Techmeme
September 5, 2021, 1:50 PM

Top News

Ryan Mac / New York Times:
Facebook apologizes after its AI recommendation feature categorized a video of Black men as “about Primates”; Facebook disabled the feature and is investigating  —  Facebook called it “an unacceptable error.”  The company has struggled with other issues related to race.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Apple made an unforced error by trying to tackle CSAM and child safety issues inside the Apple Park vacuum while adhering to its annual iOS release schedule  —  Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review.  —  Last week, we dove into the truly bizarre machinations of the NFT market.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Harvard's Willy Shih on the global chip shortage, supply chains, and why Biden's $52B for chip manufacturing may not be enough for the US to catch up to TSMC  —  Since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for microchips has far exceeded supply, causing problems in every industry that relies on computers.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Texas Right to Life whistleblower site is now using Epik for its name servers and as its domain registrar, as Digital Ocean appears to have cut off service  —  GoDaddy gave website “24 hours to move to a different provider.”  —  The Texas Right to Life group will have to find a new hosting provider …
New York Times:
Profile of BlockFi, which says it has $10B+ in assets, 450K+ clients, licenses in 28 states, and uses digital assets as collateral to provide loans in minutes  —  The boom in companies offering cryptocurrency loans and high-yield deposit accounts is disrupting the banking industry and leaving regulators scrambling to catch up.
Carrie Mihalcik / CNET:
#AppleToo publishes an open letter to Tim Cook, asking for transparent and fair compensation, reinvestigation of discrimination and harassment cases, and more  —  Among the requests in the open letter are transparent compensation and a reinvestigation of reports of discrimination and harassment.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Profile of Alvy Ray Smith, a Pixar co-founder who created the algorithms fundamental to animated movies and left after severe disagreements with Steve Jobs  —  Alvy Ray Smith helped invent computer animation as we know it—then got royally shafted by Steve Jobs.  Now he's got a vision for where the pixel will take us next.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Interview with Dom Hofmann on how and why he created Loot, the communities, creativity, and NFT speculation it spawned, and the future of the project  —  Loot (and Vine) creator Dom Hofmann on creating an open-source, decentralized game / financial asset / art project / metaverse (?)

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
GitHub Universe 2026: Highlights from the developer's developer conference  —  Copilot Fusion was the belle of the ball, but the hero at the heart of the two-day event was the developer community.
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:
Introducing the new Zoho Analytics: Agentic analytics for every business  —  We're excited to announce the launch of the new Zoho Analytics!  This release marks a major shift for the product …
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

Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
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.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
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.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
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.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
This AI Expert Argues We're Underestimating AI's Productivity Impact — With Ethan Mollick
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:50 PM ET, September 5, 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:
Yinka Adegoke / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks