Techmeme
December 29, 2021, 2:25 AM

Top News

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 …
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Waymo partners with Chinese automotive company Geely to bring a “rider-first” EV with no steering wheel to its US robotaxi Waymo One fleet in the coming years  —  Waymo One is Alphabet's Lyft/Uber competitor that's live in Phoenix and currently undergoing testing in San Francisco.
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.
Monica Alleven / Fierce Wireless:
US appeals court rules in favor of the FCC's decision to designate a large swath of the 6 GHz band to unlicensed users, after AT&T challenged the FCC  —  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) …

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Earlier Picks

Kieran Press-Reynolds / Insider:
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John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal: