Techmeme
December 1, 2020, 5:50 PM

Top News

TechCrunch:
Salesforce announces it's buying Slack in a $27.7B deal  —  Salesforce, the CRM powerhouse that recently surpassed $20 billion in annual revenue, announced today it is wading deeper into enterprise social by acquiring Slack in a $27.7 billion megadeal.  —  Every worker at every company needs …
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.
Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS announces Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL, which aims to make it easier and cheaper for Microsoft SQL Server users to migrate to the AWS cloud  —  AWS today announced a new database product that is clearly meant to go after Microsoft's SQL Server and make it easier — and cheaper — for SQL Server users to migrate to the AWS cloud.
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  —  All involve decisions originally made by the platform to remove user content.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 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 …
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 …
Shara Tibken / CNET:
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.
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
HPE announces it will relocate its headquarters from San Jose, CA, to Houston, TX, that it's constructing a new campus there, and no layoffs come with the move  —  - Hewlett Packard Enterprise is relocating its headquarters to Houston, Texas.  — The company is currently constructing a new campus.
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.
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.
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 …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Wyze unveils a $20 smartwatch with nine-day battery life and heart rate and blood oxygen tracking but no GPS support, slated to ship in February 2021  —  With heart rate and blood oxygen saturation tracking  —  Wyze, the smart home company best known for its range of budget internet-connected …

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Beyond productivity: Why live captions belong in every meeting  —  You join a meeting, someone starts talking, and within a minute, there are names, numbers, ideas, and unfamiliar terms flying around.  You could ask them to repeat it.
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

Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
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:
Meta's Muse Revival, Frontier AI Under Threat, The Rise Of Dopamine Sites
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:50 PM ET, December 1, 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

Jordan Novet / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Eric Geller / Politico:
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: