Techmeme
August 31, 2022, 3:05 PM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Memo: on top of cutting ~20% of its staff, Snap cancels its original shows, in-app games, and Zenly and Voisey apps; the layoffs could save $500M annually  —  Snapchat's original shows, in-app games, and camera drone are no more  —  Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: Snap plans to start laying off ~20% of its 6,400+ employees on August 31, 2022, including cuts to its hardware group; Snap stock is down ~80% in 2022  —  Snap's stock price has declined nearly 80 percent this year  —  Snap is planning to lay off approximately 20 percent …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:
Washington, DC sues Michael Saylor for tax fraud and his company MicroStrategy “for conspiring to help him evade taxes” “on hundreds of millions of dollars”  —  The attorney general's office is also suing the business software company for allegedly helping him evade taxes on his earnings in the district.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
After an outcry over having transphobic forum Kiwi Farms as a client, Cloudflare says denying security services due to “despicable” content is the wrong policy  —  The company has faced mounting pressure to stop providing security services to Kiwi Farms, whose users regularly dox and stalk trans people.
Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt:
Crypto.com sues an Australian woman after erroneously sending her AU$10.5M in May 2021 instead of a AU$100 refund; the woman reportedly bought a AU$1.35M house  —  A woman asked for a $100 refund from the crypto platform but instead received $10.5 million—and then went on a spending spree, according to reports.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
a16z releases free “Can't Be Evil” licenses for NFTs, inspired by Creative Commons, on GitHub; NFT licensing has been attempted before, including by Dapper Labs  —  Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm is releasing a free licensing system, aiming to help the NFT sector fulfil its “economic potential.”
ProPublica:
An investigation details an Instagram verification scheme using fake profiles on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and more; Meta removes badges from 300+ accounts  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Bloomberg:
Apple VP of Corporate Development Adrian Perica resigned from Didi's board, which he joined in 2016 after Apple's $1B investment in the ride-hailing company  —  An Apple Inc. executive has left the board of Didi Global Inc., as the Chinese ride-hailing company struggles to regain ground …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Q&A with Chris McKillop, the former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, on the past, present, and future of the OS, Nexus Q failures, and more  —  The former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, Chris McKillop, has shared with us some insights …
Tweets: @technacity
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: foldable OLED display with a comfortable keyboard and professional look, but $3,500 is expensive and the software has glitches  —  It's a 17-inch foldable that actually works  —  Ever since Samsung Display showed off a 17-inch foldable OLED screen last May …
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Researchers: self-harm posts are surging on Twitter, including graphic photos with bloody practices; one hashtag grew to close to 30,000 tweets by July 2022  —  Self-harm related hashtags have increased roughly 500 percent since October, a new report says  —  A Twitter user in apparent distress turned …
Josephine Wolff / Wired:
Cyber insurers are failing to reduce companies' cyber risk exposure and to cover breached firms' costs after state-sponsored cyberattacks that fall short of war  —  Cyberinsurance doesn't cover acts of war.  But even as cyberattacks mount, the definition of “warlike” actions remains blurry.
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Japan's digital minister Taro Kono pledges to update the many regulations that require floppy disks and CD-ROMs to be used when sending data to the government  —  Digital minister will drive change because, in theory, uploading info to government isn't allowed

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 11/21 - What The DOJ Wants Google To Do
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 3:05 PM ET, August 31, 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

Andy Baio / Waxy.org:
Jack Stebbins / CNBC:
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Jordan Middler / Video Games Chronicle: