Techmeme
August 13, 2020, 5:25 PM

Top News

Nick Statt / The Verge:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Apple has removed Epic Games' Fortnite from the App Store after the developer implemented its own in-app payment system, bypassing Apple's standard 30% fee  —  Apple says Epic is violating its App Store guidelines by using its own payment system  —  Apple has removed Epic Games' battle royale Fortnite …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Epic enables a direct payment option in Fortnite on iOS and Android alongside the existing method, to get around app store fees; buying direct is up to 20% off  —  Plus, V-bucks get permanently discounted  —  Today, Epic announced the Fortnite “mega drop,” a permanent discount on V-bucks …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will launch “Apple One” tiered subscription bundles, with Music, TV+, News+, and a new virtual fitness service, as early as October  —  Apple Inc. is readying a series of bundles that will let customers subscribe to several of the company's digital services …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple, Disney, and others participated in a White House call over the potential WeChat ban, arguing it could undermine their competitiveness in China  —  Companies including Apple, Disney and Walmart participate in call with White House over action against China's most important app
Bloomberg:
A Weibo survey asking users to choose between WeChat and iPhones drew 1.2M responses, with ~95% saying they would rather give up their devices  —  - Ban on Chinese apps may render iPhone “electronic trash”  — WeChat is instrumental to most China residents' everyday lives
Charlie Osborne / ZDNet:
Researchers say a now-patched Alexa vulnerability could have been exploited to hand over users' personal data, voice recordings, banking data history, and more  —  Subdomains belonging to the service were found to be harboring CORS errors and vulnerable to XSS attacks.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Lyft joins Uber in saying it will pull out of California if forced to re-classify drivers as employees  —  The companies say they can't afford to classify drivers as employees  —  Lyft said it would shut down operations in California if forced to classify drivers as employees …
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
US says it has seized 300+ “cryptocurrency accounts”, around $2M, four websites, and four FB pages used by al-Qaeda, Hamas' military wing, and ISIS  —  The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the “largest ever seizure of terrorist organizations' cryptocurrency accounts” …
Shannon Vavra / CyberScoop:
NSA and FBI say Russian state sponsored hacker group Fancy Bear is using a previously undisclosed Linux malware called Drovorub for cyber espionage operations  —  The National Security Agency and the FBI are jointly exposing malware that they say Russian military hackers use in cyber-espionage operations.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Facebook officially launches a Voting Information Center on Facebook and Instagram, with state-by-state information on how to register and vote  —  Eager to avoid a repeat of its disastrous role as a super-spreader of misinformation during the 2016 election cycle, Facebook is getting its ducks in a row.
Brian J Barth / OneZero :
A look at how Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs' bet on making Toronto a smart city failed, driven by intense resistance from residents and civic leaders  —  Alphabet bet big in Toronto.  Toronto didn't play along.  —  October 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke …
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Intel offers a first look at its next-gen Tiger Lake processors and Xe graphics, both of which promise higher performance and lower power consumption  —  Architecture Day 2020 offers a preview of Intel's future  —  Intel's Architecture Day 2020 brought a first look at the company's upcoming …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Stream, whose APIs enable product teams to build chat and activity feeds for their applications, raises $15M Series A led by GGV Capital  —  Earlier this year, the founders of Stream, a five-year-old, 60-person startup with offices in Boulder and Amsterdam, weren't feeling so great about their prospects.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing intelligent document processing with Zoho RPA  —  Documents are a major bottleneck at many organizations.  Invoices, contracts, forms, ID cards, receipts: They all arrive in different shapes and sizes …
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.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI buys TBPN, SpaceX's $2 Trillion IPO?, Iran Disables Amazon Infrastructure
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.
Hard Fork:
The Future of Addictive Design + Going Deep at DeepMind + HatGPT
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Go touch some grass (but don't tweet about 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.
Lenny's Podcast:
An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
The future of AI might be on your finger
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:25 PM ET, August 13, 2020.

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

Earlier Picks

James Vincent / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge: