Techmeme
October 13, 2021, 3:30 PM

Top News

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple is exploring adding health-related features to AirPods, including for enhancing hearing, reading body temperature, and monitoring posture  —  Earbuds could be offered as hearing aids and include an in-ear thermometer and posture warnings  —  Apple Inc. is studying ways …
Reuters:
Internal documents show Amazon's Indian arm ran a systematic campaign to create knockoff goods and boost them in search, starting in 2016  —  A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods and manipulating search results …
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:
Research: China's bitcoin hashrate share fell from 44% to 0% between May and July, as the US rose from 17% in April to 35% in August and Kazakhstan rose to 18%  —  Crackdown on digital currencies knocks country's share of crypto production to zero  —  The US overtook China as the world's biggest source …
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: TSMC and Sony are planning a semiconductor factory in Japan, opening in 2024 and costing ~$7B, half of which will come from the Japanese government  —  Toyota group parts maker Denso considers signing up  —  TOKYO — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chipmaker …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Apple Watch Series 7 review: bigger display, dust resistance, and multiple timers, but only one day battery life and no third-party watch faces or Qi charging  —  A bigger screen and faster charging are nice, but not reasons to upgrade  —  The most important questions to ask …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Facebook says it now counts activists and journalists as “involuntary” public figures to help protect them and will remove sexual content targeting celebrities  —  Facebook said it will remove “severe sexualizing content” targeting public figures — including celebrities …
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will likely cut its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by 10M units, due to shortage of Broadcom and Texas Instruments parts  —  Apple Inc. is likely to slash its projected iPhone 13 production targets for 2021 by as many as 10 million units because of prolonged chip shortages …
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:
Mindbody acquires ClassPass, a subscription-based fitness marketplace recently valued at $1B, in an all-stock deal and raises $500M led by Sixth Street  —  ClassPass, the subscription-based fitness marketplace most recently valued at $1 billion, is today announcing that it has been acquired by Mindbody.
More: Bloomberg and Forbes
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says a virtual event, titled “Unleashed”, will be held on October 18 at 10am PT, where new MacBook Pros with M1X are expected  —  Apple today announced that it will be holding a special event on Monday, October 18 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: competitors are gaining on Huawei and Apple in the 5G equipment and handset markets; US is catching up fast to China in 5G subscriptions per capita  —  The competition among equipment makers, countries and cellphone companies is heated.  Here are the leaders in each of those races.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung announces its Galaxy Unpacked Part 2 event will be held virtually on October 20 at 7am PT  —  Who's left?  —  Samsung has just sent out invitations for an event it is holding online on Wednesday, October 20th at 7AM PT / 10AM ET.  It's called “Galaxy Unpacked Part 2,” …
Martin Matishak / The Record:
US to host a two-day ransomware virtual event from Wed. with 30 countries, excluding Russia and China; source says Russia wasn't invited “for a host of reasons”  —  The Biden administration did not invite Russia to participate in the first meeting of a global effort to combat cybercrime …
Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
Seattle-based Karat, which helps companies conduct technical interviews, raises a $110M Series C at a $1.1B valuation led by Tiger Global  —  The news: Karat, a Seattle-based startup that helps companies conduct technical interviews, raised a $110 million Series C round at a $1.1 billion valuation.
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
Acer announces ConceptD 7 SpatialLabs Edition laptop, which uses eye tracking for a glasses-free 15.6-inch 3D display, available in December starting at €3,599  —  That kind of tech doesn't come cheap, though  —  Acer is finally bringing its glasses-free 3D SpatialLabs tech to a laptop you can buy …

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.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
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.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
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:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
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 3:30 PM ET, October 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

Richard Lawler / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
Eli Tan / CoinDesk: