Techmeme River

November 28, 2022, 4:00 PM

November 28, 2022

3:40 PM •	Justine Calma / The Verge: Google says that it has, for the first time, licensed its AI research model for breast cancer screening to a medical company, iCAD, looking to deploy it in 2024
3:00 PM •	New York Times: US crypto exchange Kraken agrees to pay $360K+ to the Treasury Department to settle accusations of sanctions violations involving transactions by users in Iran
2:25 PM •	Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: Sources: Microsoft will likely soon offer the EU concessions regarding the Activision deal; source: the main remedy would be a 10-year licensing deal to Sony
2:00 PM •	Juli Clover / MacRumors: Elon Musk says Apple threatened to “withhold” Twitter from App Store “but won't tell us why” and calls out Apple's lower Twitter ad spend and alleged censorship
1:25 PM •	Financial Times: Source: Musk sought to call some brands' CEOs to berate them for advertising less on Twitter; others lowered spend to the minimum needed to avoid confrontation
12:25 PM •	Jon Victor / The Information: Source: between Q1 2019 and this fall, Alphabet's Google Cloud, hardware unit, and YouTube have roughly doubled headcount, as the total employee count grew ~80%
10:10 AM •	Decrypt: BlockFi files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey, plans to lay off a large portion of its staff, and says it has $256.9M cash on hand
9:20 AM •	Wall Street Journal: Chinese protestors are holding up blank pieces of paper as a protest against censorship, leading platforms and censors to quickly remove the images
8:55 AM •	Financial Times: UK police report: financial losses from crypto fraud were up 32% YoY to £226M between October 2021 and September 2022 and cases rose 16% to 10,030
8:15 AM •	Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal: Ireland's Data Protection Commission fines Meta €265M for failing to safeguard data on 500M+ users from data scrapers, the third fine by the DPC on Meta
7:45 AM •	New York Times: Yahoo takes a ~25% stake in Taboola and plans to use Taboola's ad tech as part of a 30-year exclusive deal expected to generate $1B+ in annual revenue
7:30 AM •	Charley Adams / BBC: The UK plans to criminalize self-harm content in the updated Online Safety Bill, in line with suicide content, after the death of teenager Molly Russell in 2017
7:10 AM •	Eliza Gkritsi / CoinDesk: Paris-based Kiln, an Ethereum “staking-as-a-service” startup, raised a €17M Series A from Consensys and more; Kiln has $500M+ of staked assets under management
6:55 AM •	Ben Bartenstein / Bloomberg: Sources: the fall of FTX, one of the first companies to receive a license in Dubai, prompts concerns from UAE officials over embracing crypto too quickly
6:35 AM •	Gian Volpicelli / Politico: EU lawmakers claim the Markets in Crypto Assets rules, expected to be approved in 2023, would prevent an FTX-like crash, but some say the proposal needs updates
6:20 AM •	Bloomberg: Coinbase names four executives, covering Ireland, Germany, the UK, and EMEA, to lead its expansion in Europe
6:05 AM •	Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: WhatsApp begins rolling out a Message Yourself feature, letting users send notes, reminders, and shopping lists to themselves
5:55 AM •	Eva Corlett / The Guardian: New Zealand says Twitter failed to detect or remove clips from the 2019 Christchurch terror attack until the government alerted the company
4:20 AM •	Vlad Savov / Bloomberg: Source: turmoil at Foxconn's Zhengzhou hub is likely to lower iPhone 14 Pro production by close to 6M units in 2022, potentially worsening if lockdowns continue

November 27, 2022

10:30 PM •	Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Researchers: China seems to be flooding Twitter with porn tweets mentioning places where people are protesting, overwhelming Twitter's reduced moderation team
5:55 PM •	Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review: A look at OpenAI's Minecraft bot, which has learned to complete complex tasks in Minecraft after being trained on 70K hours of video of people playing the game
11:45 AM •	Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia: Shanghai-based eRoad, which offers a cloud-based HR management service with a focus on payroll, raised a ~$140M Series D, after raising an ~$84M Series C
1:35 AM •	Reuters: Elon Musk claims “all-time high” Twitter signups, averaging 2M+/day in the seven days to November 16, up 66% YoY, and user active minutes of ~8B/day, up 30% YoY
12:10 AM •	R.T. Watson / Wall Street Journal: How live-action YouTube kids channels Vlad and Niki, Like Nastya, and Kids Diana Show, with a total of ~300M subscribers, are building global franchises

November 26, 2022

7:15 PM •	Debjyoti Roy / Livemint: New Delhi-based diabetes management app BeatO raised a $33M Series B led by Lightrock India, with Flipkart and others participating
4:00 PM •	Heather Vogell / ProPublica: Source: the US DOJ is investigating whether rent-setting software made by RealPage is facilitating collusion among landlords to drive up rental prices
1:00 PM •	June Yoon / Financial Times: An in-depth look at the US sanctions on China's chipmakers and worries over their impact on inflation and rising costs for Western manufacturers and customers
10:10 AM •	Ira Dugal / Reuters: Reserve Bank of India declines a payment aggregator license for Paytm parent One 97, asking it to comply with foreign direct investment guidelines and reapply
7:05 AM •	Gené Teare / Crunchbase News: Analysis: AI startup funding has been around 9%-10% of global VC investment in recent years, led by robotics, autonomous vehicles, and enterprise software
1:20 AM •	South China Morning Post: Inside Zhengzhou's “iPhone City” lockdown, where China's zero COVID-19 policy, related propaganda and fears, and Foxconn's missteps led to the worker riots

November 25, 2022

11:55 PM •	Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World: Experts and employees detail Uber's struggles in Pakistan as it discontinues service in five cities, cuts spending, and faces increased competition from inDrive
9:30 PM •	Jonathan Burgos / Forbes: Hong Kong-based XanPool, a cross-border payments infrastructure provider for both crypto and fiat currencies, raised $41M in Q2 2022 at a $400M valuation
9:00 PM •	Alistair Gray / Financial Times: How Woolworths, Loblaws, and other retailers are developing digital advertising arms and profiling customers, aiming to become ad venues for large brands
6:15 PM •	Michelle Toh / CNN: The UK government asks its departments to stop installing Chinese surveillance cameras at sensitive sites, after calls to ban devices from Hikvision and Dahua
4:05 PM •	Christiana Loureiro / The Block: Report: several US states are investigating Genesis Global as part of an inquiry into interconnectedness of crypto firms, securities laws violations, and more
3:25 PM •	Todd Shields / Bloomberg: The FCC imposes a ban on equipment from Huawei and ZTE, camera providers Hikvision and Dahua, and radio maker Hytera, citing “a risk to national security”
1:40 PM •	Reuters: How crypto helped users buy horrific child abuse images on Dark Scandals, whose founder was sentenced to 10 years by a Dutch court, often aided by exchanges
11:15 AM •	Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India on December 29, after launching it in May 2020 in Bengaluru, as part of a broader restructuring
10:25 AM •	Alex Hern / The Guardian: The UK government says its Online Safety Bill will return to the parliament in December and will be expanded to criminalize nonconsensual “deepfake” pornography
9:10 AM •	Tim Copeland / The Block: Binance releases its proof-of-reserves system, starting with BTC, claiming it has 582,485 BTC and 575,742 BTC user balance, a reserve ratio of 101% for users
8:35 AM •	Jane Zhang / Bloomberg: Meituan reports Q3 revenue up 28.2% YoY to ~$8.7B and ~$170M in profit, as its “core local commerce” segment, including food delivery and hotels, rose 24.6% YoY
7:30 AM •	Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: London-based The Applied AI Company, which uses AI to automate repetitive work prone to human error in insurance, pharma, and other sectors, raised a $42M seed
5:15 AM •	Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Elon Musk says Twitter may start manually authenticating accounts on December 2, with blue check marks for people, gold for companies, and gray for governments

November 24, 2022

11:45 PM •	Ana Paula Pereira / Cointelegraph: IMF calls for more crypto regulation in Africa, says 25% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa have regulated crypto and two-thirds have imposed some restrictions
9:20 PM •	Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: Germany-based Temedica, which offers a health data insight service to pharma companies, raised a €25M Series B extension, bringing its total Series B to €42M
3:25 PM •	Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post: Twitter plans to restore suspended accounts next week that haven't “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”, after 72.4% of 3M+ voted yes in Musk's poll
1:55 PM •	Kris Holt / Engadget: Google's Project Zero reported five security flaws in devices with Mali GPUs in the summer, but Samsung, Xiaomi, Google, and others are yet to release patches
12:10 PM •	Luke Plunkett / Kotaku: Mercedes plans to charge $1,200 per year for “Acceleration Increase” in its EVs; Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM have all trialed similar subscription-based features
10:35 AM •	James Vincent / The Verge: Stable Diffusion 2.0 makes it harder to mimic some artists' styles or generate NSFW output; Stability AI says NSFW images were removed from its training data
9:35 AM •	Zoë Schiffer / @zoeschiffer: Source: Twitter abruptly fired around 50 engineers and warned dozens more on the evening before Thanksgiving; some were told their “code is not satisfactory”
9:10 AM •	Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: UK police, Europol, Dutch police, and others dismantle online phone number spoofing service iSpoof and arrest 146 people, including the suspected mastermind
8:50 AM •	Nicole Sperling / New York Times: Sources detail Netflix's internal debate over embracing theatrical releases for big-budget movies, something Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings call a distraction
7:40 AM •	Aanu Adeoye / Financial Times: Jumia undergoes major restructuring after ousting its co-CEOs, including closing its Prime subscription program and its Logistics service in seven countries
7:15 AM •	Parikshit Mishra / CoinDesk: ConsenSys says it collects user data related to its on-chain wallet service MetaMask, following a similar announcement by decentralized exchange Uniswap
6:50 AM •	Financial Times: Sources: Elon Musk disbands Twitter's Brussels team, sparking compliance concern among EU officials after policy executives departed the small but vital office
6:30 AM •	Jon Porter / The Verge: Elon Musk says Tesla's Full Self-Driving Beta is now available on request to anyone in North America who has paid for the $15,000 feature
6:15 AM •	Nelson Wang / CoinDesk: Filings: Block.One and its CEO Brendan Blumer buy a 7.5% and 9.3% stake, respectively, in crypto bank Silvergate Capital, making Blumer its largest shareholder
5:55 AM •	Politico: A look at Huawei's future in Europe, as sources say the company is scaling back in the UK, France, and Belgium to focus on China, following US sanctions
4:35 AM •	Financial Times: Foxconn offers ~$1,400 payouts to newly recruited Chinese workers who opt to leave its iPhone factory, aiming to quell unrest after violent clashes with police
4:25 AM •	Carly Wanna / Bloomberg: Sam Bankman-Fried plans to speak at The New York Times' annual DealBook Summit on November 30; Andrew Ross Sorkin says “nothing is off limits”
4:05 AM •	Bloomberg: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says the exchange aims for a ~$1B fund to buy distressed assets and plans to make another bid for bankrupt lender Voyager Digital
3:15 AM •	Matthew Yglesias / Slow Boring: The US Fed raising interest rates faster than expected is driving the crypto crash, tech layoffs, and more, as companies value “money now” over long-term bets
2:40 AM •	Max Seddon / Financial Times: Sources: Yandex seeks Putin's assent for restructuring, including selling its Russian business and spinning off key global projects in edtech and other sectors
2:25 AM •	Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Amazon plans to phase out Academy, an Indian edtech service launched in 2021 to help prepare for admission to engineering colleges, starting in August 2023
1:30 AM •	Stephen Gandel / New York Times: FTX sister firm Alameda paid $11.5M for control of a small WA-based US-licensed bank, raising questions about why federal regulators approved the deal
12:15 AM •	Sarah Krouse / Wall Street Journal: Bob Iger returns to a more competitive and challenging streaming landscape and should steer Disney+ to profitability without cannibalizing Disney's other units

November 23, 2022

11:25 PM •	Steve Lohr / New York Times: Frederick P. Brooks Jr., a Turing Award recipient who co-led IBM's System/360 and wrote a book cited as gospel by computer scientists, died last week at 91
10:55 PM •	Moneycontrol: Prosus valued its 9.67% stake in Byju's at $578M at the end of Q3 2022, implying Byju's total value to be $5.9B; Byju's was valued at $22B in October 2022
10:25 PM •	Bill Cusick / Stability.Ai: Stability AI releases Stable Diffusion 2.0, which can generate images with 512x512 and 768x768 default resolutions and upscale images to 2048x2048
10:10 PM •	Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: All three founders of online trading service Pipe are stepping down as the company looks for a “veteran” CEO; Pipe raised $250M at a $2B valuation in May 2021
9:35 PM •	Politico: Sources: US senators raise concerns as hundreds of China-made DJI recreational drones have violated restricted airspace over Washington, DC in recent months
8:35 PM •	Will Jarrett / Mission Local: A San Francisco Police Department draft policy allowing police to apply lethal force using robots faces criticism from advocates opposing police militarization
7:55 PM •	Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer: Google blocklisted two Chrome “SearchBlox” extensions with 200K+ installs, after discovery of a backdoor that can be used to steal Roblox credentials and assets
7:35 PM •	Josh Sisco / Politico: Sources: the FTC plans to file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard deal, as FTC staff are skeptical of the companies' arguments
4:05 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Mark Cuban's interactive streaming app Fireside acquires streaming platform Stremium and plans to launch on smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and other devices

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