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Everybody wants to buy TikTok

Your five-minute guide to what's happening in tech this Monday, from TikTok's many, many suitors to the crazy weekend for the chip world.
Good morning! This Monday, everybody wants to buy TikTok, the chip industry is in turmoil, and there's a better way to network digitally.
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Honestly, at this point are you even a tech company if you haven't kicked the tires on TikTok? (Also how is "Kicking the tires" not a TikTok dance craze set to an auto-tuned version of the "I'd buy that for a dollar!" guy? I digress.) We already knew Microsoft was deep in acquisition talks, there was that quickly-shot down Apple rumor, and now The Wall Street Journal has reported that Twitter at least had "preliminary talks" about a tie-up.
If you didn't have "preliminary talks" with TikTok, you should have. This is a rare opportunity to get a product that is somehow simultaneously mind-blowingly popular, culture-defining, and likely to go for pennies on the dollar. Though I guess you're excused if just calling Kevin Mayer would be seen as a move worthy of a dozen new antitrust hearings. (Looking at you, Mark.)
The WSJ also reported that investors from Sequoia and other firms are working with the Trump administration to find ways to keep TikTok in the U.S. And as Scott Galloway pointed out, the Twitter possibility opens up a whole new idea: TikTok essentially merging with (and becoming) an American company, in a deal where the other company is essentially a SPAC.
In the spirit of Anything Could Happen, and in part because I also read that CNBC story about how Netflix should buy TikTok and thought it was surprisingly … not crazy, here are my four favorite wild TikTok-acquisition ideas:
It's probably going to be Microsoft, but until September 20 the sky's the limit. What's your favorite Anything Could Happen TikTok scenario? Send me all your wildest ideas: david@protocol.com.
In related news:NPR reported that TikTok is planning to sue the Trump administration, and could file as soon as tomorrow.
All this geotechpolitics is creating some interesting alliances.
Over the weekend, Chinese media made it clear that Huawei is feeling the burn of the U.S. sanctions against working with the company, and may have to stop making its flagship Kirin chips altogether because it can't get access to necessary components.
Predictably, the ripples spread beyond Huawei. Qualcomm, which wants to sell components for 5G phones to Huawei, is now publicly lobbying the Trump administration to roll back its sanctions, saying that all they'll really do is open up huge business to Qualcomm competitors outside the U.S.
But there's more semiconductor controversy! Researchers revealed flaws in Qualcomm's chips, right as a hacker was leaking 20GB of engineering data from Intel with reportedly more to come. And new research suggests that chips from all over the industry are more vulnerable than we thought. So that's fun.
Shakeel Hashim writes: One of the biggest complaints people have with virtual conferences is the lack of serendipity: It's all panels, no chit-chat. Thanks to an open-source project from MIT researchers, though, that might change.
Minglr is an app designed to enable spontaneous networking alongside video conferences. You log on, see a list of other logged-in people, and click their names to request to speak to them. They'll see that you want to talk, and can hit a button to put you both in a video call.
The team decided not to charge for Minglr: "It would be very hard to compete with companies that already had a very serious video conferencing system," Malone said, noting that Zoom and Teams could just implement the feature. So instead they've made it open source, and hope that Zoom and Teams will implement it.
In 2020, it feels like the world is changing faster than ever before. Join us for conversations during the 2020 National Political Conventions on the policies and practices needed to build the future. Protocol's Issie Lapowsky and Emily Birnbaum will lead dynamic discussions on tech's role in enabling a diverse future workforce and enabling the economy of our future. Our first event on August 19 will host conversations with Representative Langevin (D-RI), former Pete for America investment chair Swati Mylavarapu, and TechEquity co-founder and former Obama campaign organizer Catherine Bracy, as well as many more policy and industry leaders. This event series is hosted in partnership with ITI.
Silicon Valley built a new stock exchange, but founder Eric Ries said it's hard to get companies to list:
When Apple tried to get her to change her logo, Prepear CEO Natalie Monson said it was ridiculous that she's not even the first to have received such a demand:
In the midst of a lot of anger about the COVID response, Bill Gates did offer a tiny bit of hope:
Waymo engineer Paul Roales is running for city council in Mountain View, and his plan is to speed up the government:
We'll try not to talk about Trump vs. China all week, but it's still the biggest story out there. And pay particularly close attention to how broadly the White House intends to actually go after Tencent and WeChat.
And there's another big week of earnings reports, including Tencent, Baidu, Lyft, Foxconn, Cisco and others.
Close your eyes and picture the Netflix sound: the Ta-Dum that's quickly becoming as recognizable as the HBO static screen. Did you know that sound almost included a goat? Or that Hans Zimmer made a longer, cooler version of it for in-theater Netflix experiences? Or that the Zimmer sound is now my alarm clock? All this and more comes up in the great new episode of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast, but most importantly: Watch the Zimmer Cut.
In 2020, it feels like the world is changing faster than ever before. Join us for conversations during the 2020 National Political Conventions on the policies and practices needed to build the future. Protocol's Issie Lapowsky and Emily Birnbaum will lead dynamic discussions on tech's role in enabling a diverse future workforce and enabling the economy of our future. Our first event on August 19 will host conversations with Representative Langevin (D-RI), former Pete for America investment chair Swati Mylavarapu, and TechEquity co-founder and former Obama campaign organizer Catherine Bracy, as well as many more policy and industry leaders. This event series is hosted in partnership with ITI.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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