM

Top News

BBC:
Amazon says it has updated Alexa after the voice assistant “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a penny to the prongs of a half-inserted plug  —  Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple issued rare bonuses of restricted stock worth $50K-$180K to select engineers, after Meta poached ~100 Apple engineers over the past few months  —  Apple Inc. has issued unusual and significant stock bonuses to some engineers in an effort to retain talent …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Some LastPass users say their master passwords were compromised and used in blocked login attempts from unknown IPs; LastPass blames “credential stuffing”  —  Many LastPass users report that their master passwords have been compromised after receiving email warnings that someone tried …
Shannon Liao / Washington Post:
Riot Games agrees to pay $100M to settle a 2018 class-action gender discrimination lawsuit with current and former women employees and California state agencies  —  “League of Legends” publisher Riot Games announced Monday that it is settling a 2018 gender-based discrimination class-action suit …
Steve Kovach / CNBC:
The App Store's most popular iOS app on Christmas was Oculus, a promising sign for Meta, which does not disclose how many VR headsets it sells  —  - Meta, Facebook's parent company, had the most popular app in Apple's App Store on Christmas: the Oculus VR app.
sreegs:
Ex-Tumblr iOS engineer details the company's struggles with App Store adult content policies, as communication between reviewers, devs, and Apple is discordant  —  Old posts in the archive  —  alright let's talk about Apple and Tumblr's current predicament.
Michail / GSMArena.com:
Xiaomi unveils the 6.28-inch 12 and 6.73-inch 12 Pro with Snapdragon 8, 50MP camera, up to 12GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, coming December 31 starting at ~$580  —  After months of leaks and rumors, Xiaomi's 12 series is now official with two entries - Xiaomi 12 and Xiaomi 12 Pro.
Kieran Press-Reynolds / Insider:
A TikTok moderator sues the company for an unsafe workplace that gave her PTSD; her lawyer says TikTok stopped her from working a day after the suit was filed  —  - A TikTok content moderator is suing the company, alleging it did not provide a safe workplace.
Scott Chipolina / Decrypt:
Overview of El Salvador's official yet controversial adoption of bitcoin in 2021, as many citizens have reportedly seen bitcoin vanish from their Chivo wallets  —  At this year's Bitcoin Conference in Miami in June, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced his country would soon accept Bitcoin as legal tender.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
How Ramp Built A $60B AI Product Factory Off A Corporate Card | Co-CEO Eric Glyman
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Would you let a robot do it?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Training Data:
A Model For Everyone: How Ronak From Trajectory Is Building Products For Continual Learning
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Going After The Democrats' Big Win? — With Teddy Schleifer
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.
Machine Gods:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:25 PM ET, December 28, 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

Balaji Srinivasan:

Earlier Picks

John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal:
Eric Ravenscraft / Wired:
Khadeeja Safdar / Wall Street Journal: