Techmeme
February 14, 2022, 9:15 PM

Top News

Lucy Harley-Mckeown / The Block:
Coinbase, FTX, eToro, and other apps surge in popularity after multiple crypto Super Bowl ads; Coinbase rose from 186th to 2nd on US App Store after QR code ad  —  Crypto apps shot up App Store download charts in the US on Monday morning, after a Super Bowl studded with digital assets advertising.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft tells employees it will fully reopen its facilities in Washington state starting February 28, citing high rates of COVID-19 vaccination in King County  —  Updated below with information on Expedia reopening.  —  One of the longest “three weeks” in history will soon come to an end.
John D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal:
Texas sues Meta over its use of facial recognition from 2010 to late 2021 in the state; source: Texas seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties  —  State says social-media giant violated privacy protections in lawsuit, seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties
New York Times:
A profile of Peter Thiel, who plans to leave Meta's board to focus on politics, funding far-right MAGA candidates who peddle conspiracies and deny Biden won  —  Peter Thiel, one of Donald J. Trump's biggest donors in 2016, has re-emerged as a prime financier of the Make America Great Again movement.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Intel is close to a deal to buy Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor for nearly $6B  —  U.S. semiconductor giant continues spending to expand its manufacturing operations  —  Intel Corp. is close to a deal to buy Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor Ltd. for nearly $6 billion …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Samsung has adopted Google Messages as its default messaging app in the US, starting with the Galaxy S22 series  —  Messaging on Android has been a mess for years, but the tide is finally changing.  With Google Messages bringing enhanced RCS messaging to virtually any Android user that wants it, there's finally a “default.”
Billy Perrigo / TIME:
Interviews and documents reveal traumatic working conditions at a Meta content moderation facility in Kenya, run by Sama, with pay as low as $1.50/hour  —  This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former Sama employees, as well as hundreds of pages …
The Block:
SEC fines crypto lending company BlockFi $100M, which will register its high-yield crypto savings product and offer it as a security as part of the settlement  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Monday that it fined crypto lending firm BlockFi $100 million …
Issie Lapowsky / Protocol:
The White House says 10M+ households have enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program, funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, for broadband discounts  —  The White House is taking a victory lap over its efforts to close the digital divide, announcing Monday that 10 million households …
BBC:
UK's HMRC tax authority seizes three NFTs in a £1.4M fraud case involving 250 alleged fake companies, the first UK law enforcement agency to seize an NFT  —  The UK tax authority has seized three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) as part of a probe into a suspected a VAT fraud involving 250 alleged fake companies.

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:
Zoho Sign is a “high growth performer” in the Frost & Sullivan's Frost Radar™ for electronic signature software, 2024  —  We are happy to announce that Zoho Sign has clinched a position as a high growth performer …
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:
Fri. 11/08 - Share To TikTok
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 9:15 PM ET, February 14, 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

David Gilbert / VICE:
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:

Earlier Picks

Yimou Lee / Reuters:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph: