Techmeme
July 20, 2021, 9:35 AM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Amnesty International researchers published a toolkit to help anyone scan their iPhone and Android devices for evidence of compromise by NSO's Pegasus spyware  —  Over the weekend, an international consortium of news outlets reported that several authoritarian governments — including Mexico …
The Guardian:
Snowden calls for spyware trade ban amid NSO news, saying the industry should not exist and “they don't make vaccines—the only thing they sell is the virus”  —  NSA whistleblower warns of world in which no phone is safe from state-sponsored hackers if no action taken
Dana Priest / Washington Post:
Nina Lakhani / The Guardian:
Washington Post:
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Washington Post:
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
DOJ unseals charges against four Chinese nationals, believed to be part of China-backed APT 40 hacking group; charging docs focus on activity from 2011 to 2018  —  The US Department of Justice has indicted four Chinese nationals today for hacking companies, government agencies …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is delaying return to office deadline by at least a month to October amid rising COVID cases, will give employees a month's notice before return  —  - The iPhone maker is now eyeing an October return for workers  — Covid-19 variants continue to spread across many countries
Sheera Frenkel / New York Times:
Sources: a group of Facebook data scientists asked for resources to measure COVID misinfo on Facebook at the start of the pandemic, but execs denied the request  —  The company doesn't know some specifics about how falsehoods about Covid-19 and vaccines for the virus spread on its social network.
Andrew Restuccia / Wall Street Journal:
Forbes:
BlockFi CEO confirms it received an order from the New Jersey Bureau of Securities to stop accepting new Interest Accounts; existing users won't be impacted  —  I write about how digital assets are going to change the world  —  According to a draft press release from the New Jersey Office …
noyb.eu:
Austria's Supreme Court asks CJEU if Facebook “undermines” GDPR by treating consent as a contract to deliver targeted ads, following a request from Max Schrems  —  BREAKING: Austrian Supreme Court asks CJEU if Facebook “undermines” the GDPR by confusing ‘consent’ with an alleged ‘contract’.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Dish Network signs a deal to pay AT&T at least $5B over the next 10 years to use AT&T's 4G and 5G networks for its MVNOs  —  Dish Network has a new network operator partner for its MVNO brands: AT&T. The companies have signed a network services agreement (NSA) that will see Dish pay …
GOV.UK:
UK proposes new pro-competition rules for digital economy, including allowing its Digital Markets Unit to suspend, block, and reverse decisions by tech giants  —  Digital firms with deep-rooted market power to be subject to mandatory code to drive up competition
Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
China calls out 145 apps, including those from Amazon and ByteDance, alleging that they illegally collected user info, and gives them until July 26 to stop  —  The 145 named apps have until July 26 to take corrective measures or face punishment, the Ministry of Information Technology (MIIT) …
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Employment Hero, an automated HR management service for SMEs, raises A$140M Series E at a valuation of A$800M; the company was last valued at A$250M in March  —  Four months after announcing its last round, Employment Hero has closed another $140 million AUD (about $103 million USD) in funding.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Google Sheets Magic Lookup for Zoho CRM  —  Our App Spotlight brings you hand-picked apps to enhance the power of your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all apps, integrations …
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:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
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.
Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
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.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:35 AM ET, July 20, 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

Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Muvija M / Reuters: