Techmeme
May 4, 2021, 10:30 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Twitter buys Scroll, the $5/month service that removes ads from partner news sites; Scroll's Nuzzel email service will shut down on May 6  —  The Nuzzel email service is winding down and the future of Scroll is uncertain  —  Twitter's acquisition spree continues today with Scroll …
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
After teasing a new social media platform, Trump debuts a new section on his website that's effectively a blog, ahead of the Oversight Board's decision on Wed.  —  A true poster never logs off for long  —  After months of promising his own social media network for banned posters …
Nick Statt / Protocol:
At trial, Tim Sweeney contends that the App Store taking “30% off of the top” is an existential threat to Fortnite becoming a metaverse or platform for creators  —  Epic CEO Tim Sweeney finished his time on the stand Tuesday afternoon, during day two of the Epic v. Apple trial.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
On Day Two of the Apple vs Epic trial, Sweeney said he would have taken an exclusive App Store deal, Apple recounted Epic's praise of Apple's Metal API, more  —  The Apple vs. Epic trial continued today, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney testifying and facing cross-examination from Apple's layers.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Shoshana Wodinsky / Gizmodo:
Signal says Facebook shut down its ad account over an Instagram ad campaign that showed the user data Facebook collects to sell ads  —  A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positive platform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former's ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Dell patches a recently discovered 12-year-old driver vulnerability impacting hundreds of millions of Dell systems, which gives local attackers full PC control  —  Hundreds of millions of Dell desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets will need to update their Dell DBUtil driver to fix …
Carmen Reinicke / CNBC:
Dogecoin's price surged roughly 40% on Tuesday, reaching a market cap of $69B, up 11,000% YTD, and making Dogecoin the fourth-largest cryptocurrency  —  The latest cryptocurrency star is a coin named after a meme of a Shiba Inu dog that was started as a joke.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google reveals the Pixel Buds A-Series in a now-deleted tweet, which mentions a new Fast Pair feature  —  At the end of March, we exclusively reported about Google's next wireless earbuds, and the first image leaked a week later.  Google today announced the “Pixel Buds A-Series” on Twitter, though the reveal was entirely an accident.
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Microsoft open sources Counterfit, an AI security risk assessment tool that comes preloaded with algorithms that can be used to evade and steal AI models  —  Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16.  Register fo r the AI event of the year.  —  Microsoft today open-sourced Counterfit …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Instagram unveils a “captions sticker”, which automatically captions videos to make them more accessible without sound, coming first to Stories and then Reels  —  Instagram is making its video Stories and Reels more accessible with the launch of a new “captions sticker” …
Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch:
A look at Atlanta's emergence as a tech startup hub, bolstered by the diverse entrepreneurial talent coming from regional colleges like Georgia Tech  —  Over the past five years, the Southeastern region, led by Atlanta, has gone from being “one of the best kept secrets” in tech …
Rupert Neate / The Guardian:
Filing: Amazon had sales of €44B in Europe in 2020, but reported a €1.2B loss and therefore paid no corporate tax  —  Despite lockdown surge the firm's Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss and therefore paid zero corporation tax  —  Fresh questions have been raised …
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Lyft reports Q1 revenue of $609M, up 7% QoQ and down 36% YoY, vs $558.7M est., active riders of 13.49M vs 12.8M est., and net loss of $427M, up from $398M YoY  —  - Ride-hailing company Lyft beat on the top and bottom lines and exceeded Wall Street's rider expectations for its first quarter.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
An ongoing DDoS attack has crippled the Belgian government's IT network, affecting 200+ government orgs, a COVID-19 reservation app, tax filing services, more  —  Most of the Belgium government's IT network has been down today after a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) …

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
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:
Meta & Microsoft's Claude Slowdown, His Agent Leaked His Banking Info, Don't Bully Your AI
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.
Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
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:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
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:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:30 PM ET, May 4, 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

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Alex Konrad / Forbes:

Earlier Picks

CNN: