Techmeme
January 21, 2021, 11:12 AM

Top News

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 …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Google signs an agreement with French media to create a framework for payment for publisher content 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.
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Amazon says it wants to help the Biden administration's vaccination efforts, says non-WFH Amazon staff should be vaccinated “at the earliest appropriate time”  —  Amazon says it is ready to turn its facilities into COVID-19 vaccination sites and is offering other resources to the U.S. government.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Pebble founder launches Beeper, a $10/month universal chat app, promising to bring 15 chat service into a single UI, including iMessage on Android and Windows  —  Beeper brings 15 chat apps together into one interface  —  Beeper is a new universal chat app that's an attempt …
Monica Chin / The Verge:
A large number of laptop flagships in H1 2021 will ship with 16:10 or 3:2 displays, signalling an industry-wide shift toward laptops with taller aspect ratios  —  For lovers of tall screens, it's a great time to be alive  —  One of the biggest trends coming out of this year's CES …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Curtsy, which makes an app allowing women to list their clothes, shoes, and accessories for resale, raises $11M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  Curtsy, a clothing resale app and competitor to recently IPO'd Poshmark, announced today it has raised $11 million in Series A funding for its startup focused on the Gen Z market.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
The Biden administration updates WhiteHouse.gov with several new accessibility features, including dark mode, a large text mode, and more  —  From dark times to dark mode  —  The official website of the White House, WhiteHouse.gov, has been completely replaced with a new version …
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.
More: CNET, Engadget, Wired, and Input
Catherine Stupp / Wall Street Journal:
EU regulators are scrutinizing how employers monitor workers, including via video surveillance or key logger tech, and whether such actions violate GDPR  —  Remote work adds surveillance risks, privacy experts say  —  European privacy regulators are scrutinizing how employers collect workers' personal data …
Richard Lawler / Engadget:
Donald Trump pardons ex-Waymo and Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski; Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey were among those supporting a pardon for Levandowski  —  Last year Anthony Levandowski pleaded guilty to one count of stealing materials from Google, where he was an engineer for its self-driving car efforts …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8M for restricting cross-border game sales in EU's Digital Single Market  —  ZeniMax, Capcom, and Bandai Namco were among the publishers fined  —  Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of €7.8 million …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Do you need a Zoho Partner?  Here's why working with one can benefit you.  —  Zoho offers over 60 applications, each one built for a unique use case.  From sales and marketing to finance, HR, and customer support …
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

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'What's in Louie's Wallet', With Louie Mantia
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Big Technology Podcast:
Leopold Blows Up, OpenAI Drastically Cuts Prices, Microsoft's Best Day
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.
Hard Fork:
Open Model Wars + Claire Stapleton's Dishy Google Memoir + Substack's Slop Fight
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.
Great Chat:
Tech's short-term era
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.
Access:
Meet the most AI-pilled CEO on Earth
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:12 AM ET, January 21, 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

Dan De Luce / NBC News:
Chainalysis Blog:
Rob Walker / Marker:

Earlier Picks

Drew FitzGerald / Wall Street Journal:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Bloomberg:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Alexandra Alper / Reuters:
Zoë Bernard / The Information:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: