Techmeme
November 15, 2020, 9:15 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
A look at Parler, which is backed by Rebekah Mercer, has doubled its user base to 10M in a week, but unlike Facebook and Twitter, leaves moderation to users  —  The libertarian-minded platform aims to challenge tech giants through a focus on free speech; surge in users since the election
Phil Vachon / Security Embedded:
A deep dive into OCSP responder Apple uses to verify integrity of Mac apps, which is a critical part of macOS security, but could benefit from more transparency  —  On November 12, 2020 Apple released macOS Big Sur.  In the hours after the release went live, somewhere in Apple's infrastructure …
Max Weinbach / Android Police:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sales readiness service MindTickle raises $100M in a round of debt and equity led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2; source: MindTickle is now valued at ~$500M  —  MindTickle, a startup that is helping hundreds of small and large firms improve their sales through its eponymous sales readiness platform …
Cyrus Farivar / NBC News:
Report: most major tech companies in Silicon Valley have kept paying their thousands of unionized blue-collar workers for now, but future remains uncertain  —  Nora Morales, 57, an overnight janitor at Google's main campus in Mountain View, California, knows better than anyone else how empty Silicon Valley's offices have become.
Whitney Kimball / Gizmodo:
Airbnb says 1.4M users have rejected its non-discrimination agreement, foregoing their use of the platform, since it implemented the policy in 2016  —  In the four years since it implemented an agreement to promote equitable treatment of its users, Airbnb claims that 1.4 million individuals …
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Researchers: flaws in Bumble exposed info of ~95M Bumble users, including Facebook data of some, and it took over 200 days after being notified to fix the bug  —  Bumble prides itself on being one of the more ethically-minded dating apps.  But is it doing enough to protect the private data of its 95 million users?
FinSMEs:
Thoughtexchange, which hosts large group conversations while shielding participants' identities to reduce gender and ethnicity biases, raises $34M Series B  —  Thoughtexchange, a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-based advanced platform for scaling conversations, received an investment from HarbourVest Partners.
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Qualcomm has received a US license to sell some 4G smartphone chips to Huawei  —  (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc on Friday received a license from the U.S. government to sell 4G mobile phone chips to China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, an exemption to U.S. trade restrictions imposed amid rising tensions with China.
Owen Hughes / TechRepublic:
Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, who first began work on the language in 1979 and still remains very much involved in its development  —  Powerful, flexible, complex: The origins of C++ date back 40 years, yet it remains one of the most widely used programming languages today.

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

Training Data:
Bringing Continual Learning to Every Company: Trajectory's Ronak Malde
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:
Will the Democrats' Big Win Stop the AI Buildout? — 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.
Invest Like the Best:
Martin Casado on Frontier Model Economics, AI's Slowdown, and the Cursor Deal
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
A quiet investor's $10 billion bet on AI, chips, and defense
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 PM ET, November 15, 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

Cameron Faulkner / The Verge:
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: