Techmeme
June 21, 2022, 3:20 PM

Top News

Andrew Rummer / The Block:
BlockFi CEO Zac Prince says the crypto lender “signed a term sheet with FTX to secure a $250M revolving credit facility”  —  - BlockFi secures $250 million revolving credit facility from crypto exchange FTX.  — The crypto lender says the deal ‘bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength.’
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:
As part of its new Responsible AI Standard rules, Microsoft plans to remove Azure's facial analysis tools, which can guess gender, age, and emotional state  —  The technology giant will stop offering automated tools that predict a person's gender, age and emotional state and will restrict the use of its facial recognition tool.
Financial Times:
South Korean prosecutors ban “dozens” of current and former Terraform Labs employees from leaving the country amid a probe into UST's and LUNA's collapse  —  South Korean prosecutors take action as they investigate embattled company behind the $40bn luna wipeout
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden raised a $130M Series B led by Electric Capital and Greylock at a $1.6B valuation, after a $27M Series A in March 2022  —  - Magic Eden has scored a $1.6 billion valuation in its latest funding round.  — The Solana-based NFT marketplace plans to launch on more blockchains.
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
ProShares, which debuted the first bitcoin futures ETF in October 2021, launches the first ETF to short bitcoin in the US, on the NYSE under the BITI ticker  —  The exchange-traded fund will allow investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure, which may prove particularly pertinent given the sharp downturn in crypto markets of late.
Financial Times:
SpaceX's Starlink aid to Ukraine triggers scrutiny in China, as Chinese firms rush to deploy satellite constellations into low-earth orbit to compete  —  ‘Silicon Valley Iron Man’ is under pressure over satellites as Chinese rivals close in on Tesla  —  In the days after Vladimir Putin …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Meta settles its housing discrimination lawsuit with the DOJ, agreeing to alter its ad targeting methods and pay a $115K fine  —  HUD had accused Meta of engaging in housing discrimination by letting advertisers restrict who could see housing ads on Facebook based on characteristics like race, religion and national origin.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
The CEO and COO of Pornhub's parent company MindGeek resign, shortly after a report that looked at sexually explicit nonconsensual videos hosted on the site  —  MindGeek, the internet company best known for operating Pornhub, said that CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo have resigned.
More: New Yorker
Richard MacManus / The New Stack:
The Khronos Group forms the Metaverse Standards Forum with Nvidia, Meta, Epic Games, Unity, Microsoft, W3C, and others, seeking to improve interoperability  —  Interoperability — or lack thereof — is a key issue in the nascent metaverse industry.  The Khronos Group aims to solve …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta adds new Instagram and Facebook monetization tools, and extends keeping events, fan subscriptions, badges, and news products free for creators until 2024  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is rolling out more ways for creators to make money on Facebook and Instagram …
New York Times:
An investigation into Chinese government bidding documents details its expanding surveillance apparatus, including ~500M cameras and extensive phone trackers  —  Times reporters spent over a year combing through government bidding documents that reveal the country's technological road map …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter announces it's bringing back the Chirp Developer Conference, to be held November 16 in San Francisco, over 10 years after its last Chirp conference  —  As Twitter continues to woo developers back to its platform, the company today announced the return of its developer conference, Chirp.
Michelle Celarier / New York Magazine:

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Earlier Picks

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
ProPublica:
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Financial Times: