Saturday, October 30, 2021

In 2018, Oculus' Jason Rubin sent a paper to Facebook execs laying the foundation for Meta's ambitions and detailing the need to own the VR market (Salvador Rodriguez/CNBC)

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC:
In 2018, Oculus' Jason Rubin sent a paper to Facebook execs laying the foundation for Meta's ambitions and detailing the need to own the VR market  —  - In 2018, an Oculus executive named Jason Rubin wrote a 50-page document headlined “The Metaverse” that he sent to a Facebook board member and some top execs.



Profile of barbershop booking app Squire, which is on track to triple its revenue to $12M in 2021 after raising $60M at a $750M valuation in July (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

Amy Feldman / Forbes:
Profile of barbershop booking app Squire, which is on track to triple its revenue to $12M in 2021 after raising $60M at a $750M valuation in July  —  Songe LaRon and Dave Salvant left their desks behind to create booking software for the nation's 109,000 barbershops.



A look at student activity monitoring software GoGuardian, whose usage in US schools exploded during lockdowns as some say it adds to kids' psychological strain (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
A look at student activity monitoring software GoGuardian, whose usage in US schools exploded during lockdowns as some say it adds to kids' psychological strain  —  The pandemic caused schools to embrace laptops, tablets, Zoom, and an app called GoGuardian that tracks everything students (and, sometimes, parents) do online.



China proposes guidelines on internet platform responsibilities

China's market regulator on Friday proposed a long list of responsibilities it said it wanted the country's internet platforms to uphold, in the latest effort by Beijing to establish an oversight framework for its technology sector. https://ift.tt/3nG0Brz

Roblox has been down since about 7PM ET Oct. 28, with some speculating that the outage may be related to a Chipotle promotion, but the company denies a link (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Roblox has been down since about 7PM ET Oct. 28, with some speculating that the outage may be related to a Chipotle promotion, but the company denies a link  —  Roblox is having some server issues  —  Roblox has been down for more than a day, with the game and its related website offline for millions of players.



Q&A with EIC Nilay Patel on The Verge's 10th anniversary, tech media's advance from early breathless gadget reviews, subject-source relationships, and more (Delia Cai/Vanity Fair)

Delia Cai / Vanity Fair:
Q&A with EIC Nilay Patel on The Verge's 10th anniversary, tech media's advance from early breathless gadget reviews, subject-source relationships, and more  —  After a decade covering the Zucks, Googles, and Ubers of the scene, the Verge editor in chief reflects on tech's troublesome relationship with the rest of the world.



Tencent's $1.3 Billion Sumo Deal Under US Security Probe

Tencent's deal with British video game maker Sumo has come under the scrutiny of a US national security panel in a potential setback to the Chinese internet giant. https://ift.tt/3bqqWEk

Squid Game Mania Pushes Cryptocurrency 300 Percent in 24 Hours

The dystopian series tells the story of a group of cash-strapped people forced to play deadly children's games for money. https://ift.tt/3vWSiew

Meta Acquires VR Fitness App Supernatural

Meta has acquired VR fitness app Supernatural a day after being rebranded from Facebook. https://ift.tt/3Ey50U3

GameStop COO Jenna Owens Exits After a Short 7-Month Stint

GameStop chief operations officer Jenna Owens is exiting from the company only seven months after joining the video games retailer. https://ift.tt/3muNfiC

Apple Protests Outside Payment Links on App Store Ahead of Epic Hearing

Apple has raised a strong objection to allowing third-party payment links on App Store as directed by a US district court following a lengthy trial with Fortnite-maker Epic Games. https://ift.tt/3nBdzqk

Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Says Bitcoin is 'Mathematical Purity'

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has said that Bitcoin is mathematical purity and can't be copied. He said cryptocurrency holds an awful lot of promise. https://ift.tt/3GBNhNl

Facebook Is Meta. Does That Mean FAANG Becomes MAANG?

Facebook's rebranding to Meta beckons another name change. The reference to the influential Big Tech consisting of Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google apart from Facebook might now go from FAANG to... https://ift.tt/3bvZO6F

Redmi Note 11 Series Said to Be Rebranded as Xiaomi 11i for India

Redmi Note 11 Pro and Redmi Note 11 Pro+ are tipped to be rebranded for India as Xiaomi 11i and Xiaomi 11i HyperCharge, respectively. Both smartphones were launched in China earlier this week along... https://ift.tt/3w2Org3

How the rhetoric surrounding techno-globalism has shifted, from countries advocating for a free, open internet to imposing limits to protect national interests (Foreign Affairs)

Foreign Affairs:
How the rhetoric surrounding techno-globalism has shifted, from countries advocating for a free, open internet to imposing limits to protect national interests  —  Two key words were missing from the statements that followed the inaugural in-person summit in September of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue …



Google proposes Search tweaks in Europe to comply with the DMA, including removing the map showing hotel locations and results in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters : Google proposes Search tweaks in Europe to comply with the DMA, including removing the map showing hotel locatio...