Techmeme
September 13, 2021, 1:10 PM

Top News

Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:
Internal Facebook documents detail XCheck, a program that shields VIP users from normal content enforcement policies, which included over 5.8M users in 2020  —  A program known as XCheck has given millions of celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users special treatment, a privilege many abuse
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Litecoin spiked ~20% after several news outlets, including Reuters and CNBC, reported that Walmart would begin accepting it based on a fake press release  —  An apparently fake press release said the retailer would begin accepting the cryptocurrency  —  The Litecoin cryptocurrency saw …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
What to expect from Apple's September 14 event: narrower iPhone 13 notch, LTPO displays on Pro models, redesigned Watch Series 7, no M1X MacBook Pros, and more  —  This is the free version of Power On.  If you like it, consider subscribing to Bloomberg.com — you'll receive …
Mike Wuerthele / AppleInsider:
Financial Times:
Sources: Beijing wants to break up Ant Group's Alipay, which has over 1B users, and create a separate app for the company's highly profitable loans business  —  Chinese fintech will turn over user data to new joint venture partly owned by state  —  Beijing wants to break up Alipay …
Margaret Harding McGill / Axios:
Sources: Biden will nominate Georgetown law professor Alvaro Bedoya, who focuses on privacy issues, to be a commissioner at the FTC  —  President Biden will nominate Georgetown University law professor Alvaro Bedoya to be a Democratic commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, people familiar with the matter told Axios.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Mozilla says it has bypassed Microsoft's cumbersome method for switching browsers in Windows 11, letting users set Firefox as default with one click  —  It's easier to switch to Firefox as default now  —  Mozilla has quietly made it easier to switch to Firefox on Windows recently.
Kim Lyons / The Verge:
M.G. Siegler / 500ish:
Eva Mathews / Reuters:
Coinbase says it plans to raise around $1.5B through a debt offering, to invest in product development and M&A, after saying it will raise $1.25B in May  —  Coinbase Global Inc (COIN.O) is planning to raise about $1.5 billion through a debt offering to invest in product development …
Financial Times:
Analysis: Irish DPC has failed to apply EU's privacy laws to US Big Tech companies, with 98% of 164 significant complaints about privacy abuses still unresolved  —  Irish regulator has not resolved 98% of 164 significant data protection complaints  —  Ireland is failing to apply …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Weeks after forcing Groovy Bot offline, Google is doing the same to Rythm, a bot with 560M+ users that lets Discord users play music from YouTube videos  —  The Rythm Discord music bot is disappearing on September 15th  —  Just weeks after forcing the Groovy Discord music bot offline …
Shane Goldmacher / New York Times:
FEC documents show that it has dismissed accusations by Republicans that Twitter violated election laws by blocking a NY Post article about Hunter Biden  —  The Federal Election Commission has dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October by blocking people …
Nic Fildes / Financial Times:
Kape, a UK-listed digital privacy company controlled by billionaire Teddy Sagi, buys rival ExpressVPN for $936M, boosting Kape's subscribers to 6M  —  Deal to acquire virtual private network provider one of biggest by UK tech group in recent years  —  A UK-listed digital privacy company controlled …
Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
How Amazon would be affected by California's new bill aimed at regulating the company's use of productivity quotas in warehouses, the first bill of its kind  —  The online retailer relies on employees' high pace of work for its fast shipping  —  California is taking aim at the grievances …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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

The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Bots Break Containment and Hack Hugging Face Autonomously — With Alex Stamos
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.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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:
Substack Wants To Become A Social Network; Beehiiv Wants To Stay Invisible
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:10 PM ET, September 13, 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

Rachel Louise Ensign / Wall Street Journal:
Mark Suster / Both Sides of the Table: