Techmeme
December 22, 2021, 4:15 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
Survey of 1,058 US internet users: 72% distrust Facebook, 63% TikTok, 60% Instagram, 53% WhatsApp, and 53% YouTube; 53% trust Amazon, 48% Google, and 44% Apple  —  You'll find all the usual technology suspects inside Mary Veselka's Pearland, Tex., home.  There's her iPhone …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
CES hosts say the show will proceed despite COVID-19; Meta, Amazon, Twitter, and others canceled in-person plans, T-Mobile and AMD plan a limited presence  —  - Google, HTC, Samsung and Sony still currently plan to go  — Host of CES conference remains steadfast in moving forward
Ben Dummett / Wall Street Journal:
Skillsoft, which makes training software for businesses, acquires edtech startup Codecademy for $525M in cash and stock; Codecademy raised $40M in February  —  Acquisition is Skillsoft's largest deal since going public in June  —  Skillsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire rival U.S.-based …
Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Jack Dorsey's tweet sparks uproar: “You don't own ‘web3.’ The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It's ultimately a centralized entity”  —  Fresh off relinquishing the chief executive reins of Twitter Inc., Bitcoin enthusiast Jack Dorsey …
Reuters:
Chinese state media says regulators suspended an info-sharing partnership with Alibaba Cloud over accusations it failed to promptly report and fix a Log4j flaw  —  Chinese regulators on Wednesday suspended an information-sharing partnership with Alibaba Cloud Computing …
Tom Krisher / Associated Press:
The US NHTSA opens an investigation to evaluate the driver distraction potential of Tesla's Passenger Play gaming feature, covering 580K cars from 2017 to 2022  —  ATHENS, Ohio (AP) — The U.S. has opened a formal investigation into Tesla allowing drivers to play video games on a center touch screen while its vehicles are moving.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell on meeting pandemic demand, relationships with Apple and Amazon, killing the Harmony remote line, USB-C, and more  —  Logitech is one of those ubiquitous companies — it's been around since 1981, selling all kinds of important things that connect …
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
A Discord announcement bot for Justin Kan's NFT platform Fractal was hacked by a scammer who made off with about $150K, before the platform even launched  —  Despite billions in VC investment, many web3 crypto platforms are still pretty hostile places for users new to the crypto world.
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Retool, a low-code tool for creating enterprise apps, raises a $20M Series C from Stripe's founders and others at a $1.85B pre-money valuation  —  Covering venture capital, software and startups  —  When Retool CEO David Hsu set out recently to raise fresh funding for his low-code software startup …
David Pierce / Protocol:
Interview with Automattic's Matt Mullenweg on working from his always-connected RV, making “the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet”, and betting on open systems  —  In the early days of the pandemic, Matt Mullenweg didn't move to a compound in Hawaii, bug out to a bunker …
Chris Vallance / BBC:
The UK's ASA bans a webpage and a Facebook post promoting Arsenal FC's Socios-based Fan Tokens, as the club “failed to illustrate the risk of the investment”  —  A web page and a Facebook post by Arsenal football club promoting crypto-based fan tokens broke advertising rules, a watchdog has ruled.
The Markup:
Amazon warehouse workers in Oregon say they saw a spike in COVID-19 cases this fall after the company started rolling back pandemic safety protocols  —  Two Oregon warehouses have been in an active outbreak for nearly 19 months.  Elsewhere in the country, warehouse workers report continual cases
More: Engadget
Bloomberg:
Intel faces criticism in China after asking suppliers not to use Xinjiang labor or products, with a Weibo hashtag on the topic drawing over 250M views  —  - Chipmaker says it doesn't use labor or supplies from Xinjiang  — Western nations have accused China of forced labor in region
Mehul Srivastava / Financial Times:
Sources detail how a 2019 NSO deal to sell Pegasus services to Uganda, followed by an attempt to hack US diplomats in Uganda using Pegasus, led to NSO's decline  —  For years, the Israeli spyware maker thrived through scandal.  Then, US diplomats in Uganda got hacked by Pegasus
FinSMEs:
HyperScience, which uses AI to extract data from business forms, raises a $100M Series E led by Global Founders, Tiger, Stripes, and Bessemer  —  Hyperscience, a NYC-based human centered automation company, raised $100m in Series E funding.  —  The round was led by existing investors Global …
More: AlleyWatch

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Ryne Hager / Android Police:
Mathew Olson / The Information:
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
Kimberly Chin / Wall Street Journal:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: