Techmeme
December 9, 2021, 7:40 PM

Top News

WABetaInfo:
WhatsApp begins a limited test of Meta's Novi digital wallet in the US, letting users send and receive USDP within a chat  —  Today, WhatsApp is finally announcing a small pilot program to some people in the US, that can finally use the Novi digital wallet within WhatsApp!
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta opens its VR social platform Horizon Worlds to all adult users in the US and Canada, after announcing a private beta in September 2019  —  Facebook's first stab at the metaverse is Roblox meets the OASIS  —  More than two years and a company rebrand later, Meta is finally opening …
Jonathan Bell / Wallpaper*:
A look at the working processes at Apple's design team, led by VP of industrial design Evans Hankey and VP of human interface design Alan Dye  —  Global exclusive!  Led by Evans Hankey and Alan Dye, the Apple Design Team holds enormous sway over our evolving relationship with technology.
Politico:
Italy's competition authority fines Amazon €1.13B for abusing its market position and harming competitors in e-commerce logistics; Amazon plans to appeal  —  Italy's competition authority announced Thursday it was slapping a €1.13 billion fine on Amazon for abusing its dominant position …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Epic v. Apple emails show Microsoft offered to bring triple-A, Xbox-exclusive games to iOS if Apple let its xCloud game streaming service into the App Store  —  Remember when Apple pretended like it would let cloud gaming services like Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia into the App Store …
Eli Tan / CoinDesk:
Palm, which helps companies and brands create NFT projects, raises a $27M Series B led by Microsoft's M12  —  Microsoft's venture arm is leading a $27 million bet on NFT studio Palm.  —  The funding will be used primarily to scale the company's operations with a slew of new hires, a representative of the studio told CoinDesk.
Bloomberg:
Sources: as Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen buy Las Vegas properties, they are less involved in a16z's daily operations and are on fewer corporate boards  —  Recently, the Bay Area-based venture capitalist Ben Horowitz took part in a popular pandemic-era pastime: updating the location on his LinkedIn profile.
MacRumors:
Kuo: Apple's AR headset will include four sets of 3D sensors to offer a user interface with hand gesture controls and object detection  —  Apple's long rumored AR headset is predicted to include multiple highly sensitive 3D sensing modules in order to offer an innovative hand gesture …
Bloomberg:
Coinbase launches a DeFi yield product for non-US customers in over 70 countries, after US regulators effectively killed plans for its Lend program in September  —  - U.S. regulators effectively shut down Lend program earlier  — Holdings to be deposited into the Compound Finance protocol
Elizabeth M. Renieris / CIGI:
A look at Cardano, a controversial blockchain project led by Ethereum cofounder Charles Hoskinson that aims to build a national ID system for Ethiopia  —  There are countless examples of the dangers posed by national ID schemes, including from Kenya, Uganda, Pakistan, India and elsewhere.
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Crypto derivates market Paradigm, which focuses on large trades, raises a $35M Series A at a $400M valuation led by Jump Capital and Alameda Research  —  Quick Take  — Paradigm is raising $35 million in a fundraise led by Jump Capital and Alameda Research.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Tim Berners-Lee's Inrupt, which aims to “reshape the internet” by letting users control their data, raises Series A led by Forte Ventures, source says for ~$30M  —  Tim Berners-Lee's startup, Inrupt, has raised about $30 million in its Series A financing round, a source familiar with the matter said.
New York Times:
EU Commission proposes rules to turn gig workers into employees, affecting up to 4.1M workers; the EU estimates 28M work via digital labor platforms in the bloc  —  A proposal with widespread political support would entitle drivers and couriers for companies like Uber to a minimum wage and legal protections.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
In a letter, Sen. Warren asks the US DOJ and SEC to investigate whether Meta executives knew the company inflated a key metric measuring an ad's potential reach  —  Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the DOJ and SEC, after Sen. Maria Cantwell sent a letter to the FTC
C-SPAN.org:
Video of Adam Mosseri's testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee examining Instagram's negative effects on teen mental health  —  Instagram CEO testifies on impact of platform on young users before a Senate Commerce subcommittee.
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
DeepMind claims its language model RETRO matches the performance of neural networks 25 times its size, cutting the time and cost to train large language models  —  RETRO uses an external memory to look up passages of text on the fly, avoiding some of the costs of training a vast neural network
Mayank Parmar / BleepingComputer:
Amazon says it will shut down its global website ranking system Alexa.com on May 1, 2022, after 26 years of operation  —  Amazon announced on Wednesday plans to shut down its global website ranking system and competitor analysis tool “Alexa.com”, which has been available for 25 years.
South China Morning Post:
China orders app stores to remove 106 more smartphone apps, including social network Douban and karaoke app Changba, citing data privacy and security violations  —  Authorities say more than a hundred apps, including Douban, have failed to rectify data privacy and security violations Douban …
More: Protocol

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
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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

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
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.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Bringing Back Mammoths And Building Noah's Ark 2.0 | Colossal's Ben Lamm
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.
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Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Big Technology Podcast:
Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
Larry Ellison's Media Ambitions & Kevin Roose on AI's Biggest Gamble
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.
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Training Data:
Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
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.
 

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Kollen Post / The Block:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: