Techmeme
January 22, 2021, 8:20 AM

Top News

Steven Levy / Wired:
Alphabet says that it is shutting down Loon, its internet balloon project, calling it “a successful experiment” but not a viable one  —  Plus: The moonshot's launch, health care for the mask-less, and a new era's inaugural meme.  —  DO you detect something missing?
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
In an Australian Senate hearing, a Google executive said that a law forcing Google to pay news outlets for links could prompt it to stop offering Search  —  As Google and Facebook face Senate committee, poll finds three in five Australians agree social media companies should prioritise news in feeds
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
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 …
Evelyn Douek / Lawfare:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on a thinner and lighter 13-inch high-end MacBook Air with MagSafe charging and next-gen processors to launch as soon as this year  —  Apple Inc. is working on a thinner and lighter version of the MacBook Air, the company's mass-market laptop, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
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.
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 …
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:
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.
Tom Krazit / Protocol:
AWS will maintain an open source fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana, after criticism from Elastic which changed its licensing terms to monetize cloud-service use  —  Fed up with what he sees as unfair competition from AWS, Elastic CEO Shay Banon felt he had no choice but to restrict …
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.
Alex Kantrowitz / OneZero :
Internal memo: Facebook's Andrew Bosworth told staff in Dec. to build products prioritizing privacy, as the public's expectations around privacy have shifted  —  Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth tells colleagues that privacy matters more than the product experience
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.
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?
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.

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Earlier Picks

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