Techmeme
October 20, 2021, 2:50 PM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Source: Facebook is planning to change its company name to reflect its focus on the metaverse as soon as next week  —  Mark Zuckerberg wants to be known for building the metaverse  —  Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse …
More: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Reuters, The Information, Reuters, GamesIndustry.biz, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, SiliconANGLE, PCMag, MobileSyrup, Al Jazeera, VICE, MarketWatch, Engadget, San Francisco Business Journal, PYMNTS.com, HotHardware.com News, Gizmodo, iThinkDifferent, USA Today, Quartz, CNN, The Economic Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, GameSpot, iPhone Hacks, afrotech.com, Coinspeaker, TNW, Redmond Pie, Mashable, Newser, iClarified, Android Headlines, Silicon Republic, Telegraph, phonearena.com, Memeburn, Techaeris, BetaNews, iPhone in Canada Blog, MacRumors, Wccftech, BBC, SlashGear, Patently Apple, KnowTechie, Input, cybernews.com, Protocol, fossbytes.com, The Week, cryptonews.com, MUO, Android Central, New York Post, TechCircle, OneZero, and BGR
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft begins letting Windows 11 beta testers try Android apps from the Amazon Appstore, starting with 50 apps  —  Beta Channel testers get access first  —  Microsoft is now allowing Windows 11 testers to try out Android apps.  A preview version of the Windows Subsystem for Android …
Bloomberg:
Sources: PayPal has approached Pinterest about an acquisition, potentially valuing it at $39B; Pinterest stock had dropped 16% this year but is up 10%+ today  —  PayPal Holdings Inc. is exploring an acquisition of social media company Pinterest Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, Bloomberg News reports.
Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:
US Commerce Department announces rules banning the export or resale of hacking tools to China, Russia, and other countries of concern  —  The Commerce Department on Wednesday announced a long-awaited rule that officials hope will help stem the export or resale of hacking tools to China …
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
District of Columbia AG Karl Racine plans to add Mark Zuckerberg to an ongoing privacy lawsuit, which began in 2018 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal  —  The District of Columbia case, which grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, could expose the chief executive to financial and other penalties.
Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
UK's CMA fines Facebook £50.5M for breaching an order imposed during its ongoing Giphy acquisition investigation, saying Facebook refused to report information  —  Social media giant Facebook has been fined £50.5 million ($69.1 million) for breaching an order imposed …
CoinDesk:
Bitcoin crosses $65,607, an all-time high, after the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF rose by nearly 5% on the NYSE  —  The latest rally appears fueled by the successful debut on Tuesday of the first U.S. bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund.  —  Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency …
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: China's Oppo is developing high-end mobile chips, using TSMC's 3nm tech, for its premium handsets due out in 2023 or 2024  —  China's top handset maker looks to use TSMC's cutting-edge 3-nm tech  —  TAIPEI — China's leading smartphone maker Oppo is developing high-end mobile chips …
James Vincent / The Verge:
A look at Ask Delphi, a research project by the Allen Institute for AI that offers answers to ethical dilemmas, often with bewildering responses  —  A fascinating project that's best understood as a cautionary tale  —  Got a moral quandary you don't know how to solve?  Fancy making it worse?
Benedict Evans / @benedictevans:
[Thread] Analysis of FTC's report on Big Tech's startup M&A between 2010 and 2019: half of the deals were <$10M, most had <10 people and were US-based, and more  —  A common talking point in tech anti-trust: big tech companies have made hundreds of acquisitions in recent years, and almost none were reviewed, let along stopped. So, last month the FTC released some actual data, for Google, Apple, FB, Amazon and Microsoft. 🧵 https://twitter.com/...
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Spotify partners with Shopify to let artists list merch on profiles for $29/month to $299/month, starting in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand  —  Spotify on Wednesday announced a new partnership with ecommerce provider Shopify to let artists list merchandise directly on their profiles …
Ian Bremmer / Foreign Affairs:
How Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, and others increasingly rival states for geopolitical influence and are reshaping the global order as we know it  —  After rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, some of the United States' most powerful institutions sprang into action to punish the leaders of the failed insurrection.
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Brave now uses its own privacy-centric Brave Search instead of Google as the default search engine in its browser  —  As part of its ongoing push to eliminate Google as much as possible from our daily web experiences, Brave is removing Google Search as its default search engine.
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Q&A with Google executives on the Pixel 6's new Tensor SoC, which has two big ARM Cortex-X1 cores, 2 medium cores, and 4 efficiency cores  —  Learn more about the Google Tensor from the people that designed it.  —  The Pixel 6 is official, with a wild new camera design, incredible pricing, and the new Android 12 OS.
William Turton / Bloomberg:
Sources: the recent ransomware attack against Sinclair is linked to Russian group Evil Corp., which changed names to avoid 2019 US sanctions  —  - Evil Corp. said to change names to avoid 2019 U.S. sanctions  — Broadcaster hit with new ransomware strain called Macaw

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Keith Zhai / Wall Street Journal: