Techmeme
March 18, 2021, 12:55 AM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: faster iPad Pros may come as early as April with better cameras; Apple aims to use MiniLED on at least the 12.9" model and has tested using Thunderbolt  —  - Company plans updated iPad Pro line with faster processor  — Apple's iPad sales have jumped in work-from-home environment
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Facebook outlines multiple changes for Groups: probation for rule-breaking users, limiting civic and political groups' reach, and requiring more moderation  —  Ultimately culminating in a ban  —  Facebook is trying to clean up its Groups experience and limit the reach of potentially problematic users and communities.
Substack Blog:
Substack shares details on its Pro program after criticism, saying 30+ writers with a “diverse set of viewpoints” have signed up, none of whom are anti-trans  —  In recent days, we've heard from some people who are concerned that we might have been using Substack Pro …
Sam Altman:
AI will drive a new tech revolution, applying Moore's law to everything; to rebalance the newly created wealth, society should favor taxing capital over labor  —  My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe.
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon says it will expand Amazon Care, a telehealth service piloted on its employees in Seattle, to other companies and the rest of its US employees this year  —  Amazon.com Inc. is expanding digital medical consultations to its employees across the U.S. and says it will start offering the service to other companies later this year.
Jonty Wareing / @jonty:
[Thread] Most NFTs' JSON metadata files point to normal URLs or IPFS gateway URLs run by an NFT startup; if the startups shutter, those NFTs will likely break  —  Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're “buying” and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon
Bloomberg:
A profile of Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davison, who previously had built social apps like Highlight and Shorts that nudged people to share more by default  —  “He's got more momentum than force,” says a former colleague.  “Paul is just always moving forward.”
Shaan Puri / @shaanvp:
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Samsung updates its mid-range Galaxy lineup: 6.5" A52 and A52 5G, from ~$415, and 6.7" A72, from ~$535, with 90Hz or 120Hz displays, better cameras, and more  —  The A-series phones will also include IP67 ratings, brighter screens, and expandable microSD storage
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
AT&T says it will no longer exempt HBO Max from mobile data caps starting March 25, after a US court upheld CA's net neutrality law; change will apply beyond CA  —  - AT&T will no longer exempt viewing of its HBO Max streaming service from data caps after a federal court upheld California's …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Intel hires Justin Long, who played the “I'm a Mac” role in Apple's Mac vs PC ads, to pitch Intel-based PCs and tout touchscreens and convertible form factors  —  Intel is reviving the Mac vs. PC ads  —  Intel has hired Apple's former “I'm a Mac” actor Justin Long to create new ads praising PCs.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Invstr, an 8-year-old startup with 1M+ app installs that's focused on financial education, raises $20M Series A and adds trading and banking services in the US  —  One of the biggest gripes about investing apps is that they are not acting responsibly by not educating users properly and allegedly letting them fend for themselves.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
Document: surveillance contractor Ulysses Group marketed a tool that tracks 15B car locations using data from automakers and third parties to the US military  —  15 billion car locations.  Nearly any country on Earth.  ‘The Ulysses Group’ is pitching a powerful surveillance technology to the U.S. government.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Stack Overflow says it will add a free tier to its Teams service, limited to 50 users, and it added 1,500 Teams customers in 2020, including Microsoft and Box  —  Stack Overflow is the default Q&A site for programmers (though the overall Stack Exchange network goes well beyond helping you answer your basic PHP questions).
Will Bedingfield / WIRED UK:
For the first time, Netflix details its carbon footprint using DIMPACT tool, claiming one hour of streaming equates to a 75W ceiling fan running for four hours  —  Streaming platforms finally have a tool to evaluate the size of their carbon footprint.  Now they need to take action and go green

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.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Zoho WorkDrive named a Leader in the Nucleus Research CSC Technology Value Matrix 2026  —  Enterprise content management is evolving rapidly with about 80% of the data unstructured.  The growing challenge is not about storing information anymore.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
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.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv Wants To Stay Invisible
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.
Training Data:
Factory's Matan Grinberg: The Coming 'Dark Factory' Where Software Builds Itself
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
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 12:55 AM ET, March 18, 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

Todd Feathers / VICE:
Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal: