Techmeme
December 1, 2020, 11:20 AM

Top News

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Amazon launches EC2 Mac instances bringing the Intel-based Mac mini 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.
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  —  All involve decisions originally made by the platform to remove user content.
Reuters:
Sources: Samsung may discontinue its premium Galaxy Note phone 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 …
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.
Shara Tibken / CNET:
Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Facebook to launch Facebook News in the UK in Jan. 2021, says it will pay publishers for news not already on its platform; most big UK publishers have signed up  —  Facebook is to pay mainstream UK news outlets millions of pounds a year to license their articles, as the social network faces …
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 …
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.
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 …
Thanks:@emmkrem
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
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
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
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Alphabet's DeepMind says it has solved the key “protein folding problem”, cutting the job down from months to hours, which could speed up drug discovery  —  Researchers at DeepMind say they have solved “the protein folding problem,” a task that has bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple hires Josh Elman, former VC at Greylock Partners and ex-VP of product at Robinhood, to work on app discovery at the App Store  —  Apple Inc. hired Josh Elman, a former venture capitalist at Greylock Partners who led early investments in Discord and the precursor to TikTok, to work on the App Store.

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Earlier Picks

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Surojit Chatterjee / The Coinbase Blog:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Scott Pelley / CBS News: