Techmeme
January 26, 2022, 5:10 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta-backed Diem Association is talking to investment bankers about selling its IP to return capital to investors and giving its engineers a new home  —  The controversial cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg once defended in front of Congress is unraveling after regulatory pressure.
Microsoft - Investor Relations:
Microsoft Q2: revenue of $51.7B, up 20% YoY, net income of $18.8B, up 21% YoY, Windows OEM revenue up 25%, LinkedIn revenue up 37%, and Surface revenue up 8%  —  Earnings Release FY22 Q2 - REDMOND, Wash. — January 25, 2022 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft will keep Activision Blizzard agreements for three new Call of Duty games on PlayStation in the next two years, but long-term plans are hazy  —  Activision Blizzard Inc., which is being bought by Microsoft Corp., will release at least the next three games in its hit Call …
Eric Martin / Bloomberg:
The IMF's board urges El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks, a major obstacle to the country's $1.3B loan request  —  The International Monetary Fund's board urged El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's gaming head who oversaw big deals to poach Twitch's star streamers, leaves to grow Ethereum scaling startup Polygon's developer ecosystem  —  Ryan Wyatt will be at YouTube until the end of February  —  Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's head of gaming who oversaw some of its big deals …
Shannon Liao / Washington Post:
Activision Blizzard declines to voluntarily recognize a union formed by 34 QA testers at Raven Software, after failing to reach an agreement with the CWA  —  Activision Blizzard did not respond to workers' request for recognition of a union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software, the workers said Tuesday evening.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google shutters FLoC, its controversial ad tech for replacing third-party cookies, and proposes Topics, which categorizes the sites users visit into 300+ topics  —  FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), Google's controversial project for replacing cookies for interest-based advertising …
Bloomberg:
The US Commerce Department says the global chip shortage will stretch into at least H2 2022, based on information from 150+ companies in the chip supply chain  —  The Biden administration has concluded that a global semiconductor shortage will persist until at least the second half of this year …
Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:
Researchers find a 12-year-old vulnerability in Polkit that local attackers can use to gain root privileges on all major Linux distributions; an exploit is out  —  A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component that is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
In a YouTube creator update, Susan Wojcicki defends hiding dislikes, discusses adding NFT support, says creators making over $10K/year jumped 40% YoY, and more  —  YouTube is touting the explosive popularity of its TikTok-style short-form Shorts video feature — and says it's going to test …
Jason Koebler / VICE:
President Biden backs consumers' right to repair and acknowledges the anticompetitive practices of electronics manufacturers  —  “Too many areas, if you own a product, from a smartphone to a tractor, you don't have the freedom to choose how or where to repair that item you purchased.”
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Samsung announces its Galaxy Unpacked “The Epic Standard” event will be held virtually on February 9 at 7am PT, where it's expected to unveil the Galaxy S22  —  After its president TM Roh teased “the most noteworthy S series device we've ever created”, Samsung is announcing today when we can learn more.
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Twitter: governments made 43,387 content removal demands from a record 196,878 accounts in H1 2021; 95% came from Japan, Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea  —  Twitter said governments around the world made requests to remove content from a record number of user accounts between January …
Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times:
The FTC and Fashion Nova reach a $4.2M settlement over allegations that the fast-fashion clothing site suppressed product reviews of less than four stars  —  Fashion Nova held lower-starred reviews for approval before they could be posted, the F.T.C. said in a complaint.
Aaron Gordon / VICE:
Google's three years of security updates for its older phones like 2018's Pixel 3 is planned obsolescence; new Pixels get five years of support vs. iPhones' ~6  —  Three years ago, my Pixel 3 was the latest and greatest Google phone.  Now, the company has stopped providing software updates, making it a security risk to use.
Chester Wisniewski / Sophos News:
The immediate threat of attackers mass exploiting Log4Shell was averted because the severity of the bug galvanized digital and security communities into action  —  Sometimes, when a software crisis doesn't cause the kind of devastation everyone expects, it is because there may not have been a crisis in the first place.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/25 - Return Of The Vita?
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 5:10 AM ET, January 26, 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

Earlier Picks

Matt Wille / Input: