Techmeme
April 6, 2022, 7:50 PM

Top News

Jillian Ward / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk refiles his Twitter stake's SEC disclosure to classify himself as an active investor; Musk bought his 9.1% stake in cash from January 31 to April 1  —  Elon Musk refiled the disclosure of his stake in Twitter Inc. to classify himself as an active investor, making the change …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal may struggle to balance his own vision against that of Elon Musk, an unpredictable board member with a much louder megaphone  —  Task #1: undermine CEO, consolidate power  —  Today, let's talk about what Elon Musk means for the future of Twitter.
Wall Street Journal:
Google Play removes dozens of Android apps, including Muslim prayer apps with 10M+ downloads, after researchers find malware tied to a US defense contractor  —  Code placed in consumer-facing apps is tied to U.S. national-security contractors, documents show
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
OpenAI releases DALL-E 2, a higher-resolution and lower-latency version of its text-to-image generation program with new capabilities, to researchers in preview  —  Researchers can sign up to preview it  —  Artificial intelligence research group OpenAI has created a new version of DALL-E, its text-to-image generation program.
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
The US DOJ charges Russian national Dmitry Olegovich Pavlov for helping operate and administer the Hydra Market darknet, after German police shut down the site  —  The US Justice Department on Tuesday filed charges against Dmitry Olegovich Pavlov, a 30-year-old Russian national accused …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
In a court-authorized March operation, the FBI cut off the servers of the Cyclops Blink botnet, tied to Russia's Sandworm, from Asus and WatchGuard routers  —  The Federal Bureau of Investigation has disclosed it carried out an operation in March to target a massive botnet controlled by Russian intelligence.
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
Sky Mavis, which runs Axie Infinity, raises $150M led by Binance, with participation from Animoca, a16z, and others, to reimburse users after the Ronin hack  —  Sky Mavis, the creator of play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has raised $150 million to reimburse its users who lost funds during …
David Uberti / Wall Street Journal:
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta won't hold its F8 developer conference in 2022, instead holding Conversations, a “business messaging event” on May 19, and an AR/VR event “later this year”  —  Meta is pausing the event in 2022  —  Meta won't be holding its F8 developer conference in 2022, the company announced Wednesday.
Kevin Marks:
Twitter quietly changed how embeds of deleted tweets work, showing blank embeds on websites; Twitter: the change is “to better respect” when users delete tweets  —  Twitter Edits You 2022-04-06 With all the fuss about Twitter's promised edit button, and how they might design it …
Samantha Cole / VICE:
Analysis: 50 out of 150 US police reports mentioning Apple's AirTags were of women describing stalking, 25 of which suspected ex-partners, husbands, or bosses  —  Motherboard obtained reports of stalking, harassment, and abuse using Airtags, targeting victims of intimate partner violence.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Amazon will increase its Music Unlimited plan on Prime from $7.99/month to $8.99/month and its Single Device plan from $3.99/month to $4.99/month on May 5  —  Amazon is increasing the price of its Unlimited Music subscription for Prime members, the company announced on its website.
BuzzFeed News:
An investigation reveals that Worldcoin, which exchanges iris scans for free crypto, is grappling with issues, from angry field operators to privacy concerns  —  As Kudzanayi strolled through the mall with friends, a small crowd caught his attention.  At its center, three men held …
Jessica Golden / CNBC:
Sports e-commerce company Fanatics raises $1.5B at a $27B valuation led by the NFL, MLB, and others; the NFL invested $320M, the biggest portion of funding  —  - The NFL, other major sports leagues, players unions and team owners are leading the latest round of investment in Fanatics, the online sports platform company.
More: TechCrunch
Dara Kerr / The Markup:
A report finds over 50 US gig workers were murdered while working since 2017; the families say Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and others offer little support  —  New report lists Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Grubhub worker victims, and the tally is likely even higher
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Binance.US, the exchange's American affiliate, raises a $200M+ seed at a $4.5B pre-money valuation from RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, VanEck, and others  —  Quick Take  — Binance.US has closed its first funding round, raising more than $200 million at a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation.
Crystal Kim / Bloomberg:
MicroStrategy borrows $205M against its bitcoin holdings to buy $190.5M more bitcoin, a first for the company; MicroStrategy now owns 129,218 BTC, worth ~$6B  —  MicroStrategy Inc. used a loan against its Bitcoin holdings for the first time to purchase $190.5 million more of the cryptocurrency.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Uber plans to add long-distance travel bookings to its UK app in 2022, including intercity trains, coaches, and flights; Uber hopes to eventually add hotels  —  Ride-booking group aims to become a broader travel hub as part of plan that was delayed by the pandemic
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pinterest announces a comprehensive policy to ban ads and posts featuring climate change misinformation or disinformation, a first for a major online platform  —  Pinterest announced today it's becoming the first major digital platform to introduce a comprehensive misinformation policy designed …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Nord Security, the Lithuania-based startup behind NordVPN, raises $100M, its first ever funding, at a $1.6B valuation led by Novator Ventures  —  VPN usage has surged in the last several years, with growing concerns over data privacy and security — and sometimes completely different motivations …
Washington Post:
Apple restores the “Smart Voting” app run by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's supporters in Russia; Apple removed the app after the Kremlin threatened its execs  —  Apple has resumed allowing Russians to download an app run by supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny …
Sarah McBride / Bloomberg:
PitchBook and NVCA data: US VCs raised $73.8B in Q1 2022 and invested $70.7B across 3,723 startup deals, down from $77B invested across 4,282 deals in Q1 2021  —  The U.S. venture industry raised $73.8 billion last quarter, more money than in any other previously announced three-month period and more than the total for most full years.

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