Techmeme
December 31, 2021, 12:50 PM

Top News

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
OpenSea bans PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club, two NFT projects dueling over which is the authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club ripoff  —  And dodging NFT marketplace bans while doing it  —  A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody.
New York Times:
A number of women who believe they were tracked with AirTags say Apple's safeguards against stalking are insufficient  —  Privacy groups sounded alarms about the coin-sized location-tracking devices when they were introduced.  Now people are concerned those fears are being realized.
Tim / Droid Life:
Google pauses the rollout of its December update for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro until late January after reports of calls dropping and disconnecting  —  In a bit of frustrating news, Google has confirmed that it has paused the December update for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, aka the first Feature Drop update for the two devices.
Brian Quarmby / Cointelegraph:
Ethereum scaling project Polygon says it quietly fixed a bug that put $23.6B in MATIC tokens at risk, but not before $2.04M in tokens was stolen  —  “Considering how much was at stake, I believe our team has made the best decisions possible given the circumstances,” said Polygon's co-founder Jaynti Kanani.
Brad Linder / Liliputing:
Devices running BlackBerry 10 or OS 7.1 and earlier will lose key services like calling, texting, data usage, and 911 access starting January 4  —  BlackBerry stopped shipping phones and tablets with its own software years ago, switching to Android in 2015 before shifting from a hardware company …
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Metaverse products from Meta, Microsoft, and others are just 3D virtual social spaces, and lack key features of the metaverse concept, chiefly interoperability  —  Meta's ‘Horizon Worlds’ app, Microsoft and Roblox are capitalizing on a buzzword that's far from reality
Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
African tech startups raised a record $4B+ in 2021, more than 2019 and 2020 combined, with more $100M+ rounds than ever before  —  African VC reached new heights in 2021 at over $4 billion and there's never been a better time to be bullish  —  Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention …
Rebecca Elliott / Wall Street Journal:
Tesla's software engineering expertise let it navigate the global chip shortage by rewriting software to use alternative chips in its cars  —  Electric-vehicle maker is expected to manufacture roughly 80% more vehicles this year than it did in 2020  —  Tesla Inc. has emerged …
Andrés Engler / CoinDesk:
Mexico's central bank plans to issue its own digital currency by 2024, joining Brazil and Peru as Latin American countries working on developing CBDCs  —  The Central Bank of Mexico (Banxico) plans to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) by 2024, the Mexican government confirmed in a tweet on Wednesday evening.
New York Times:
Investigation: how China identifies, tracks, and pressures its critics on Facebook and Twitter, including Chinese living abroad and citizens of other nations  —  Authorities in China have turned to sophisticated investigative software to track and silence obscure critics on overseas social media.

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