Techmeme
February 2, 2022, 11:20 PM

Top News

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Meta beats with Q4 revenue of $33.67B vs. $33.4B est., up 20% YoY, 2.91B MAUs, up 4% YoY, but misses with EPS of $3.67 vs. $3.84 est.; stock down 20%+  —  - Facebook earnings came in below expectations for the fourth quarter, and the company said numerous challenges are ahead in the first quarter.
Meta:
Meta breaks out Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp as Family of Apps, with Q4 revenue of $32.8B, up 20% YoY, and will adopt the META ticker in H1 2022  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2021.
Washington Post:
Meta reports its first-ever sequential decline in global Facebook daily active users, falling from 1.930B to 1.929B QoQ  —  The slowing growth is taking place as the company pushes into the metaverse and hardware.  —  Facebook parent Meta's quarterly earnings report on Wednesday revealed …
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Meta breaks out its AR/VR-focused Reality Labs unit, reporting 2021 revenue of $2.3B, up from $1.1B in 2020, and losses of $10.2B in 2021, up from $6.6B in 2020  —  Meta's AR and VR ambitions come with a significant price tag: Meta's Reality Labs unit lost $10.2 billion last year …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Blockchain bridge Wormhole confirms a hacker stole $322M worth of ether, and has moved its site into maintenance mode  —  A threat actor has abused a vulnerability in the Wormhole cryptocurrency platform to steal an estimated $322 million worth of Ether currency.
J. Clara Chan / The Hollywood Reporter:
Spotify reports Q4 revenue of €2.69B, up 24% YoY, 406M MAUs, up 18% YoY, and ad-supported revenue of €394M, up 40% YoY and a record 15% of total revenue  —  The audio giant reported earnings as a growing list of musicians and podcasters leave the platform over its handling of misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A profile of US hacker P4x, who says he is responsible for ongoing North Korean internet outages and frustrated by the US' lack of response to DPRK attacks  —  Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Elon Musk announces $500/month Starlink Premium, claiming 150Mbps-500Mbps download speeds, up from 50Mbps-250Mbps, and doubling upload speeds to 20Mbps-40Mbps  —  The new antenna carries an upfront cost of $2500  —  SpaceX's satellite internet service Starlink is getting a pricey new high-performance tier called Starlink Premium.
James Vincent / The Verge:
DeepMind details AlphaCode, a new AI coding engine that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level”  —  AlphaCode is good, but not great — not yet  —  DeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level.”
Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:
Belgium's data watchdog fines IAB Europe €250K after finding its ad-targeting tool violates GDPR, and orders a “series of remedies” within two months  —  IAB Europe, an association for online advertising companies, was fined 250,000 euros ($282,690) and handed an ultimatum …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
GitHub, which owns the npm JavaScript package manager, enrolls the maintainers of npm's 100 most popular libraries into mandatory two-factor authentication  —  The administrators of the Node Package Manager (npm), the largest package repository of the JavaScript ecosystem …
Sneha Shah / The Economic Times:
Headout, an online travel experiences marketplace, adds a $30M extension to its $12M Series B from September 2021 led by Glade Brook Capital  —  Mumbai: Mumbai: Headout, an online experiences marketplace for travellers, has raised $30 million (Rs 224.3 crore) in its extended series B financing round led by Glade Brook Capital.
More: TechCrunch
Wall Street Journal:
The US Commerce Department is finalizing rules for apps deemed to be national security risks, like TikTok, including mandatory third-party audits and monitoring  —  Commerce Department proposes rule to widen restrictions on Chinese apps; Sen. Marco Rubio says administration is taking timid steps on data security

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Earlier Picks

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