Techmeme
November 20, 2021, 1:30 AM

Top News

Kelly Crow / Wall Street Journal:
ConstitutionDAO, which crowdfunded over $40M, loses Sotheby's US Constitution auction to a $43.2M bid from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin  —  The 53-year-old billionaire paid $43.2 million for the historic document; he plans to lend it to a museum in Arkansas  —  Chicago hedge-fund billionaire …
Matt Burgess / Wired UK:
DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android, a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers from Google and Facebook  —  The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.  —  At the end of April …
CoinDesk:
Square's TBD division releases a white paper detailing tbDEX, a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets  —  Payments giant Square released a white paper on Friday detailing a new decentralized protocol for exchanging digital and other assets known as tbDEX.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Defense Department solicits bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle for cloud contracts; DoD canceled its $10B JEDI contract in July  —  - The U.S. Defense Department expects to dole out cloud contracts to multiple companies.  — The new push comes after Pentagon scrapped its plans …
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:
DOJ says Iranian hackers breached a media company in fall 2020 and tested how to create false news content; sources say Lee Enterprises was targeted  —  Computer systems of Lee Enterprises, which owns dozens of daily papers, were targeted in disinformation campaign
Reuters:
Internal documents describe how Amazon's lobbying helped it kill or undermine privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 US states  —  The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, speaking in 2018 after Amazon picked the state as the site of its new headquarters.
Matthew Gault / VICE:
An artist and programmer in Australia creates The NFT Bay, a torrent website where anyone can download 15TB of NFT JPEGs  —  An artist and programer in Australia has uploaded 15 Terabytes of NFTs to a server.  Here's the torrent for them.  —  Matthew Gault
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
A writer created a politically bland Facebook profile to test the app's algorithm for extreme content, and ended up being shown low-quality, clickbait posts  —  In 2019, a researcher at Facebook conducted an experiment to see whether the platform really has a tendency to send users …
Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Thinkarete Lifestyle, cited by Facebook as Q3's most widely viewed Page in the US, seems to be a barely active drop-shipping scheme with stolen content  —  Read to the end for a fascinating thread about why music sucks now  —  Unmasking The Most Viral Page On Facebook
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Disney adds Disney+ and ESPN+ to Hulu + Live TV, and will raise its monthly price by $5 to $70 for the ad-supported tier and $76 for ad-free, starting Dec. 21  —  Softening the blow of a monthly price hike, Disney is offering subscribers to Hulu's live TV service access to Disney+ and ESPN+ at no extra charge.
Steven Levy / Wired:
Alphabet X's Everyday Robots says it now has a fleet of 100+ robot prototypes that are autonomously performing tasks like wiping tables around its offices  —  Plus: The man behind a famous paradox, the laws that will govern the metaverse, and a deadly swarm of scorpions.  —  Hi, everyone!
Gilad Edelman / Wired:
Q&A with Integrity Institute's Jeff Allen on how Facebook's algorithm gives preference to engagement baiting, and how to address that from a design perspective  —  Jeff Allen, cofounder of the Integrity Institute and a former data scientist at Facebook, says social media companies need missions beyond “giving everyone a voice.”

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
Cultivating creativity and innovation in the modern workspace  —  In the realm of modern business, success depends on more than just delivering products or services—it requires an environment where creativity thrives and new ideas are welcomed.
Mastodon:
Donate to Mastodon  —  Mastodon gGmbH, the non-profit behind the open-source software powering the social web, relies entirely on support from users like you.  Donate directly with a credit card or through Patreon.
The Kevin Rose Show:
How to Cultivate Everyday Dharma, Suneel Gupta (#54)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 04/24 - What Now For TikTok?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:30 AM ET, November 20, 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

Michelle F Davis / Bloomberg:
Tim Starks / CyberScoop:

Earlier Picks

Catie Keck / The Verge:
Shannon Bond / NPR:
Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:
The Information:
Henry Powderly / Search Engine Land:
Wall Street Journal:
Mark Di Stefano / The Information: