Techmeme
December 21, 2020, 9:05 AM

Top News

The Citizen Lab:
Citizen Lab: NSO's zero-day, zero-click exploit chain, active in at least iOS 13.5.1, was used to hack ~36 Al Jazeera reporters via iMessage in summer of 2020  —  Summary & Key Findings  — In July and August 2020, government operatives used NSO Group's Pegasus spyware …
Daisuke Wakabayashi / New York Times:
Profile of Dina Srinivasan, who is helping Texas AG's antitrust investigation of Google after her treatises on Facebook and Google reframed antitrust thinking  —  Regulators are relying on insiders like Dina Srinivasan, who left her digital ad job after concluding that “Facebook and Google …
Andrés Arrieta / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Facebook is attacking privacy with its anti-Apple campaign and has locked SMBs into a surveillance-powered advertising model that's invasive of customers  —  Facebook has recently launched a campaign touting itself as the protector of small businesses.  This is a laughable attempt from Facebook …
Matt Stoller / BIG:
Aislinn Keely / The Block:
Personal information of 270K+ customers of hardware wallet Ledger has been leaked online, including emails, home addresses, and phone numbers  —  A database containing the personal information of over 270,000 Ledger customers has been published on RaidForums, a marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing hacked information.
Nico Grant / Bloomberg:
Zoom says it is under investigation by the SEC and two US attorney offices over security and privacy issues and interactions with China and other governments  —  - Company says data security, privacy actions under review  — Videoconferencing firm's contacts with China spur scrutiny
Dan Primack / Axios:
Sources: SoftBank will file on Monday to raise between $500M and $600M via an IPO of its first SPAC and is preparing at least two additional SPACs  —  SoftBank on Monday will file to raise between $500 million and $600 million via an IPO of its first SPAC, Axios has learned from multiple sources.
Owen Thomas / San Francisco Chronicle:
Profile of Bret Taylor, Salesforce's new COO and the architect of its $27.7B acquisition of Slack, who might one day succeed Marc Benioff as CEO of the company  —  Everyone in Silicon Valley seems to know Bret Taylor.  —  Few outside do.  —  That's going to change, as the software engineer …
The Economic Times:
Pine Labs, which makes POS software and provides last-mile retail transaction tech for merchants, raises $75M-$100M at a $2B valuation  —  Pine Labs is currently India's third largest fintech startup after Paytm and PhonePe.  It counts Lone Pine Capital, Sequoia India, Temasek, Mastercard, Paypal and Actis LLP as among its investors.
Jacob Knutson / Axios:
Microsoft Security:
Rene Ebersole / National Geographic:
Black-market wildlife ads have increased on Facebook despite the company's steps to combat them, as experts say ad takedowns prematurely alert criminals  —  llegal wildlife ads have increased on Facebook despite its steps to combat animal trafficking.  Crime watch groups are calling for broad legal reforms.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Contract Signed.  Project Ready.  Tasks Created.  —  Every project begins with a promise; a contract that outlines the deliverables, the timelines, and the terms.  But for most businesses …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box 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 100-person AI lab that became Anthropic and Google's secret weapon | Edwin Chen (Surge AI)
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:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
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:
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
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.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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.
Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:05 AM ET, December 21, 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

Pranshu Verma / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Lingling Wei / Wall Street Journal:
Michael Steeber / 9to5Mac:
Katie Bo Williams / Defense One: