Techmeme
January 21, 2021, 9:00 PM

Top News

Nick Clegg / About Facebook:
Facebook is referring its decision to indefinitely suspend Trump's accounts to the Oversight Board and says the accounts will remain suspended in the meantime  —  Today, Facebook is referring its decision to indefinitely suspend former US President Donald Trump's access to his Facebook …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's first VR headset, planned for 2022 with a focus on gaming, video, and communication but with limited AR features, faces development hurdles  —  Apple Inc.'s first crack at a headset is designed to be a pricey, niche precursor to a more ambitious augmented reality product …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Alphabet says that it is shutting down Loon, its internet balloon project, calling it “a successful experiment”  —  Plus: The moonshot's launch, health care for the mask-less, and a new era's inaugural meme.  —  DO you detect something missing?  Like that unease in your gut that everything has gone to hell?
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
Instacart cuts 1,877 jobs, including its only union roles, as it shifts to new models, like selling its tech to retailers to have their staff prepare orders  —  Instacart Inc. plans to terminate about 1,900 employees' jobs, including the only unionized positions in the U.S., representing a fulsome embrace of the gig economy.
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Raspberry Pi Foundation launches $4 Pico, a tiny microcontroller for hardware projects that uses Raspberry Pi's own RP2040 chip  —  Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller.
April Glaser / NBC News:
Profile of Jessica Rosenworcel, the second woman to lead the FCC as acting chair and a big proponent of net neutrality and expanding broadband access  —  President Joe Biden has picked Jessica Rosenworcel to run the Federal Communications Commission in an interim position.
Margaret Harding McGill / Axios:
Biden designates Jessica Rosenworcel, currently a Democratic commissioner at the FCC, as acting chairwoman of the agency  —  President Biden has designated Jessica Rosenworcel as acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission, according to an agency statement.
Russell Brandom / The Verge:
Federal judge rejects Parler's demand to be reinstated on AWS  —  Ruling calls Parler's antitrust evidence ‘dwindlingly slight’  —  A Washington judge has denied social network Parler's demand to be reinstated on Amazon Web Services.  Following a hearing last week, Judge Barbara Rothstein declined …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Google signs an agreement with French publishers to create a framework of payment for snippet reuse and has reached agreements with three major newspapers  —  Google has reached an agreement with an association of French publishers over how it will be pay for reuse of snippets of their content.
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Intel reports Q4 revenue of $20B, down 1% YoY, Data Center Group revenue of $6.1B, down 16% YoY, as new CEO commits to manufacturing, stock down ~5% after hours  —  - Intel's earnings report on Thursday is the last with Bob Swan in the CEO role.  — Former VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger takes over as Intel CEO in February.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Pebble founder launches Beeper, a $10/month universal chat app promising to bring 15 chat services, including iMessage on Android and Windows, into a single UI  —  Beeper brings 15 chat apps together into one interface  —  Beeper is a new universal chat app that's an attempt …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: beautiful screen with high refresh rate and a great camera system but let down by software with ads and subpar Bixby  —  Samsung's “Ultra” phones are meant to be the absolute pinnacle of the company's (non-folding) mobile technology.
Kim-Mai Cutler / Initialized:
Survey of portfolio companies: 40% of founders say remote or decentralized is best for a new startup, most with offices will have 2 or 3 days in office per week  —  Where are tech companies going to go once the pandemic subsides as vaccines reach more and more Americans?
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Bluesky, Twitter's decentralized social networking project, releases a review of the existing decentralized web ecosystem, says it still seeks a project lead  —  Bluesky is still seeking a project lead  —  Bluesky, Twitter's decentralized social networking effort, has announced its first major update since 2019.
Kate Clark / The Information:
Plaid to seek financing that could triple its valuation to ~$15B according to a source, amid a surge in investor interest following Visa's abandoned acquisition  —  Normally CEOs that opt to sell their companies aren't happy when the government blocks the deal over antitrust concerns.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
TripActions, a booking and management service with insights into business travel and expenses, raises $155M Series E co-led by a16z  —  TripActions, a booking and management platform that offers enterprises real-time data, automated reporting, and insights into business travel and expenses …

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