Techmeme
August 31, 2022, 3:10 PM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Memo: on top of cutting ~20% of its staff, Snap cancels its original shows, in-app games, and Zenly and Voisey apps; the layoffs could save $500M annually  —  Snapchat's original shows, in-app games, and camera drone are no more  —  Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: Snap plans to start laying off ~20% of its 6,400+ employees on August 31, 2022, including cuts to its hardware group; Snap stock is down ~80% in 2022  —  Snap's stock price has declined nearly 80 percent this year  —  Snap is planning to lay off approximately 20 percent …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:
Washington, DC sues Michael Saylor for tax fraud and his company MicroStrategy “for conspiring to help him evade taxes” “on hundreds of millions of dollars”  —  The attorney general's office is also suing the business software company for allegedly helping him evade taxes on his earnings in the district.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
After an outcry over having transphobic forum Kiwi Farms as a client, Cloudflare says denying security services due to “despicable” content is the wrong policy  —  The company has faced mounting pressure to stop providing security services to Kiwi Farms, whose users regularly dox and stalk trans people.
Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt:
Crypto.com sues an Australian woman after erroneously sending her AU$10.5M in May 2021 instead of a AU$100 refund; the woman reportedly bought a AU$1.35M house  —  A woman asked for a $100 refund from the crypto platform but instead received $10.5 million—and then went on a spending spree, according to reports.
ProPublica:
An investigation details an Instagram verification scheme using fake profiles on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and more; Meta removes badges from 300+ accounts  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
a16z releases free “Can't Be Evil” licenses for NFTs, inspired by Creative Commons, on GitHub; NFT licensing has been attempted before, including by Dapper Labs  —  Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm is releasing a free licensing system, aiming to help the NFT sector fulfil its “economic potential.”
Bloomberg:
Apple VP of Corporate Development Adrian Perica resigned from Didi's board, which he joined in 2016 after Apple's $1B investment in the ride-hailing company  —  An Apple Inc. executive has left the board of Didi Global Inc., as the Chinese ride-hailing company struggles to regain ground …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Q&A with Chris McKillop, the former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, on the past, present, and future of the OS, Nexus Q failures, and more  —  The former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, Chris McKillop, has shared with us some insights …
Tweets: @technacity
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: foldable OLED display with a comfortable keyboard and professional look, but $3,500 is expensive and the software has glitches  —  It's a 17-inch foldable that actually works  —  Ever since Samsung Display showed off a 17-inch foldable OLED screen last May …
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Solid, which offers APIs for banking, payments, cards, and crypto features, raised a $63M Series B led by FTV Capital, bringing its total funding to $80.7M  —  Solid, which rebranded from Wise in 2021, raised a $63 million Series B round of funding to continue providing its fintech …
More: FinSMEs and Finextra
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Researchers: self-harm posts are surging on Twitter, including graphic photos with bloody practices; one hashtag grew to close to 30,000 tweets by July 2022  —  Self-harm related hashtags have increased roughly 500 percent since October, a new report says  —  A Twitter user in apparent distress turned …
Josephine Wolff / Wired:
Cyber insurers are failing to reduce companies' cyber risk exposure and to cover breached firms' costs after state-sponsored cyberattacks that fall short of war  —  Cyberinsurance doesn't cover acts of war.  But even as cyberattacks mount, the definition of “warlike” actions remains blurry.

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