Techmeme
February 8, 2022, 4:27 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils Tap to Pay on iPhone, letting US merchants accept contactless payments via partner-enabled apps later in 2022; partners include Stripe and Shopify  —  Apple has officially announced a new Tap to Pay feature for iPhone.  This feature, coming later this year …
Devlin Barrett / Washington Post:
The US DOJ arrests two people in New York and seizes ~$3.6B worth of bitcoin allegedly stolen in a 2016 Bitfinex hack, its “largest financial seizure ever”  —  The Justice Department announced Tuesday it had seized more than $3.6 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen as part …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Nvidia and SoftBank call off Nvidia's Arm acquisition, following regulatory scrutiny; Arm CEO Simon Segars resigns, replaced by Arm IP group president Rene Haas  —  Nvidia's deal to acquire Arm is off, the two companies and Arm owner SoftBank announced Tuesday.  —  With this, there is also a major leadership change at Arm.
Cara Lombardo / Wall Street Journal:
Peloton CEO John Foley will step down and ex-Spotify and Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy will take over; Peloton will cut ~2,800 jobs and cancel its Ohio factory  —  Exercise-equipment maker to name former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy as successor, overhaul board and cut costs
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple plans to improve benefits for full- and part-time US retail workers, including doubling paid sick days and increasing PTO, amid a tight labor market  —  Apple Inc. plans to significantly increase its benefits for U.S. retail store workers as it grapples with a tightening labor market …
Jeff John Roberts / Decrypt:
Crypto infrastructure startup Alchemy raises a $200M Series C extension from Lightspeed and Silver Lake at a $10.2B valuation, up from $3.5B in October 2021  —  Alchemy, a startup that provides blockchain tools, has been growing fast: It raised buckets of money last year and attracted dozens …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok updates its policies to improve safety for LGBTQ users, including banning misgendering and deadnaming, adds tools for age-appropriate content, and more  —  Months after TikTok was hauled into its first-ever major congressional hearing over platform safety, the company is today announcing …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
A look at Apple's IAP changes for Dutch dating app developers: its proposal seemingly isn't compliant, reducing the commission by just 3% is spiteful, and more  —  The continuing saga of Apple's conflict with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) — the Dutch equivalent …
John Markoff / New York Times:
As data centers grow, engineers at Meta, Google, and other companies worry about the reliability of ever-smaller chips and hardware failures with unclear causes  —  As the largest computer networks continue to grow, some engineers fear that their smallest components could prove to be an Achilles' heel.
CNBC:
Amazon Care rolls out its telehealth service nationwide, expands in-person care to more US cities, and adds Whole Foods, Silicon Labs, and TrueBlue as customers  —  - Amazon is launching its telehealth program, known as Amazon Care, nationwide and has signed up a handful of new companies to use its services.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out Journeys for Chrome on desktop, letting users revisit old browsing sessions, based on searches from the omnibar, organized by subject matter  —  Journeys groups your search history together by category  —  Google Chrome is rolling out Journeys, a feature that lets you revisit …
Shiona McCallum / BBC:
The UK's Online Safety Bill would mandate that porn websites verify users' ages or face fines; similar proposals were quietly dropped in 2019 after criticism  —  Porn websites in the UK will be legally required to verify the age of their users under new internet safety laws.
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Netflix and Amazon had fewer Oscar nominations in 2022; half of the Best Picture nominees had little to no theater time and all major studios used hybrid models  —  This morning's Oscar nominations suggest a rethink — or at least a collective hitting of the pause button — on the status of streaming in the awards conversation.
Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Partech Partners report: African startups raised a record $5.2B in 2021 across 681 deals, up from $1.43B across 359 deals in 2020  —  Last year was record-breaking for African startups.  I know I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but the astronomical growth is worth highlighting again and again.
Wall Street Journal:
The EU details the Chips Act, which would make €43B in public and private funding available for R&D and chip production, seeking to compete with the US and Asia  —  Legislation could mobilize about $49 billion in government and private cash, though critics fear a subsidy race
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
A review of digital advertising in 2022, which has shifted from a Google-Meta duopoly to one where Amazon and potentially Apple are major forces  —  Six years ago tomorrow, in The Reality of Missing Out, I wrote that the digital advertising market was settled, and Google and Facebook won:
Jessica Bursztynsky / CNBC:
Lyft Q4: revenue of $970M, vs. $940M est. and up from $570M YoY, average revenue per rider of $51.79, up 14% YoY, but 18.73M active riders, down from 18.94M QoQ  —  - Lyft reported fourth-quarter earnings after-the-bell on Tuesday.  — Lyft reported 18.73 million active riders in the last quarter of 2021.
More: Lyft, Inc.

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