Techmeme: Apple hires Josh Elman, former VC at Greylock Partners and ex-VP of product at Robinhood, to work on app discovery in the App Store (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

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Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Amazon launches EC2 Mac instances, bringing Intel-based Mac minis to its cloud for $1.083 per hour billed by the second — AWS today opened its re:Invent conference with a surprise announcement: the company is bringing the Mac mini to its cloud. These new EC2 Mac instances, as AWS calls them, are now available in preview.

More: AWS News Blog, VentureBeat, Engadget, ZDNet, The Verge, Computerworld, XDA Developers, CNET, TechRepublic, iMore, 9to5Mac, MacDailyNews, SlashGear, ServeTheHome, GitHub, AppleInsider, SiliconANGLE, GeekWire, Bloomberg, MSPoweruser, Wall Street Journal, MacRumors, and Six Colors

Tweets: @dinodaizovi, @timsweeneyepic, @quinnypig, @stevesi, @film_girl, @thedavedev, @fredericl, and @kfury

Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:

AWS unveils new compute instances like the compute heavy C6gn powered by Arm-based Graviton2 that it says performs 40% better on price vs comparable x86 options — The company introduced several new advancements to its compute portfolio to kick off re:Invent.

More: Amazon Web Services, AWS News Blog, Amazon.com, Inc., TechCrunch, and ZDNet

Tweets: @rakyll, @craigkerstiens, @shawnbice, and @mjasay

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

AWS unveils its new custom ML training chip Trainium with support for TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MXNet, coming 2021; AWS claims it outperforms rival cloud chips — At its annual re:Invent developer conference, AWS today announced the launch of AWS Trainium, the company's next-gen custom chip dedicated …

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, and CNBC

Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:

AWS launches preview of its Proton container management service for infrastructure provisioning and code deployment for serverless and container-based apps

More: AWS News Blog

Reuters:

Sources: Samsung may discontinue Galaxy Note next year, reflecting the sharp drop in demand for high-end smartphones due to the pandemic — SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd may discontinue its premium Galaxy Note phone next year, sources with knowledge of the matter said …

More: Ars Technica, 9to5Google, CNET, The Verge, ZDNet, Thurrott, Android Authority, KnowTechie, Wccftech, iPhone in Canada Blog, Neowin, Android Central, Phandroid, iPhone Hacks, and New York Post

Tweets: @quinnypig and @arjunkharpal

BBC:

Facebook's Oversight Board takes up first cases for review, all involving decisions to remove user content, says users have submitted 20K cases since Oct. 2020 — Facebook's Oversight Board has chosen its first batch of cases to review. — All involve decisions originally made by the platform to remove user content.

More: Oversight Board, TechCrunch, About Facebook, The Verge, Protocol, Engadget, USA Today, Gizmodo, CNET, About Facebook, About Facebook, About Facebook, About Facebook, About Facebook, and About Facebook

Tweets: @oversightboard, @daphnehk, @lmatsakis, @justinhendrix, @zeynep, @sivavaid, and @martinsfp

Shara Tibken / CNET:

Qualcomm unveils its upcoming flagship chipset Snapdragon 888, including a 5G modem with both mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G support and an AI engine capable of 26 TOPS — The chip that will power most high-end 5G phones next year is here: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888.

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:

Libra Association is rebranding to Diem, distancing itself from the initial Facebook-led vision debuted last year, ahead of its expected 2021 stablecoin launch — The Libra Association put together by Facebook last year is rebranding in further efforts to distance itself from the original Facebook-led vision rolled out last year.

More: Diem Association, The Verge, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Hill, CNET, Mashable, CoinGeek, SlashGear, BitcoinExchangeGuide, Finextra, Cointelegraph, and CNBC

Tweets: @nickwingfield, @caseynewton, @caseynewton, @mikojava, @davidmarcus, @mgsiegler, @alexvoica, @coindesk, and @diemassociation

CNBC:

Amazon says 2020's holiday shopping season has been its biggest ever, with independent sellers reaching $4.8B+ in worldwide sales over the weekend, up 60% YoY — - Amazon has announced that this year's holiday shopping season has been the biggest in its history.

More: Amazon, Reuters, The Hill, The Verge, ZDNet, TechCrunch, The Next Web, USA Today, coinspeaker.com, Footwear News, TheStreet, PYMNTS.com, and WRAL TechWire. Tweets: @besvinick

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft Teams adds support for answering calls via Apple CarPlay, transferring calls between mobile and desktop, and adding call recordings to OneDrive — Microsoft Teams will soon let you transfer calls easily between desktop and mobile — Microsoft is overhauling its calling features inside Microsoft Teams today.

More: 9to5Mac, VentureBeat, and BleepingComputer. Tweets: @stevekovach

Sahil Patel / Wall Street Journal:

Reddit says it averaged 52M DAUs in October, up 44% YoY, disclosing the metric for the first time; ad revenue hit $100M+ in 2019, on track to rise 70%+ in 2020 — The disclosure comes as the tech company pursues new advertisers — Reddit Inc. said it averaged 52 million daily active users in October …

More: The Verge, Engadget, and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @anthony and @quinnypig

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Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Microsoft will remove user names from Productivity Score feature after a privacy backlash, says Microsoft 365 will only aggregate data at the organization level — Microsoft says it will make changes in its new Productivity Score feature, including removing the ability for companies to see data …

More: ZDNet, Forbes, and Microsoft 365 Blog. Tweets: @alexhern. Thanks:@taylor_soper

Eric Geller / Politico:

SCOTUS worries about CFAA's sweeping nature, with Justice Gorsuch saying that the US government's view of the law risks “making a federal criminal of us all” — The Supreme Court on Monday indicated serious reservations about the ambiguity and scope of the nation's only major cybercrime law …

More: C-SPAN.org and Ars Technica

Tweets: @juliaangwin, @orinkerr, @nabihasyed, @themarkup, @orinkerr, @biellacoleman, @varadmehta, @robpegoraro, @orinkerr, @orinkerr, @orinkerr, @ericgeller, @tom_cardoso, @vickerysec, @cendemtech, @issielapowsky, @orinkerr, @pwnallthethings, and @nabihasyed

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Scale, which helps companies label data for use in artificial intelligence models, raises $155M led by Tiger Global at a $3.5B+ valuation — - Start-up Scale helps companies label data for use in artificial intelligence models. — It has had trouble keeping up with one of its customers …

More: EnterpriseAI, ServiceNow, and TechRadar

Tweets: @jaminball and @element_ai. Thanks:@emmkrem

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Google debuts Android Enterprise Essentials device management service geared at SMBs, which can enforce policies like device encryption and ban app sideloading — Increasing enterprise adoption of Android devices has been a long-running initiative for Google.

More: Android Police, Thurrott, ZDNet, The Keyword, and Android Headlines

Steve Kovach / CNBC:

Filing: Airbnb seeks to raise ~$2.5B in its IPO at a valuation of up to $35B, after pricing its shares at $44 to $50 — - Airbnb filed an updated S-1 Tuesday ahead of its expected IPO later this month. — Airbnb says it expects to price between $44 and $50 per share.

More: TechCrunch, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNET, Axios, Investor's Business Daily, Tech Xplore, Bloomberg, and TheStreet

Jeff Grubb / VentureBeat:

Report: in the past six months 79% of US consumers played a video game, with time spent playing games up 26% YoY, and user spending up 33% YoY — We know that time and money spent on video games is surging due to the pandemic. Now, industry-tracking firm The NPD Group is providing detail on where that growth is coming from.

More: NPD Group and GameSpot

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Flexe, which operates a marketplace to buy warehousing space on demand, raises $70M Series C led by T. Rowe Price, bringing its total raised to $134M — Flexe is raising more capital ahead of schedule as the pandemic-driven e-commerce boom spurs faster-than-expected growth for its warehousing technology platform.

More: VentureBeat, FreightWaves, and FinSMEs

Tweets: @rsarver and @taylor_soper

Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:

BlackBerry shares jump 50%+ on news that it will partner with AWS to jointly develop and market its vehicle data integration and monitoring platform, IVY — BlackBerry shares shot up in early trading on news that the company will partner with Amazon Web Services to jointly develop and market …

More: ZDNet, Amazon.com, Inc., and Business Wire

Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:

Olive, which says 600+ hospitals use its AI-powered bots to automate healthcare admin tasks, raises $225.5M led by Tiger Global, valuing it at $1.5B — Olive, which has developed an artificial intelligence workforce for the health care industry, said it closed $225.5 million in financing to bring its valuation to $1.5 billion.

More: FinSMEs, hitconsultant.net, and Olive

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:

Flock Freight, an AI-driven marketplace helping shippers and SMBs find freight truckers, raises $113.5M Series C led by Softbank, after a $50M Series B in Feb. — Flock Freight today closed a $113.5 million round to accelerate developments of its algorithmic pooling technology for truckload shipping and logistics.

More: TechCrunch

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Databand, a developer of AI-based observability software for data pipelines, raises $14.5M Series A led by Accel. bringing its total raised to ~$18.5M — DevOps continues to get a lot of attention as a wave of companies develop more sophisticated tools to help developers manage increasingly complex architectures and workloads.

More: FinSMEs and Geektime

James Rundle / Wall Street Journal:

Report: 3.1M professionals are needed to bridge the global cybersecurity talent gap; experts urge companies to adjust hiring requirements for cybersecurity jobs — Researchers say cyber talent is available but often not considered — Companies need millions more cybersecurity professionals …

Tweets: @ron_miller

New York Times:

E-commerce is in a flux for luxury brands, with Amazon on one side and a new alliance, including LVMH, Kering, Farfetch, and Richemont, on the other — On one side: Amazon. On the other: a new alliance of brands and platforms. Who will win? — In 2015, the chairman and controlling shareholder …

Tweets: @sdunbarj, @bryanboy, @vvfriedman, and @lizziepaton

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