Techmeme
July 16, 2021, 4:50 PM

Top News

Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Automattic, owner of Tumblr, buys podcast app Pocket Casts from a public radio collective that includes NPR, which reportedly lost $800K on it last year  —  A new home for the popular podcast app  —  Pocket Casts has a new owner.  Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and recently purchased Tumblr …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Report: Apple tapped VP of technology Kevin Lynch to help lead its car project; Lynch had a major role in development of Watch and associated health features  —  As Apple continues its work on self-driving car technology, it is shifting one of its most well-known executives to the Project Titan team.
Maureen Dowd / New York Times:
Interview with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi about Prop 22, capitalism, Travis Kalanick, getting nearly killed while delivering for UberEats on a bike in SF, more  —  The Uber CEO dreams of “pushing a button and getting a piano delivered to your home in an hour and a half.”  Uh ... let's start with dinner?
Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
Biden says platforms like Facebook are “killing people” with the way they are handling COVID-19 vaccine misinfo, as White House calls on Facebook to do more  —  - President Joe Biden on Friday said platforms like Facebook are killing people by allowing Covid-19 vaccine misinformation on their services.
CNN:
More: Fortune and Vox
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Kait Sanchez / The Verge:
Unicode releases a draft list of new emoji to be finalized in September; contenders include multiracial handshake, melting smiley face, a pregnant man, and more  —  Looking forward to beans and more  —  The draft list for the next round of new emoji was announced today, two days ahead of World Emoji Day on July 17th.
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google Cloud VP Amr Awadallah leaves the company, after staff complain about his manifesto called We Are One that he posted online about his past antisemitism  —  - Google Cloud has abruptly parted with developer relations vice president Amr Awadallah, according to an internal email seen by CNBC.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Paytm files for an IPO in India, looking to raise $2.2B  —  Digital payments giant Paytm, one of India's most valuable startups, plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in an initial public offering, it said in draft papers submitted to the country's market regulator on Friday.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitter rolls out auto-captions for voice tweets in 11 languages including English, Japanese, and Hindi, more than a year after launching voice tweets on iOS  —  Twitter was criticized for launching voice tweets without captions  —  Twitter is now rolling out captions for voice tweets, the company announced Thursday.
Liam J. Kelly / Decrypt:
Binance is halting operations for its stock tokens offering, which launched in April and let users buy and sell tokenized stocks of popular stocks like Tesla  —  Editor's note: This article has been updated to include an announcement from Hong Kong's financial regulator.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / VICE:
Microsoft and Citizen Lab say government hackers from several countries have used spyware from Israeli vendor Candiru that uses two 0-day exploits in Windows  —  Microsoft and Citizen Lab found a new kind of spyware made by the mysterious Israeli vendor Candiru, and targeting someone in Europe based on their political beliefs.
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Dorsey says Square is creating a new business line with the aim of helping devs build decentralized financial services products, primarily focused on Bitcoin  —  Square Inc. is creating a new business line to help developers build financial services products focused on Bitcoin …
Brad Bergan / Interesting Engineering:
Engineers in Japan say they have achieved a data transmission rate of 319 Tb/s on a fiber line more than 3,000 kilometers long  —  This could change everything.  —  We're in for an information revolution.  —  Engineers in Japan just shattered the world record for the fastest internet speed …
More: VICE and Tom's Hardware
Canalys:
Global smartphone shipments grew 12% YoY in Q2, with Xiaomi up 83% to take a 17% share and pushing past Apple to reach the second place for the first time ever  —  In Q2 2021, global smartphone shipments increased 12%, as vaccines rolled out around the world, and the new normal for economies and citizens started to take shape.
Jennifer Broxmeyer / About Facebook:
Facebook publishes its first quarterly Oversight Board update, noting it fully or partially implemented 14 of 18 board recommendations across 6 cases in Q1 2021  —  When we launched the Oversight Board, we committed to consider and transparently respond to all of the board's recommendations.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Stay alert: Zoho Cliq keeps you in the Checkout loop  —  Payment pages are becoming increasingly significant for various organizations.  For instance, consider an NGO committed to helping those in need.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
How to Cultivate Everyday Dharma, Suneel Gupta (#54)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 04/22 - TikTok Back On The Chopping Block?
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 4:50 PM ET, July 16, 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

Wall Street Journal:
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
Frank Bajak / Associated Press:
Dave Gershgorn / The Verge:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Jay Peters / The Verge: