Techmeme
June 15, 2022, 5:35 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Internal Kraken comms and interviews with five workers: some staff accuse CEO Jesse Powell of fostering a hateful workplace and dozens are considering quitting  —  Jesse Powell, who leads the crypto exchange Kraken, has challenged the use of preferred pronouns, debated who can use racial slurs and called American women “brainwashed.”
Molly White / @molly0xfff:
[Thread] A look at Kraken's announcement of a culture overhaul, eschewing “stereotypical team diversity measurements”, as the crypto exchange touts hiring plans  —  Kraken, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, has announced they'll be continuing to hire, and have announced a culture overhaul that promotes “diversity of thought” over “stereotypical team diversity measurements” and prohibits describing another's words as “racist” or “x-phobic”. 🧵
Frank Chaparro / The Block:
Sources: crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital faces an uncertain future after a $400M+ liquidation; CEO Su Zhu: we are “fully committed to working this out”  —  The future of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital hangs in the balance as the firm faces potential insolvency after being liquidated by its lenders.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Carl Pei reveals Nothing phone (1) ahead of its July 12 launch event, saying “leaks are harder to contain nowadays”; details likely to come over the next month  —  Nothing, the consumer tech startup led by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, has shown off the rear design of its debut Phone 1 smartphone.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Internal memo: Meta plans to make Facebook more like TikTok, including bringing Messenger back into the app and recommending posts from “unconnected” sources  —  Facebook employees were recently given a new directive with sweeping implications: make the app's feed more like TikTok.
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Microsoft retires Internet Explorer after nearly 27 years, disabling the desktop app and directing users to Edge, which arrived with Windows 10 in 2015  —  Company says decision to disable desktop app comes as web developers less likely to make sites compatible with browser, which first graced computers in 1995
New York Times:
NHTSA data from July 1, 2021, to May 15, 2022: six people died in 392 incidents involving driver-assistance tech; Teslas were in 273 crashes and five were fatal  —  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released data on 10 months of crashes involving systems like Tesla's Autopilot.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The EU's General Court sides with Qualcomm over the European Commission's €997M fine from 2018 for allegedly paying Apple billions to use only Qualcomm chips  —  U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm (QCOM.O) on Wednesday won its fight against a 997-million-euro ($1.05 billion) fine imposed …
James Vincent / The Verge:
YouTube launches a corrections feature, letting creators add infocards in the top right-hand corner of a video at a relevant timestamp  —  Instead of having to re-upload a whole video  —  Everyone makes mistakes, but if you mess up a fact or flub a line in a YouTube video it can be hard to correct the error.
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Google says 1.5B+ people watch YouTube Shorts every month; TikTok had 1B+ MAUs in September 2021 and third parties estimated almost 1.6B MAUs in March 2022  —  Alphabet's Google discloses Shorts monthly viewership for first time amid heightened competition from TikTok and Instagram Reels
Max Chafkin / Bloomberg:
Meta's reported investigation into Sheryl Sandberg's expenses feels strange given the company spends extreme sums of money to boost its CEO and other executives  —  For an entrepreneur who has made “community” his life's mission, Mark Zuckerberg has always seemed oddly fixated on managing his own appearance.
Wall Street Journal:
Source: crypto lender Celsius Networks is looking for financing options from investors and exploring other strategic alternatives, like financial restructuring  —  Celsius Network, among the largest crypto lenders, has paused user accounts, citing extreme market conditions
Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Spotify CEO tells staff the company plans to slow hiring by 25%; Spotify added 2,000+ staff from 2019 to 2021, bringing its headcount to 6,617; stock is up 7%+  —  Spotify Technology SA will slow hiring growth by 25%, the latest sign of how fears of a recession are weighing on the economy.
Sydney Maki / Bloomberg:
As crypto tanks, El Salvador has lost almost $56M, more than half of what President Nayib Bukele spent to buy 2,301 bitcoin, raising debt repayment concerns  —  An epic rout that has wiped out about two-thirds of Bitcoin's value is exacerbating the debt crisis in the world's most crypto-friendly country.

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Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Stephanie Kirchgaessner / The Guardian:
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: