Techmeme
February 23, 2021, 5:40 PM

Top News

Georgia Hitch / ABC:
Australia says Facebook agreed to reinstate news content in Australia in the coming days after the government promised amendments to its proposed media bill  —  We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
Alex Barker / Financial Times:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google announces new features for Android, including a way to schedule texts and a Password Checkup tool to notify users of compromised credentials  —  Google today announced the next set of features coming to Android, including a new password checkup tool, a way to schedule your texts …
Square - Investor Relations:
Square announces it spent $170M to acquire 3,318 bitcoins at an average price of $51,236, following its earlier $50M bet on the cryptocurrency  —  Square also announced a $170 million purchase in bitcoin as part of its ongoing commitment to the cryptocurrency
Stephen Warwick / iMore:
Some M1 Mac owners report a worryingly large number of writes to their Macs' SSDs, though in some cases it could be explained by faulty monitoring tools  —  “If this is accurate, some of these machines aren't going to last half a year”  —  What you need to know
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Q&A with Spotify's Daniel Ek on growing the number of creators on the service and engaging with them, podcast success metrics, Clubhouse, and more  —  Spotify hosted an event on Monday to discuss its ambitions in audio, and one message came through loud and clear: the company wants to play …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple plans to release two new MacBook Pro models with an HDMI port and an SD card reader in the second half of 2021  —  Apple plans to release two new MacBook Pro models equipped with an HDMI port and SD card reader in the second half of 2021, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo …
Tim Copeland / Decrypt:
Bitfinex and Tether agree to an $18.5M settlement with the New York AG and will stop operating in the state following a two-year probe  —  Bitfinex and Tether have agreed to stop all trading activity in the state of New York as part of a settlement announced today by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
FCC proposes using $3.2B in emergency funds to subsidize broadband services for low-income families with $50/month discounts and $75/month on tribal lands  —  A proposal released by the acting chairwoman of the commission is an attempt to close the digital divide.
Hirsh Chitkara / Protocol:
Inside Chess.com's streaming success, with Twitch users watching 18.3M hours of chess content in January, nearly as much as they consumed throughout all of 2019  —  There's something inherently perverse in calling chess “open source.”  It's a bit like saying France “pivoted” …
Gene Park / Washington Post:
Sony says it's developing a VR headset for the PlayStation 5 that will be much less cumbersome than its current PS VR setup, but the device won't launch in 2021  —  The PlayStation 5 will have its own virtual reality headset, however, consumers may face ongoing difficulties obtaining a PS5 console given a supply chain shortfall.
Nikkei Asia:
Draft executive order from Biden admin orders development of a US supply chain strategy less reliant on China, focused on chips, batteries, rare-earth metals  —  Exclusive: Biden to sign presidential order to bolster chip, battery and rare-earth industries  —  WASHINGTON/TAIPEI …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Quill, a messaging app that raised its Index Ventures-led $12.5M Series A in 2019, quietly comes out of stealth to take on Slack  —  Slack took the workplace communications landscape by storm after it launched its integration-friendly, GIF-tastic chat platform in 2013.
More: 9to5Mac
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Akamai finds a botnet using bitcoin transactions to put its control server's IP address on the blockchain, making it basically impossible to fully take down  —  Wallet transactions camouflage the IP address of the botnet's control server.  —  When hackers corral infected computers into a botnet …
More: The Akamai BlogTweets: @stillinbeta
The Information:
Source: ~40%, or 40M, of Disney+ subscribers are in the US, and Disney has said 30% are in India, so Europe and LatAm seem to make up less than a third of subs  —  Disney's flagship video-streaming service, Disney+, has quickly emerged as the only true competitor to Netflix …
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
Filing: Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116M to the financing event  —  Reddit, which announced a $250 million Series E earlier this month, has added over $116 million to the financing event, upping the round's most recent total to $367 million, according to a new SEC filing.
Eugene Wei / Remains of the Day:
TikTok's networks effects, driven by remixability of content and features that interconnect, can't be easily cloned by rivals who wish to recreate its ecosystem  —  I promised one final piece on TikTok, focused primarily on the network effects of creativity.  And this is that, in part.
Mickey Rapkin / Esquire:
Profile of Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, who has made millions of dollars by selling and auctioning his digital art on marketplaces for non-fungible tokens  —  He's a dad from Wisconsin who drives a “piece of shit” Corolla.  And his brilliantly absurd artwork has made him the face of a crypto market you didn't know existed.
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Wisetack, which provides buy-now-pay-later services for in-person business transactions, raises $19M across seed and Series A rounds  —  This morning Wisetack, a startup that provides buy-now-pay-later services to in-person business transactions, announced that is has closed a total …
More: FinSMEs and Greylock

Sponsor Posts

OVHcloud:
Escape Ingress/Egress Fees  —  Experience seamless multi-cloud solutions without ingress/egress constraints.  Optimize costs and pave the way for a sustainable digital future.
Standard Metrics:
Nail Portfolio Reviews, Board Meetings and LP Reporting  —  You didn't hire that Stanford grad to manage spreadsheets.  Automate VC portfolio reporting and free your talented team up to deliver portfolio insights.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Introducing Apple's Journaling Suggestions in Zoho Notebook  —  Are you ready to take your journaling to the next level?  At Zoho Notebook, we are excited to announce a captivating new feature in our iOS app: Apple's Journaling Suggestions!
The Logan Bartlett Show:
EP 111: How Josh Reeves (CEO, Gusto) Built a $10B Company Serving Small Businesses
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show!
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 07/26 - SearchGPT
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:40 PM ET, February 23, 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

Earlier Picks

Zachary Fryer-Biggs / Washington Post:
The Verge: