Techmeme
August 23, 2021, 3:55 PM

Top News

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Researchers find 1K+ web apps, from Ford, American Airlines, and others, mistakenly exposed 38M records stored on Microsoft's Power Apps service  —  Misconfigured Power Apps from Microsoft led to more than a thousand web apps accessible to anyone who found them.
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
After criticism, Centre, the consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase, says its stablecoin USDC will now back reserves with only cash and US treasuries  —  - Digital currency company Circle says it's changing the makeup of its dollar-pegged stablecoin USD Coin to just cash and U.S. Treasury bonds.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
A bug in Razer's Synapse software, which Windows fetches and installs when a Razer accessory is plugged in, lets anyone with a Razer mouse gain admin privileges  —  A Razer Synapse zero-day vulnerability has been disclosed on Twitter, allowing you to gain Windows admin privileges simply by plugging in a Razer mouse or keyboard.
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Apple confirms it has been scanning iCloud Mail for CSAM since 2019 but has not been scanning iCloud Photos or iCloud backups  —  Apple has confirmed to me that it already scans iCloud Mail for CSAM, and has been doing so since 2019.  It has not, however, been scanning iCloud Photos or iCloud backups.
Gillian Tan / Bloomberg:
Nigerian mobile payments service OPay raises $400M led by Vision Fund 2 at a $2B valuation, marking SoftBank's first investment in Africa  —  - Sequoia Capital China and Redpoint China also participated  — Investment marks Vision Fund 2's first bet in Africa
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Visa says it acquired CryptoPunk 7610, one of the 3,840 female punk NFTs, for around $150K last week, adding it to its art collection  —  Quick Take  — Visa has bought CryptoPunk 7610 as it enters into the world of NFT commerce.  — “NFTs are an intersection of culture and commerce …
Turner Wright / Cointelegraph:
Substack begins accepting bitcoin as payment for subscriptions, initially for a few crypto publications, using payments processor OpenNode  —  Substack has more than 500,000 paid subscribers, but Bitcoin payments will first be available to “a select group of crypto-focused publications.”
Packy McCormick / Not Boring:
An in-depth look at Solana blockchain project: $0.0001/transaction and 65,000 transactions/second, well ahead of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and a $21.2B market cap  —  The $21B Blockchain and the Arrow of Time … Today's essay, the whole thing, is brought to you by... Solana  —  Hi friends 👋,
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
PayPal will launch its cryptocurrency service in the UK this week, the product's first international expansion since it debuted in the US in 2020  —  - PayPal will let British customers buy, hold and sell digital currencies, starting this week.  — It marks the first international expansion …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Labels that build themselves: Simplified Label Automation in Zoho Writer  —  Anyone who ships every day knows this feeling.  Forty orders, each with a different number of items, and every item needs its own label.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Will the Democrats' Big Win Stop the AI Buildout? — With Teddy Schleifer
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.
Machine Gods:
Crypto's Biggest Heist Ever + The Spy Who Loved Nvidia + Hacktober's Unsolved Mysteries
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Barry Diller on Big Bets, AI, and Knowing When to Walk Away
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Martin Casado on Frontier Model Economics, AI's Slowdown, and the Cursor Deal
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Sources:
A quiet investor's $10 billion bet on AI, chips, and defense
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.
Cheeky Pint:
The company building America's uranium supply from scratch
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:55 PM ET, August 23, 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

Cecilia D'Anastasio / Wired:
Edd Gent / IEEE Spectrum:
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
Post-Culture / @postcultrev: