Techmeme
December 20, 2022, 7:00 PM

Top News

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times:
FTX seeks to recoup Sam Bankman-Fried's and his associates' political donations, estimated at $70M+ in the 2021-2022 election cycle, to help repay creditors  —  Crypto group's new management says if funds are not returned voluntarily it will pursue recipients in court
Tracy Wang / CoinDesk:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Washington Post:
Alex Stamos / @alex@cybervillains.com:
Elon Musk amplifies false claims that the FBI “paid Twitter millions” to “censor info from the public”; law enforcement reimburses companies for data requests  —  This claim is false.  Law enforcement has the ability to get stored communications from companies like Twitter under 18 USC 2703(d).
Bloomberg:
Brian Fung / CNN:
SEC deposition: in 2017, Zuckerberg considered saying Facebook was investigating “organizations like Cambridge Analytica”, before advisers suggested against it  —  Mark Zuckerberg considered disclosing in 2017 that Facebook (FB) was investigating “organizations like Cambridge Analytica” …
Lee Fang / The Intercept:
Internal documents: from at least 2017, Twitter helped the Pentagon in its covert online foreign propaganda campaigns including by whitelisting CENTCOM accounts  —  Twitter executives have claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI open sources Point-E, a machine learning system that generates and displays a 3D object from a text prompt in one to two minutes on an Nvidia V100 GPU  —  The next breakthrough to take the AI world by storm might be 3D model generators.  This week, OpenAI open-sourced Point-E …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
TikTok begins telling users why a video was in their For You feed, such as content watched, likes, shares, comments, searches, followed accounts, or region  —  TikTok is launching a new feature that allows users to see why a particular video was recommended to them in their For You feed, the company announced on Tuesday.
James Reddick / The Record:
US prosecutors say two men conspired with Russian hackers to tamper with JFK airport's taxi queuing software, allegedly letting drivers cut the line for a fee  —  Two Queens men have been arrested and are facing up to 10 years in prison on charges that they conspired with Russian hackers …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Twitter pilots Blue for Business with select accounts, helping companies identify brands and key employees via badges, but doesn't share other perks and pricing  —  Twitter launched “Blue for Business” last week alongside relaunching Twitter Blue.  At that time, the social network had assigned a gold checkmark to businesses.
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Amazon agrees to settle two EU antitrust cases related to third-party sellers on its platform, won't pay a fine, and will make commitments for up to seven years  —  Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to settle two European Union antitrust cases related to allegations about its treatment …
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
The DEA finds a Mexico-based methamphetamine and cocaine gang working in the US, Mexico, Europe, and Australia used Binance to launder $15M to $40M in proceeds  —  A methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Australia used the world's biggest cryptocurrency …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Insider Intelligence: Google will capture 28.8% of US digital ad revenue in 2022 and Meta will grab 19.6%, for a combined 48.4%, down from a 54.7% peak in 2017  —  Google and Meta, known together in the ad industry as the “duopoly,” are expected to bring in less than half of all U.S. digital advertising …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko says the social network reached 2.5M MAUs in November 2022, up from around 300,000 MAUs in October, as Twitter users flee the service  —  Mastodon, a decentralized social media platform that many are turning to as a Twitter alternative, saw its userbase skyrocket …
Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia:
Sources: in a first, Apple plans to move some MacBook production to Vietnam in 2023, asking Foxconn to begin as early as May, to further diversify from China  —  iPhone maker aims to have ‘out of China’ production alternatives for key products  —  TAIPEI — Apple plans to move …
Jeff Kauflin / Forbes:
A profile of London-based crypto trading firm Wintermute in the aftermath of UST and FTX's implosion and a $160M hack, as revenue dramatically declined in 2022  —  By deftly navigating crypto's frontier markets and winning big on the collapse of Terra's stable coin, Wintermute has grown …
Marta Belcher / CoinDesk:
Senator Warren's Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act would be a disaster for privacy and civil liberties by effectively surveilling all blockchain users  —  The proposal would turn blockchains into permissioned ledgers surveilled by centralized gatekeepers.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Over 100 BTC claimed to be inaccessible was moved out of cold wallets tied to QuadrigaCX, the exchange that went bankrupt in 2019 after its CEO allegedly died  —  More than 100 BTC tied to QuadrigaCX moved out of cold storage wallets over the weekend.  Quadriga's bankruptcy trustee …
Viola Zhou / Rest of World:
Sources: Foxconn workers in Zhengzhou say they got COVID-19 in December 2022 and some were asked to keep working; one supervisor advised workers against testing  —  Sick workers say they're being asked to stay on the assembly line as Foxconn ramps up iPhone 14 Pro production.

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.
Zoho:
Transform sales efficiency with VoIP-CRM integration  —  This is a guest post by CallHippo.  Sales efficiency is critical for success in today's competitive business landscape.  However, many businesses struggle …
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 12/19 - 1800CHATGPT
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 7:00 PM ET, December 20, 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

Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:
Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: