Techmeme
December 8, 2022, 12:15 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources: US prosecutors are investigating whether Sam Bankman-Fried manipulated TerraUSD and LUNA markets, leading to the cryptocurrencies' collapse in May 2022  —  Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Sam Bankman-Fried and his hedge fund orchestrated trades in a way that led to the collapse of two cryptocurrencies in May.
Kollen Post / The Block:
The US Senate Banking Committee calls on SBF to testify on December 14, a day after a similar House hearing; House lawmakers also threatened him with a subpoena  —  - The Senate committee wants Sam Bankman-Fried to testify the day after he's been told to testify in the House of Representatives …
Erin Woo / The Information:
Source: Twitter plans to change Twitter Blue's $8 per month price to $11 per month on iOS, likely due to Apple's 30% App Store cut, and $7 per month on the web  —  Twitter has informed some employees that it plans to change the pricing of its Twitter Blue subscription product to $7 if users pay …
Tatum Hunter / Washington Post:
A look at Prisma Labs' Stable Diffusion-based portrait generation app Lensa, which launched in 2018 for $36 per year and took off after adding “magic avatars”  —  Social media is celebrating.  Artists are protesting.  What's the real cost of an AI-generated portrait?
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expects the crypto exchange's 2022 revenue to be half “or less” of the ~$7B the company generated in 2021, as coin prices fall  —  Coinbase Global Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said the cryptocurrency exchange's revenue is set to be cut …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Debunking claims on Twitter's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, including that Twitter engaged in election interference or violated the First Amendment  —  Hello!  Someone has referred you to this post because you've said something quite wrong about Twitter and how it handled something to do with Hunter Biden's laptop.
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
A look at the reaction to Apple's E2EE news: the FBI is “deeply concerned” and says the change “hinders” its work while the EFF and others applaud the feature  —  Apple yesterday announced that end-to-end encryption is coming to even more sensitive types of iCloud data …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: a letter by Foxconn founder Terry Gou to China's leadership, sent over a month ago during unrest in Zhengzhou, helped dismantle zero COVID-19 policies  —  Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou warned that the government's strict policies would threaten its position in global supply chains
Wall Street Journal:
How tensions grew between Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor for months; sources: Benioff became frustrated about how Taylor was spending his time  —  Exit of Bret Taylor from role he has shared for about a year wasn't long planned  —  The Tech Sector Is Taking a Beating.  Here's Why.
Ezra Reguerra / Cointelegraph:
Some NFTs minted on FTX now show blank images instead of the original art as the metadata points to an FTX.US domain used for a bankruptcy restructuring website  —  NFTs hosted on FTX platform were affected by the firm's collapse, showing blank images instead of the original art.  —  191 Total views
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Google plans to merge Waze's 500+ employees into its Maps group starting on December 9; Waze will remain a standalone service but CEO Neha Parikh plans to leave  —  Search giant to keep navigation apps separate, says no layoffs are planned  —  How Google Remapped the World: The Tech Behind
Andrew Liszewski / Gizmodo:
Dyson announces the $949 Dyson Zone headphones, offering active noise cancellation and filters to block unwanted airborne particles, for preorder in March 2023  —  The company's first audio product promises to eliminate both unwanted noise and unwanted air particles.  —  Alerts
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Cameo launches Cameo Kids, offering personalized videos from animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, Blippi, CoComelon's Nina, and Santa for $25 to $30  —  Cameo today launched Cameo Kids, its new video messaging service that features personalized videos from popular animated characters …
More: Variety
Jeremy Hill / Bloomberg:
A US bankruptcy judge orders Celsius to return $50M of crypto deposits in non-interest bearing custody accounts, pending a decision on interest-bearing accounts  —  US Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn ordered Celsius Network LLC to return cryptocurrency that never touched the lender's interest-bearing accounts to its customers.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
The Pentagon awards Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle cloud contracts with a shared ceiling of $9B through 2028 under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability  —  - Of the four companies receiving cloud-computing contracts from the Pentagon, all of them had received requests for bids from the U.S. federal agency last year.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Dutch officials plan new controls on exports of chipmaking equipment to China as soon as January, potentially impacting ASML, aligning with US efforts  —  Dutch officials are planning new controls on exports of chipmaking equipment to China, according to people familiar with the matter …
Semafor:
Sources: in January 2018, Alameda got a $110M loan from Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and a $6M loan from philanthropist Luke Ding, who back Effective Altruism  —  The big money behind Alameda Research, the sister trading firm of crypto exchange FTX, came from two influential backers …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
The EU sets a December 28, 2024, deadline for new smartphones, tablets, headphones, handheld game consoles, and other devices to use USB-C for wired charging  —  We finally have a final official deadline for when new phones sold in the European Union — including future iPhones …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 12:15 PM ET, December 8, 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

Joseph De Avila / Wall Street Journal:
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Lily Hay Newman / Wired: