Techmeme
January 28, 2022, 10:15 PM

Top News

New York Times:
An investigation into the rise of NSO's Pegasus shows its widespread use by the CIA, UAE, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and others; the FBI bought but didn't use it  —  A Times investigation reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO's Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban.
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
DeFi service Qubit Finance says a hacker stole ~$80M in Binance coins on January 27 and offers them a bug bounty in exchange for returning the cryptocurrency  —  A threat actor has used an exploit to steal approximately $80 million from Qubit Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) …
Corinne Reichert / CNET:
Counterpoint and IDC: smartphone shipments grew about 5% to 1.35B+ units in 2021; Samsung took the top spot with 270M+ units, followed by Apple with 235M+  —  Companies shipped 1.35 billion smartphones in 2021, a 5.7% increase over the previous year, market researcher IDC said Thursday.
Alexandra S. Levine / Politico:
AI-driven suicide chat service Crisis Text Line shares anonymized data with for-profit spinoff Loris.ai, which uses it to market its customer service software  —  Crisis Text Line is one of the world's most prominent mental health support lines, a tech-driven nonprofit that uses big data …
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
Internal messages detail Spotify's lax health content policy; the company told staff multiple Joe Rogan podcast episodes “didn't meet the threshold for removal”  —  Leaked messages reveal the company has reviewed every Rogan episode and none ‘meet the threshold for removal’
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
After a customer backlash, Google says legacy free G Suite accounts will be able to migrate their data to free, consumer accounts before the July 2022 shutdown  —  Last week, Google essentially told free G Suite users “pay up or lose your account.”  —  There is hope for users of Google's “legacy” free G Suite accounts.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple adds unlisted app distribution to the App Store, letting developers publish an app that can only be installed via a direct link and not found via search  —  Apple has deployed an interesting new App Store feature called ‘unlisted app distribution’.  This means a developer can now publish …
Chris Stead / Finder:
Q&A with two Ubisoft executives, one of whom says NFTs are a paradigm shift in gaming and gamers “don't get what a digital secondary market can bring to them”  —  We talk to Nicolas Pouard, VP at Ubisoft's Strategic Innovations Lab, about the launch of Ubisoft Quartz and the Digits NFTs.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple deprecates Python 2.7 in macOS 12.3 and points developers to alternative languages like Python 3; Python ended support for version 2 on January 1, 2020  —  Apple will no longer bundle Python 2.7 with macOS 12.3, according to developer release notes for the upcoming software update.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Will Cathcart says WhatsApp has no plans to support RCS, as Meta launches its first marketing push for WhatsApp in the US, touting its privacy compared to SMS  —  The Meta-owned messaging app wants to be as popular in the US as it is everywhere else — will a big marketing push work?
Jonathan Browning / Bloomberg:
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch loses a $5B UK court battle with HP over false accounting and faces the prospect of extradition to the US  —  Mike Lynch, the Autonomy Corp. founder lost his acrimonious court battle with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. over false accounting.
James Hale / Tubefilter:
YouTuber Hank Green compares TikTok's creator fund, which pays creators less as more creators join, unfavorably to YouTube, which pays 55% of ad revenue  —  In 2020, TikTok established a creator fund that distributes $200 million annually to creators based in the U.S.
Jordan Pearson / VICE:
OpenSea says 80%+ of NFTs minted for free on its service are plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam, but reverses its decision to limit free NFT creation  —  After reversing course on a limit to the amount of free NFTs a user can create, OpenSea said the decision was due to the amount of fraud and spam.
Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times:
Waymo sues the California DMV to hide its safety details, such as descriptions of driverless car crashes, and says the data should be designated a trade secret  —  Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
Microsoft Azure Blog:
Microsoft mitigated a 3.47 Tbps DDoS attack on an Azure customer in Asia in November; DDoS attacks in India rose from 2% of all attacks in H1 2021 to 23% in H2  —  This blog post was co-authored by Anupam Vij, Principal PM Manager, and Syed Pasha, Principal Network Engineer, Azure Networking
Niraj Chokshi / New York Times:
The FAA says it has reached a deal to let Verizon and AT&T expand their 5G cellular service near airports while allowing more aircraft to land safely  —  The federal agency said an agreement with Verizon and AT&T would enable the wireless providers to expand their networks while allowing aircraft to land safely.
Florian Mueller / FOSS Patents:
Microsoft, the DOJ, and 35 US states led by Utah support Epic Games against Apple through amicus briefs filed with the Ninth Circuit appeals court  —  [Update] The Biden Administration is also supporting Epic.  [/Update]  —  Apple just reported record numbers.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
iOS 15.4 beta adds Face ID use with a mask for iPhone 12 and newer, without needing Apple Watch authentication, by recognizing “unique features around the eye”  —  The iOS 15.4 beta that was introduced today added a new feature designed to allow Face ID to be used with a mask and without an Apple Watch for authentication.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Eva Szalay / Financial Times:
Digital asset trading group Genesis starts accepting “blue-chip” NFTs as collateral for loans and derivatives deals  —  Decision to use the tokens to back crypto deals highlights boom in digital collectibles market  —  Digital asset trading group Genesis has started accepting non-fungible tokens …

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