Techmeme
January 22, 2021, 11:35 AM

Top News

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.
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
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Evelyn Douek / Lawfare:
Nick Clegg / About Facebook:
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 …
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.
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.
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 …
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

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:
Automate your scheduling workflows with Zoho Calendar  —  Your calendar can do more than schedule meetings Creating a calendar event takes only a few seconds.  But scheduling is rarely just about creating the event.
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

Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
90 minutes of unfiltered product advice from Snap and Discord's product chief | Peter Sellis
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 Doom Backlash Arrives, Anthropic & OpenAI IPO Outlook, Frontier Business Momentum Slows
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:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:35 AM ET, January 22, 2021.

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

Kate Clark / The Information:
Kim-Mai Cutler / Initialized:

Earlier Picks

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Joseph Cox / VICE: