Techmeme
December 20, 2022, 4:35 PM

Top News

Joshua Oliver / Financial Times:
FTX plans to recoup political donations by Sam Bankman-Fried and his associates, 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:
A look at Modulo Capital, a mysterious multi-strategy hedge fund founded in 2022 and based in Albany in The Bahamas, which received $400M from Alameda Research  —  Founded in early 2022, Modulo operated out of the same luxury Bahamian condominium community where Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX employees lived.
Washington Post:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
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.
Wall Street Journal:
As US lawmakers considered adding antitrust bills to the omnibus spending package, tech trade group CCIA, Meta, Amazon, and more ramped up opposition to them  —  Industry has spent more than $100 million to fight antitrust measures and other bills in Congress  —  How Apple's iPhone and Apps Trap You in a Walled Garden
Alex Stamos / @alex@cybervillains.com:
Elon Musk is amplifying false claims 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:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
TikTok begins telling users why a video was recommended in the For You feed, such as previous interactions or followed accounts  —  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.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI releases Point-E, an open-source ML system that generates and displays 3D objects from a text prompt in one to two minutes on a single 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 …
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
The DEA finds a Mexico-based methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the US, Mexico, Europe, and Australia used Binance to launder $15M to $40M  —  A methamphetamine and cocaine gang operating across the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Australia used the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance …
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 adhere to commitments for seven years  —  Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to settle two European Union antitrust cases related to allegations about its treatment of third-party sellers …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko says the social network reached 2.5M MAUs in November, up from around 300,000 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 …
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 …
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 …
Lee Fang / The Intercept:
Internal documents show that, going back to 2017, Twitter worked with the Pentagon to whitelist CENTCOM accounts used in online foreign influence campaigns  —  Twitter executives have claimed for years that the company makes concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed covert propaganda campaigns on its platform.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Insider Intelligence: Google will capture 28.8% of US digital ad revenue in 2022 and Meta will get 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 …
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 revenues dramatically decline in 2022  —  By deftly navigating crypto's frontier markets and winning big on the collapse of Terra's stable coin, Wintermute has grown …
Viola Zhou / Rest of World:
Sources: Foxconn workers in Zhengzhou say they got COVID-19 at the plant in December and some were asked to keep working; one said he was dissuaded from testing  —  Sick workers say they're being asked to stay on the assembly line as Foxconn ramps up iPhone 14 Pro production.
Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal:
BetterHelp, Cerebral, and other digital mental health companies are failing to offer quality care due to unprofessional therapists, a pressure to grow, and more  —  Heavy advertising and other strategies from Silicon Valley's playbook boost providers' growth but not the quality of care
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Apple fixes a macOS vulnerability, reported by Microsoft, that let attackers bypass Gatekeeper, a feature that checks if apps are notarized and developer-signed  —  Apple has fixed a vulnerability attackers could leverage to deploy malware on vulnerable macOS devices via untrusted applications capable …

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