Techmeme
February 1, 2022, 12:50 PM

Top News

The New York Times Company:
The New York Times acquires Wordle, the simple word game that has amassed “millions of daily players”, for “an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures”  —  Wordle, Josh Wardle's stimulating and wildly popular daily word game, is joining The New York Times's portfolio of original …
Maximiliano Firtman / firt.dev:
iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4 beta code shows Apple is working on adding push notifications for web-based apps to Safari  —  iOS 15.4 beta has finally added icon support in the manifest, Web Push, AR, and VR experiments.  —  Twitter @firt About Newsletter  —  About 8 min reading time
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google begins rolling out iMessage reactions for Android's Messages app in beta, appearing next to message bubbles; some emoji reactions are not quite identical  —  As we spotted in November and following the latest push for RCS support on iPhone earlier this month, Google Messages is starting …
David McLaughlin / Bloomberg:
Source: the FTC, not the DOJ, will oversee the US antitrust review of Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition and will focus on potential harm to rivals  —  The U.S. antitrust review of Microsoft Corp.'s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. will be handled by the Federal Trade Commission …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India proposes a 30% tax on income from the transfer of crypto, NFTs, and other digital assets and will launch a digital rupee in the next financial year  —  India on Tuesday proposed launching digital rupee in within a year and a 30% tax on income from transfer of virtual digital assets …
John Hendel / Politico:
Nonprofit suicide chat service Crisis Text Line ends its data sharing relationship with for-profit spinoff Loris.ai and asks the company to delete existing data  —  The nonprofit mental-health hotline Crisis Text Line ended its data-sharing relationship with a for-profit spinoff Monday …
Taylor Lyles / IGN:
Discord starts letting US PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 users link their PSN accounts and display game activity; support for more countries is coming soon  —  Support will roll out first to US users, though.  —  PlayStation owners will able to connect their accounts to Discord starting today …
Tom Krisher / Associated Press:
NHTSA: Tesla will issue an OTA update for 53,822 cars and SUVs to remove an FSD feature that let vehicles roll through stop signs without coming to a halt  —  DETROIT (AP) — Tesla is recalling nearly 54,000 cars and SUVs because their “Full Self-Driving” software lets them roll through stop signs without coming to a complete halt.
IDC:
Global tablet shipments grew 3.2% YoY to 168.8M in 2021; Apple had 34.2% market share, Samsung had 18.3%, Lenovo had 10.5%, Amazon had 9.5%, and Huawei had 5.7%  —  Worldwide tablet shipments reached 46 million units during the fourth quarter of 2021 (4Q21), posting a decline for the second time since the pandemic began in 2020.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Silvergate Bank acquires the Diem Association's tech and other assets by issuing $132M in stock and paying $50M in cash and aims to debut a stablecoin in 2022  —  The Diem Association is shutting down.  —  Silvergate Bank confirmed Monday that it's purchasing the technology and other assets from Diem …
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
As Tumblr CEO Jeff D'Onofrio quietly departs and the company merges with Automattic, a look at its future plans and enormous impact on the modern social web  —  The CEO of Tumblr—a social platform that was once worth more than $1 billion, and in its time was among the internet's most popular …
Wall Street Journal:
Indian politician Rahul Gandhi writes to Twitter's CEO alleging it has been unwittingly complicit in a government campaign to limit new followers to his account  —  Politician writes to Twitter CEO to complain about curbs he blames on India's government, highlighting how New Delhi polices U.S. social media companies
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Metronome, which offers APIs to help SaaS companies charge customers on a usage basis, raises a $30M Series A led by a16z  —  As more software companies shift to more flexible pricing models based on consumption, many are choosing to charge customers on a per-use, or usage, basis.
Brendan Sinclair / GamesIndustry.biz:
Sony Interactive Entertainment announces it is buying Bungie, which makes Destiny and other games, for $3.6B; Bungie will become an independent subsidiary  —  Destiny studio will remain multiplatform, able “to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play”
Craig Timberg / Washington Post:
A whistleblower working with the DOJ says NSO Group offered staffers from US mobile security firm Mobileum “bags of cash” for access to global cellular networks  —  Rep. Ted Lieu asks the Justice Department to investigate after hearing the account of what he called ‘fishy’ behavior.
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Lunchbox, which offers restaurants tools for ordering, managing apps, and other tech, raises a $50M Series B led by Coatue after a $20M Series A in October 2020  —  It's not a secret that the restaurant industry was a late adopter of technology, a move that unfortunately left many restaurants unprepared …
More: FinSMEs
Ed Dixon / SportsPro:
Report: crypto-based sports fan platform Iqoniq, which partnered with Spain's LaLiga and others, has entered liquidation; Iqoniq raised €100M in July 2020  —  Fan engagement platform Iqoniq has gone into liquidation, leaving multiple sporting organisations potentially out of pocket.
Josh Scott / BetaKit:
Canadian startup RenoRun, an e-commerce service for construction and building materials, raises a $142M Series B led by Tiger Global and Sozo  —  RenoRun is building a vertically-integrated “one-stop shop” for construction materials.  —  Montréal-based startup RenoRun has raised $181 million CAD …

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Kim Lyons / The Verge:
Sam Byford / The Verge: