Techmeme
February 17, 2021, 12:30 PM

Top News

Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
Epic Games files a formal antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission, claiming that Apple imposes commercially unviable burdens on rivals  —  Filing is latest shot in escalating feud between ‘Fortnite’ developer and Silicon Valley giant  —  Epic Games has filed …
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Internal docs: Amazon India has secretly favored big sellers, misrepresented its ties with them, and used them to circumvent tough foreign investment rules  —  NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It was early 2019, and senior Amazon.com Inc executive Jay Carney was preparing for an important meeting.
Karen Weise / New York Times:
NY AG sues Amazon, alleging it inadequately protected workers from COVID-19 in Staten Island and Queens, and retaliated against employees who raised concerns  —  The case focuses on two of the company's facilities in New York.  —  New York's attorney general, Letitia James …
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
DOJ announces charges against three North Korean hackers for conspiring to steal and extort over $1.3B in cash and cryptocurrencies from banks and businesses  —  The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed charges against three North Korean hacker spies accused of conspiring to steal …
Babu Mohan / Android Central:
Twitter starts testing voice DMs, which can be up to 140 seconds long, on iOS in India, Brazil, and Japan  —  Twitter is giving its users “more options to express themselves” in conversations.  —  What you need to know  — Twitter is testing a voice messaging feature for direct messages.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Researcher finds one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 chips; the GoSearch22 adware installs itself as a Safari extension  —  A security researcher found one of the first examples of malware written to run natively on Apple's M1 processors.  —  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
YouTube says it will expand Shorts, its TikTok rival in beta, to the US soon, add 4K and DVR to YouTube TV, expand in-video shopping, and more in 2021  —  YouTube has a host of big product updates coming this year, and it just detailed a lot of them in a blog post from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan.
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Google Maps now lets users pay for public transportation and parking by integrating Passport and ParkMobile services into its app, available in 400+ US cities  —  Fill your meter or get a train ticket  —  Google Maps is adding a couple of new useful features: the ability to pay for parking or buy a train ticket right from the app.
Emil Protalinski / GeekWire:
IDC: Chrome OS market share passed macOS for the first time in 2020, up 4.4 points YoY to 10.8%; Windows fell 4.9 points to 80.5%, macOS rose 0.8 point to 7.5%  —  New numbers show 2020 was the first year that Chromebooks outsold Macs, posting impressive market share gains at the expense of Windows.
Cathy Applefeld Olson / Forbes:
20 music streaming services have paid $424M+ in historical unmatched royalties to Mechanical Licensing Collective; Apple paid $163M, Spotify $153M, Amazon $42M  —  The Mechanical Licensing Collective has received a total of $424.38 million in accrued historical unmatched royalties …
Kotaku:
Sources: Google's Stadia VP Phil Harrison sent an email to Stadia's game studios lauding their “great progress”, despite knowledge of its impending shutdown  —  Developers at Google's recently formed game studios were shocked February 1 when they were notified that the studios would be shut down …
Phil Muncaster / Infosecurity Magazine:
YouTube takes down nearly 3,000 channels and accounts that were part of Chinese state coordinated influence operation  —  UK / EMEA News Reporter , Infosecurity Magazine  —  YouTube has taken down almost 3000 channels and accounts deemed to part of separate Chinese and Russian state coordinated influence operations.
More: The Keyword and ZDNet
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
North Dakota state Senate blocks bill that would have required app stores to allow devs to use their own payment systems; Epic lobbied in favor of the bill  —  - The North Dakota state senate voted 36-11 on Tuesday not to pass a bill that would have required app stores to enable software developers …
Jeremy Burge / Emojipedia:
A look at the new 217 new emojis coming in iOS 14.5, including a syringe without blood, couples with a mix of skin tones, AirPod Max headphones, and more  —  New emojis have arrived on iOS as part of the latest iOS 14.5 beta.  These include a heart on fire, exhaling face, and gender options for the people with beards.
Sean Endicott / Windows Central:
Microsoft begins testing a Kids Mode for Edge, with Bing SafeSearch on and tracking prevention set to strict by default, plus other safety features  —  Kids Mode helps parents provide a more child-friendly browsing experience on Edge.  —  What you need to know
Wall Street Journal:
A hacker claims to have stolen and posted files from global law firm Jones Day on the dark web; Jones Day says a file-sharing company it used was compromised  —  Firm disputes network breach, says its file-transfer company was compromised  —  A hacker claims to have stolen files belonging …

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