Techmeme
August 10, 2023, 5:55 PM

Top News

Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
An interview with X CEO Linda Yaccarino on having “autonomy” under Elon Musk, planning to add video calls, payments between users, brands returning, and more  —  - X CEO Linda Yaccarino explained to CNBC on Thursday why the company decided to get rid of its Twitter branding.
Nicola Agius / Search Engine Land:
X unveils Sensitivity Settings and Enhanced Blocklist to boost brand safety and control for advertisers, rolling out over the next few weeks in X Ads Manager  —  The new tools give marketers more say over ad placement.  —  X, formerly known as Twitter, has launched two new features to improve brand safety and control for advertisers.
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Dana Mattioli / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Amazon cuts dozens of in-house brands in clothing, furniture, and more to fend off regulators and grow profits; Amazon says Basics will remain a focus  —  Company's cuts include all but three of its 30 clothing labels, such as Goodthreads and Lark & Ro
Justine Calma / The Verge:
Google, American Airlines, and Bill Gates' fund Breakthrough Energy partner to use AI to chart more sustainable flights by avoiding routes that create contrails  —  Google has been working with American Airlines and Bill Gates' climate investment fund, Breakthrough Energy, to chart more sustainable flight routes.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
The UK Electoral Commission hack, which lasted 14 months and was disclosed nine months after discovery, likely exploited a now-patched Exchange Server zero-day  —  Evidence appears to show a critical 0-day tracked as ProxyNotShell was exploited.  —  It's looking more and more likely …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Mark Zuckerberg says Meta plans to add Threads features this week: share posts to Instagram DMs, a mention button, and a way to add custom alt text for media  —  Threads, Meta's Twitter competitor, is getting some new features “this week,” according to a post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Reuters:
Sources: the Kremlin's fear of a serious tech brain drain is the main factor preventing Moscow from nationalizing the Nasdaq-listed Yandex, which has 20K+ staff  —  The Kremlin's fear of a serious tech brain drain is the main factor preventing Moscow from nationalising Nasdaq-listed Yandex …
Alexander Marrow / Reuters:
Sarah Fielding / Engadget:
To fight spam, YouTube plans to deactivate links in Shorts descriptions, comments, and the vertical feed from August 31 and make social media icons unclickable  —  The move follows other anti-spam measures.  —  YouTube knows that it has a spam problem, particularly when it comes to its two-year-old Shorts feature.
Reuters:
Filing: Bittrex agrees to pay $24M to settle US SEC claims that the crypto exchange failed to register with the agency; Bittrex doesn't admit to the allegations  —  Bittrex has agreed to pay $24 million to settle claims by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the cryptocurrency exchange failed …
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Skydio shuts down its consumer drone business and plans to expand its enterprise offerings, after raising a $230M Series E at a $2.2B valuation in February 2023  —  Skydio today announced that it will be shutting down its consumer drone business.  —  Beginning today, the firm will no longer …
Rosie Perper / CoinDesk:
Y00ts, once a top Solana-based NFT project and that moved to Polygon in December 2022, plans to migrate to Ethereum and to return its $3M grant from Polygon  —  The popular project, which started out on Solana and migrated to Polygon earlier this year, said it would return 100% of the grant money it received.
Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph:
Fireblocks discloses BitForge, a set of zero-day flaws affecting widely used crypto wallets; Coinbase, Binance, and Zengo have patched their BitForge flaws  —  Fireblocks said the vulnerabilities affecting Coinbase, Binance and Zengo have since been fixed and has reached out to more than 12 others still at risk.
Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q1 revenue up 14% YoY to ~$32.3B, vs. ~$31.1B est., and net income up 51% YoY to ~$4.7B, as its core domestic e-commerce unit returned to growth  —  - Core e-commerce returned to growth for first time in a year  — Alibaba is trying to revive its business in a volatile economy
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Check Point acquires rival cybersecurity startup Perimeter 81 in a ~$490M “cash free, debt free” deal; Perimeter 81 raised $100M at a $1B valuation in June 2022  —  There is yet more M&A coming out of the security industry.  In the latest development, Check Point …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
ESET: since 2014, Belarus-linked hackers, dubbed MoustachedBouncer, have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country by intercepting their ISP connections  —  Hackers with apparent links to the Belarusian government have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country for nearly 10 years, according to security researchers.

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