Techmeme
October 16, 2021, 6:50 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Internal docs: Instagram spent the majority of its global annual marketing budget since 2018 targeting teenagers, as it worries about losing its user “pipeline”  —  The app, hailed as Facebook's growth engine, has privately wrestled with retaining and engaging teenagers, according to internal documents.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
A joint advisory by the FBI, NSA, CISA, and EPA reveals three more ransomware attacks on water treatment plants this year in Nevada, Maine, and California  —  Ransomware gangs have silently hit three US water and wastewater treatment facilities this year, in 2021, the US government …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Valve quietly updates Steam's rules to ban games “built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs”  —  Your move, Epic Games Store  —  Games that use blockchain technology or let users exchange NFTs or cryptocurrencies won't be allowed on Steam …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Twitch downplays last week's hack, saying it had minimal impact and user login credentials, full credit card numbers, and bank information were not exposed  —  In an update regarding this month's security incident, Twitch downplayed the breach saying that it had minimal impact and only affected a small number of users.
Julie Jargon / Wall Street Journal:
Some doctors in the US and other countries say TikTok videos about Tourette syndrome may be contributing to a rise in cases of teen girls with physical tics  —  When teens started turning up in doctors' offices with sudden, severe physical tics, specialists suspected social media …
Chavi Mehta / Reuters:
Jack Dorsey says Square is considering building an open source Bitcoin miner, using custom silicon, for individuals and businesses  —  Square Inc (SQ.N) Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said on Friday the fintech firm is looking to build a bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon …
Kyle Chayka / New Yorker:
A look at Raya, a secretive subscription-based social network with a rigorous user selection process and a rigid code of silence for accepted members  —  The app has created a space free of the problems that plague the rest of the Web, but only by leaving almost everybody out.
Aislinn Keely / The Block:
CFTC files and settles charges against Tether and Bitfinex, ordering them to pay a total of $42.5M for making “untrue or misleading statements” about USDT  —  The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) simultaneously filed and settled charges against Tether and Bitfinex today …
Huib Modderkolk / The Guardian:
Profile of Edwin Robbe, who hacked the Netherlands' largest telecom KPN as a teenager and cost the company €3M, before being found dead in South Korea  —  Edwin Robbe had a troubled life, but found excitement and purpose by joining an audacious community of hackers.

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.
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.
Zoho:
Update on Node.js vulnerabilities CVE-2026-111497, CVE-2026-105482, CVE-2026-105483 and CVE-2026-106069  —  Overview On October 21, 2026, Node.js announced security releases for the 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines to fix multiple vulnerabilities.
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:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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:
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:50 PM ET, October 16, 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

Kellen Browning / New York Times:
Bloomberg: