Techmeme
April 12, 2021, 9:45 PM

Top News

Microsoft:
Microsoft says it has acquired speech tech company Nuance for $19.7B in cash, a 23% premium on its Friday closing price, as it boosts its healthcare offerings  —  Acquisition will combine solutions and expertise to deliver new cloud and AI capabilities across healthcare and other industries
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is in early stages of developing a product that combines an Apple TV with a HomePod speaker and has a FaceTime camera and smart home functions  —  - Company also exploring Amazon-like speaker with iPad as screen  — Apple has trailed Amazon, Google in the connected home market
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Nvidia unveils Grace, a high-performance Arm-based server CPU for large-scale neural network workloads, expected to become available in Nvidia products in 2023  —  Kicking off another busy Spring GPU Technology Conference for NVIDIA, this morning the graphics and accelerator designer …
Julia Carrie Wong / The Guardian:
Sources detail how Facebook allowed state-backed political manipulation in small countries, prioritizing abuses considered PR risks in countries like the US  —  A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform  —  Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders …
Brave Browser:
Brave is disabling Google's FLoC tracking method from all of its releases, saying it materially harms user privacy under the guise of being privacy-friendly  —  Peter Snyder, Senior Privacy Researcher at Brave  —  FLoC is a recent Google proposal that would have your browser share …
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols / ZDNet:
Despite the backlash, Free Software Foundation doubles down on restoring Richard M. Stallman to its board after he issued a defensive non-apology apology  —  Weeks after being readmitted to the Free Software Foundation board, Stallman speaks and the board stands behind him.
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
Biden administration announces the nominations of ex-NSA deputy director Chris Inglis as first national cyber director and Jen Easterly as CISA head  —  The Biden administration plans on Monday to name a former senior National Security Agency official as the first national cyber director …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google to shut down Play Movies and TV app for Roku, Samsung, LG, and Vizio on June 15, will push users to use YouTube instead  —  After announcing Google TV last year, its predecessor had an unspoken expiration date.  This week, Google has confirmed that it will kill off the Play Movies & TV app …
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Apple Support docs show that unusual mid-production hardware changes were made to its A12, A13, and S5 chips last fall, to update the Secure Storage Component  —  Apple made unusual mid-production hardware changes to the A12, A13, and S5 processors in its devices in the fall of 2020 to update …
Zak Doffman / Forbes:
Researchers have discovered a flaw where any user can deactivate another user's WhatsApp via multiple 2FA requests and emailing support to deactivate account  —  A nasty new surprise for WhatsApp's 2 billion users today, with the discovery of an alarming security risk.
Pranob Mehrotra / XDA Developers:
Google is rolling out “Heads Up”, a Digital Wellbeing feature that tells users to raise their head when walking while on Pixel devices  —  In November last year, XDA's Mishaal Rahman spotted an upcoming feature, called Heads Up, in a teardown of the Digital Wellbeing app.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
MLB announces that venerable trading card company Topps will begin selling new NFT baseball cards via the WAX blockchain starting on April 20  —  The MLB has its answer to the NBA's Top Shot NFT clips  —  Major League Baseball has announced its latest move to cash in on the NFT craze …

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Earlier Picks

Liam Tung / ZDNet:
Lulu Yilun Chen / Bloomberg:
Leo Kelion / BBC:
Bloomberg: