Techmeme
June 22, 2022, 11:15 PM

Top News

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Amazon is developing a system to let Alexa mimic any voice after hearing less than a minute of audio; an Alexa SVP says the goal is to “make the memories last”  —  Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) wants to give customers the chance to make Alexa, the company's voice assistant, sound just like their grandmother — or anyone else.
Jason Del Rey / Vox:
An internal Amazon memo from mid-2021 warns the company could run out of potential US warehouse workers by 2024 and suggests six remedies, such as raising wages  —  Unions might not be the tech giant's biggest labor threat.  —  Amazon is facing a looming crisis: It could run out of people …
Zach Schonfeld / The Hill:
Microsoft report details Russian cyberattacks across 42 countries outside Ukraine since the war began, with a 29% success rate and NATO governments prioritized  —  Russia has levied dozens of cyber espionage campaigns in 42 countries since it invaded Ukraine in February, according to a new Microsoft report.
David Ignatius / Washington Post:
Sascha Segan / PCMag:
Nothing confirms phone (1) will not be fully supported by carriers in North America, as the company focuses on “home markets”, including the UK and Europe  —  It looks like Americans and Canadians are getting ... nothing.  —  Carl Pei's buzzy phone firm, which he says will be a top alternative …
Monica Chin / The Verge:
MacBook Pro 13-inch (M2) review: dominant single-core performance with good battery life, but just two USB-C ports, design from 2016, and webcam is still bad  —  Apple has put a 2022 CPU in a 2016 computer  —  I don't really care what the M2 MacBook Pro gets on benchmarks.
Oliver Knight / CoinDesk:
eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum; DappRadar: KnownOrigin enabled $7.8M in digital collectible trade volume since its 2018 launch  —  The move comes one month after eBay released its debut collection of NFTs.  —  E-commerce giant eBay (EBAY) …
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Meta rebrands Facebook Pay as Meta Pay; Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is working on an interoperable “wallet for the metaverse” that will have “proof of ownership”  —  Also, the Meta Pay rebrand is here  —  Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Twitter partners with Shopify to launch a sales channel app, letting Shopify's US merchants sell products and engage customers via Twitter's Shopping Manager  —  As part of its ongoing efforts to expand into e-commerce, Twitter today announced a new partnership with Shopify.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Comcast and Google have emerged as the top contenders to help Netflix develop an ad-supported tier, and Netflix has discussed ad partnerships with Roku  —  Deals with the streaming company could include exclusive agreements and revenue-sharing  —  Comcast Corp.'s NBCUniversal …
CoinDesk:
Crypto broker Voyager Digital says its exposure to Three Arrows Capital consists of 15,250 bitcoin and $350M USDC, and “may issue a notice of default” to 3AC  —  The crypto broker said it's on the hook for about $370 million of bitcoin and $350 million of USDC and has asked for a repayment installment by Friday.
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Google revamps News, elevating local news and fact checks; News returns to Spain after 7.5 years citing the country adopting EU copyright rules in November 2021  —  Google News is relaunching in Spain almost eight years after it shut down to avoid paying publishers when the country introduced …
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, lays off ~120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in May 2021  —  MasterClass, an education platform that sells subscriptions to celebrity-taught classes, has cut 20% of its team to …
More: Variety
Jared Newman / Fast Company:
Valve's Steam Deck makes a brilliant case against walled gardens by running Arch Linux and allowing software from anywhere, unlike every major game console  —  The Steam Deck is a portable gaming system that breaks the biggest rule of gaming systems.  —  Unlike practically every major game …
More: Slashdot
Annie Njanja / TechCrunch:
Ghana-based Fido, which offers financial tools and loans to customers via its mobile app, raised a $30M Series A led by Fortissimo Capital  —  After extending credit to thousands of customers over mobile phones since 2015, Ghana-based fintech Fido is now in search of additional growth avenues for its expansion across Africa.
More: PYMNTS.com and FinSMEs
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Tether plans to launch its fifth fiat-pegged stablecoin in July, called GBPT, pegged to the British pound and initially available on Ethereum  —  - Tether has launched a new stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the British pound.  — It will be initially available on Ethereum.

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