Techmeme
April 12, 2022, 4:10 PM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has delayed adding a blood pressure monitor to Watch until 2024, possibly 2025, after difficulties with accuracy during testing  —  Apple Inc.'s plan to add a highly anticipated blood-pressure monitor to its smartwatch has hit some snags and the technology isn't expected …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Apple updates iMovie for iOS and iPadOS with Magic Movie, for automatic movie creation from clips and photos, and storyboards for a template-guided approach  —  Apple is releasing an iMovie update today for iOS and iPadOS. iMovie 3.0 introduces two new major features — storyboards and Magic Movie.
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
A profile of a16z VC Chris Dixon, who made early bets on crypto startups like Coinbase; sources: a16z plans to fold its crypto funds back into its central funds  —  The Andreessen Horowitz partner is the new no. 1 on Forbes' 21st annual Midas List of top venture investors, thanks to savvy bets on tokens …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Matt Burgess / Wired:
DuckDuckGo launches its privacy-focused browser on macOS in beta through a private waiting list  —  DuckDuckGo started out as a private search engine.  Now its web browser is debuting on Macs to rival Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Brave.  —  When Google launched Chrome back in 2008, it changed the web overnight.
Zack Seward / CoinDesk:
Circle, which maintains the USDC stablecoin, raises $400M from BlackRock, Fidelity, and others, after raising $440M in May 2021  —  BlackRock and Fidelity headlined the stablecoin issuer's latest funding round, which follows a $440 million raise from last May.
Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:
RaidForums, used by Lapsus$, Babuk, and other extortion gangs, is seized in a US-led international operation; Europol says the hacking forum had 500K+ users  —  The RaidForums hacker forum, used mainly for trading and selling stolen databases, has been shut down and its domain seized …
Alex Webb / Bloomberg:
Data.ai: TikTok users spent $847M on in-app payments from January through March, up 184% YoY, a record for an app; TikTok had 1.6B MAUs at the end of March  —  Dubbing Russia's invasion of Ukraine “the first TikTok war” is by now a cliché, but we still have very little insight …
Bhanvi Satija / Reuters:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify rebrands companion app Spotify Greenroom as Spotify Live and integrates its live audio capabilities in the main app minus the interactive features  —  As an earlier report had suggested, Spotify today announced it will integrate the live audio capabilities from its companion app …
Akshat Rathi / Bloomberg:
A look at Stripe's $925M Frontier initiative, which funds carbon-removal startups and has received funding from Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and others  —  Some of the world's largest companies will spend $925 million buying offsets from startups that remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok is rolling out Effect House, which lets creators make AR effects that others can use in videos, to all users after a closed beta test last fall  —  Last August, TechCrunch noted TikTok was working to build its own augmented reality (AR) development platform called Effect House …
Nikkei Asia:
Major iPhone manufacturer Pegatron, Mac manufacturer Quanta, and iPad maker Compal suspend factory operations near Shanghai amid strict COVID-19 measures  —  TAIPEI — Three key Apple suppliers have suspended production in and near Shanghai as strict COVID-19 lockdown measures show signs …
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Ethereum developers launch the so-called mainnet shadow fork, a key stress test ahead of the proof-of-stake Merge upgrade, expected to reduce energy use by ~99%  —  Ethereum's network is inching closer toward its much-anticipated software upgrade known as the Merge, having just entered a key testing step.
Jill R Shah / Bloomberg:
Filing: Meta spent $26.8M on Mark Zuckerberg's security in 2021, up 6% from 2020, far above other execs, such as Sundar Pichai ($4.3M) and Jeff Bezos ($1.6M)  —  The cost of keeping Mark Zuckerberg safe keeps going up for Meta Platforms Inc., far outstripping what similar technology companies with high-profile executives are spending.
Eric Migicovsky:
On the 10th anniversary of smart watch maker Pebble's Kickstarter launch, its founder says Pebble failed as it tried to expand beyond a hacker user base  —  I've been giving a talk on the importance of learning from failure to every YC batch for last few years.  I wrote this post in 2017 but never published it.
Andi Ortiz / The Wrap:
Last Week Tonight's John Oliver weighed in on data brokers, showing how easy it was to target members of Congress with ads after obtaining their personal info  —  John Oliver escalated his typical shenanigans on Sunday night's episode of “Last Week Tonight,” going from poking fun at politicians to outright blackmailing them.
Eli Tan / CoinDesk:
Coinbase will produce a movie trilogy based on the Bored Ape Yacht Club, set to premier at NFT.NYC in June; BAYC owners can submit their apes for consideration  —  The trio of films will tie into the launch of Coinbase's long-awaited NFT marketplace.  —  The Bored Ape Yacht Club is getting …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Singapore-based fashion marketplace Zilingo suspends CEO Ankiti Bose, after attempts to raise $150M-$200M led to an investigation over its accounting  —  Zilingo Pte, one of Singapore's highest-profile startups, has suspended Chief Executive Officer Ankiti Bose after an effort …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Some business customers say Microsoft's licensing rules make it harder and costlier to run Windows and Office on rival cloud platforms like AWS and Google Cloud  —  The current tide of antitrust scrutiny and regulations focused on big technology companies has conspicuously omitted one company …

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
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.
Zoho:
Zoho SalesIQ turns 10: Transforming customer experiences since 2014  —  October marked a remarkable milestone for Zoho SalesIQ—our 10th anniversary.  What began in 2014 as a simple live chat tool has evolved …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/01 - ChatGPT Search
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 4:10 PM ET, April 12, 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

Earlier Picks

Teddy Amenabar / Washington Post:
Wall Street Journal:
The Verge: