Techmeme
January 12, 2022, 5:30 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sony confirms PlayStation 4 production will continue in 2022, which sources claim will help the company offset some PlayStation 5 production pressure  —  Sony Group Corp. will continue producing PlayStation 4 consoles throughout 2022 as it navigates disruptions to the global supply chain …
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Jack Dorsey and others propose a legal defense fund for Bitcoin developers, citing “multi-front litigation” and “threats”  —  The main purpose of the fund will be to defend developers from from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Canalys: worldwide PC shipments grew 15% YoY in 2021 to 341M, the highest annual shipments since 2012; Apple's market share grew by 28.3%, Acer's by 21.8%  —  It would be easy to think PC sales dropped worldwide last year amid chip shortages, but that conventional thinking would be wrong.
Poynter:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
App Annie: consumers spent $170B on mobile apps globally in 2021, up 19% YoY, downloading 230B apps; the average American spent 4.1 hours in apps per day  —  Consumer spending on mobile apps reached $170 billion in 2021, according to App Annie's newly released “State of Mobile 2022″ report …
Peter Rudegeair / Wall Street Journal:
London-based Checkout.com, which offers payment processing tools, raises $1B in a share sale at a $40B valuation  —  The $1 billion deal vaults the digital-payments processor past all but a handful of other startups  —  Checkout.com didn't raise money from outside investors until 2019.
Lucy Harley-Mckeown / The Block:
Coinbase says “nearly the entire company will shut down” across four separate “recharge weeks” for employees in 2022  —  Quick Take  — Coinbase is giving employees four ‘recharge weeks’ off in 2022 in order to counteract what it called an intense working environment.
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Samsung, after announcing a Jan. 11 event for the Exynos 2200, didn't show up to the product's launch and says it will unveil the new chip with a new smartphone  —  The Exynos 2200 was supposed to launch on January 11.  It didn't.  —  So here's a crazy story.
Justin Hendrix / Tech Policy Press:
Over 260 health professionals tell Spotify to implement a misinformation policy, after a Joe Rogan Experience episode featured a discredited scientist  —  More than 260 doctors, nurses, scientists, health professionals and others have signed an open letter calling on the streaming media platform Spotify to …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft has hired a veteran semiconductor designer from Apple, as it seeks to develop its own chips for Azure servers  —  Microsoft Corp. lured away a veteran semiconductor designer from Apple Inc. as it looks to expand its own server-chips efforts, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: Instagram became the world's most downloaded app in Q4 2021, its best quarter since 2014 with installs up 10% QoQ, followed by TikTok and Facebook  —  Instagram is benefiting from TikTok's ban in India, and has now reclaimed the top spot in terms of total global downloads as of the fourth quarter of 2021.
More: Sensor Tower BlogTweets: @kantrowitz
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Wordle clones are starting to disappear from Apple's App Store, after reports surfaced about many capitalizing on the guessing game's popularity  —  It seems Apple has taken action  —  Has Apple taken action against apps that cloned the popular web game Wordle?
Bloomberg:
Alphabet Workers Union complains that contract workers receive COVID-19 testing that is inferior to the $949 Cue Health devices given to full-time WFH employees  —  - Full-time employees at home get instant results from Cue  — Contractors in office are offered cheaper mail-in tests
Casey Newton / Platformer:
The FTC's suit against Meta comes too late to really matter, but its scrutiny of Meta's VR acquisitions shows it's determined not to make the same mistake twice  —  Why an FTC inquiry into the company's VR ambitions matters more than today's lawsuit ruling  —  Just over 13 months ago …
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Felix Onuah / Reuters:
Nigeria will lift its ban on Twitter after suspending it on June 4 last year; Twitter has agreed to open an office in Nigeria, among other agreements  —  Nigeria will lift a ban on Twitter (TWTR.N) from midnight after the social media platform agreed to open a local office …
More: TechCrunch

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Planned US Data Center Maintenance on 23rd and 30th November 2024, between 08.30PM to 00.30AM PST  —  Dear Customers, Our annual infrastructure maintenance for our US Data Center is scheduled for 23rd November 2024 …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Tue. 11/12 - Apple Into The Smarthome
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:30 PM ET, January 12, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times:

Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
Talal Ansari / Wall Street Journal:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Meta: