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Cory Doctorow / OneZero :
Cory Doctorow highlights the conceptual limitations of Shoshana Zuboff's “surveillance capitalism” and details how to dismantle it — The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st century is just how widespread the evidence against them is.
Jack Morse / Mashable:
Slack discloses a now fixed critical RCE flaw in its desktop app; Slack paid $1,750 bug bounty to researcher, which critics say is a paltry sum for such a bug — Slack and its scores of desktop app users just dodged a major bullet. — The communications tool relied upon by journalists …
South China Morning Post:
Construction of a $20B chip manufacturing plant in Wuhan stopped due to lack of funding, the latest example of China's semiconductor efforts failing to take off — Construction on a US$20 billion state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing plant in Wuhan has stalled due to a lack of funding It's …
Dara Kerr / CNET:
How a law professor became the target of posts on conservative sites, social media harassment, and PR firms hired by gig economy companies, for supporting AB5 — Labor activists are targeted in a social media campaign as gig economy companies spend millions to prevent workers from becoming employees.
Ev Williams / The Official Medium Blog:
Medium says it had 1.2B page views in Q2 and now has “several hundred thousand” paying subscribers, and will start offering custom domains again — Upcoming features and a status update — We've had a busy summer. — Last month, we announced new features coming to our publishing tools …
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
ReliaQuest, a managed cybersecurity and intelligence services provider, raises $300M led by KKR, says its revenue grew more than 450% in the past three years — ReliaQuest, a company developing a cybersecurity managed service and intelligence platform for global enterprises …
Coco Liu / Nikkei Asian Review:
China updates its export control list, adding AI tech including “personalized content recommendations based on data analysis”, which may affect TikTok US sale — Popular video app's powerful algorithm likely to face ‘dual-use’ restrictions — HONG KONG — Beijing …
If you can’t keep up with the latest rumor mill on TikTok’s impending doom acquisition, my suggestion is simple: don’t. Or instead, enjoy it for what it is: one of the most absurd bakeoff deals in investment banking history.
Walmart and its always low prices are in the fray. Oracle is looking to find synergies to make enterprise resource planning software more enticing to Gen Z workers. Triller — who the hell are they again? — is supposedly teaming up with an asset management firm (and a planet near the Hoth system) called Centricus according to Bloomberg (to which TikTok responded nah). Twitter is in — maybe? — with key corporate strategic advice from Beyoncé on the social network’s debt underwriting strategy.
SoftBank is apparently looking, and also just happened to announce yesterday its intention to sell off $14 billion of its core Japanese mobile services business to net cash quickly. (The upshot is that at least TikTok lost most of its value before SoftBank’s investment!)
Everything here is absurd. TikTok is absurd. The videos of people doing what they are doing on TikTok are absurd. TikTok’s growth is absurd. A president setting a deadline on the sale of a company is absurd. This process is absurd. Selling a company as large as TikTok in 45 days is absurd. Walmart is absurd (and also a mirage, since they are still banned from New York City lest someone gets discounted soap in a pandemic).
I warned a few weeks ago to “beware bankers” peddling TikTok rumors. And that’s still the right answer, in the sense that of course we are going to get to the furthest reaches of the M&A universe as bankers try to salvage TikTok’s final sale price (“We’re approaching the Centricus system, sir!”). But that approach is so much more boring than just assuming that every rumor is true and trying to imagine Wall Street advisors trundling through this morass of bids.
My advice here is simple: let’s all take our analyst hats off for a week and put on our clown costumes, since — and it’s key you don’t work at TikTok for this or have money at stake in the company — this story is actually enjoyable.
COVID-19 is serious, the U.S. presidential election is weeks away, social justice in our cities is critically important. Just in the past few hours, T’Challa passed away, Hurricane Laura ripped up the Gulf Coast, and the longest continuously-serving Japanese prime minister of the post-war era (yes, I know, that’s a lot of qualifiers) just resigned due to health issues. It can get weighty on the front pages of the newspapers these days.
So it’s just nice to know that you can flip to the business pages and get some farce.
Maybe this whole story will eventually turn into the next great business book à la Barbarians at the Gate. But at least the barbarians then knew how to destroy a company with the proper levels of debt leverage. Here, you’ve got the pre-smoldered detritus of a business being bid on by the company that brought us The Greeter.
Whatever this saga brings next (hint: Microsoft buying the company), I’ll just say this: the warmth and cheeriness that TikTok provided millions of teenagers though short videos of awakward dance routines is the same mirth that it provides acerbic financial analysts with a caustic eye on the markets. In what has been a miserable year for all of us, for that small twinkle of amusement, I’m thankful.
“High Score” is a new Netflix documentary series that looks back at the early years of the video game industry.
Across six episodes, key developers, artists, executives and even players discuss the initial arcade and home console boom, the emergence of Nintendo, the rise of adventure and role-playing games, the battle between Sega and Nintendo, the success and ensuing controversy over fighting games like Mortal Kombat and the development of 3D gameplay in Starfox and Doom.
We review “High Score” on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, which inevitably leads us to get a little wistful our own relationship with these classic games.
For older gamers, the series provides some pleasant jolts of nostalgia, and it’s also a useful primer for anyone who isn’t familiar with the industry’s history. It also taking time to highlight some lesser-known stories, and it’s full of fun touches, like retro animation illustrated moments that weren’t captured on film.
It’s worth remembering, though, that “High Score” focuses on just a few key figures and a few key games, which means that a number of important developments are ignored or only touched on briefly.
You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:33 “High Score” review
Byrne Hobart / The Diff:
As Palantir files to go public, an in-depth analysis of its business model, a look at its politics and challenges it faces amid a widespread move to privacy — Plus! Wirecard, Yuan, Housing, Financial Education for Future 1%ers, Alphabet Insurance — Normally when a company files its S-1 …
Aliide Naylor / Gizmodo:
How Belarusians turned to VPNs and a private Telegram channel to bypass censorship when its internet was shut down using deep packet inspection — Illustration: Elena Scotti (Photos: Getty Images, Screenshots via Twitter) — In early August, Belarus—sometimes called Europe's last dictatorship …
Mehr Nadeem / Rest of World:
A look at how Saudi Arabia's gaming scene has dramatically evolved, especially for women, as the country loosens gender restrictions on esports — In April 2012, three college juniors — Felwa, Tasnim, and Najla — waited anxiously on the campus of Prince Sultan University in Riyadh.
New York Times:
Once a cautionary tale of arrogant tech, Microsoft now operates one of the most effective influence operations in DC, with TikTok its latest campaign — The tech giant, once an example of how not to operate in the nation's capital, now has a successful influence operation there.
Christine Hall / Crunchbase News:
A roundup of trends from YC's S20 Demo Day, which saw plenty of virtual events and edtech startups, and at least seven self-described “Shopify for X” startups — Y Combinator's Summer 2020 batch was the first to be completely virtual from interview to Demo Day.
Reuters:
BlueCity, owner of China's biggest gay dating app Blued, buys Chinese lesbian dating app LESDO, marking the first ever deal within the country's LGBT market — BEIJING (Reuters) - BlueCity BLCT.O, the owner of China's biggest gay men dating app Blued, said on Wednesday it had bought …
Nic Fildes / Financial Times:
UK-based patent translation and IP search services company RWS has agreed to buy SDL, which develops language translation software, for £809M in all-stock deal — Support services group continues expansion with largest UK tech acquisition this year — RWS has agreed to pay £809m …
Caixin Global:
Viva Republica, the parent company of the popular South Korean P2P payments app Toss, raises $173M at a valuation of $2.6B, brining its total raised to $530M — Viva Republica, the operator of peer-to-peer payment service Toss, has raised $173 million in a round led by existing investors …
