Techmeme
August 14, 2020, 5:10 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
By weaponizing Fortnite and with Apple as its primary target, Epic Games is well positioned to lead the fight for a change in app store policies  —  Epic Games executed its most ambitious Fortnite live event yesterday, leading both Apple and Google to remove one of the world's most popular games from their app stores.
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Epic files a suit against Google alleging that its Play Store payments restrictions constitute a monopoly, also accuses Google of being anti-competitive  —  Just like Apple  —  Epic Games has filed suit against Google over alleged antitrust violations, just hours after being dropped …
Austen Goslin / Polygon:
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Facebook launches paid online events in 20 countries with waived fees during COVID-19, says Apple is hurting SMBs by refusing to waive its 30% cut on iOS  —  Facebook Inc. joined a growing list of developers to publicly criticize Apple Inc. over its revenue-sharing policy for in-app purchases …
New York Times:
Internal docs show TikTok classified more than a third of its 49M US DAUs in July as 14 years old or younger, raising concerns about safeguards for preteens  —  Three current and former employees expressed concerns about the Chinese-owned app's safeguards for preteen children.
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Ubisoft fires Ashraf Ismail, the creative director of its newest Assassin's Creed game, following an investigation into misconduct allegations  —  Ubisoft Entertainment SA has dismissed the creative director of the newest Assassin's Creed game, the latest result of a MeToo reckoning …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Facebook didn't apply hate speech rules to at least four flagged individuals and groups in India, showing a pattern of favoritism to Modi's party  —  Company executive in vital market opposed move to ban controversial politician; some employees allege favoritism to ruling party
BuzzFeed News:
Katyanna Quach / The Register:
Mozilla confirms a deal to keep Google as the default search provider in Firefox; source says the deal is worth $400M to $450M a year between now and 2023  —  $2.5m-a-year CEO set to take a pay cut, so that's all right, then  —  Mozilla has renewed its lucrative nine-figure deal with Google …
Eva Xiao / Wall Street Journal:
China says it will expand a pilot program of its digital currency, led by its central bank People's Bank of China, to include a number of large cities  —  Testing efforts are being led by the People's Bank of China  —  HONG KONG—China's Commerce Ministry said it would expand a pilot program …
Aaron Mak / Slate:
Google's Ad Exchange is demonetizing pages that merely mention issues of race and LGBTQ rights, classifying them as “dangerous or derogatory content”  —  On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, the Atlantic decided to recirculate King's famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” …
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 …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho Expense MCP: Turn conversations into expense workflows  —  Artificial intelligence (AI) has already changed how we search for information, summarize documents, and analyze data.
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

Lenny's Podcast:
The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
Demis Steps Down, Apple's Memory Problem, Microsoft's Clever Trick
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 White House's Secret A.I. Rules + The State of Model Alignment With METR's Chris Painter + The Final Hot Mess Express
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Oliver Darcy on Status, Bari Weiss, and Why Media Reporters Are Too Soft
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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 5:10 PM ET, August 14, 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

Tom Simonite / Wired:
Gannon Burgett / Digital Photography Review:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Shannon Vavra / CyberScoop: