Bookmarks (1034)

Elon Musk / @elonmusk: Ye's Twitter account is suspended after he tweeted a picture of a swastika merged with a Star of David; Elon Musk replied, saying he violated Twitter rules  —  @TheeAleexJ @kanyewest I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.

Anil Ananthaswamy / Nature: DeepMind unveils DeepNash, an AI agent that matches human experts in the board game Stratego by combining game theory and model-free deep reinforcement learning  —  Anil Ananthaswamy is the author of Through Two Doors at Once, among other books.  His next is on the mathematics of machine learning.

Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez / Fortune: Stripe debuts a customizable fiat-to-crypto payments widget for Web3 devs to directly embed into their apps; Stripe to handle KYC checks, fraud, and compliance  —  DAVID PAUL MORRIS—BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES  —  Payments processing company Stripe on Thursday announced a so-called …

Michael Sheetz / CNBC: SpaceX gets FCC approval to deploy up to 7,500 next-generation Starlink internet satellites in low Earth orbit; SpaceX had applied for nearly 30K satellites  —  - The FCC issued a key authorization to Elon Musk's SpaceX, granting approval to launch up to 7,500 of its next-generation Starlink internet satellites.

Tony Romm / Washington Post: US House committee report details how fintech companies, like Blueacorn, allegedly disbursed billions in fraudulent PPP loans, while collecting billions in fees  —  Little-known firms such as Blueacorn and Womply allegedly collected taxpayer-funded fees as they overlooked signs of grift …

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch: Parler's owner says it “has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler”, after announcing the deal in October  —  Despite a joint statement between Ye (fka Kanye West) and Parler in October noting that the two had reached an agreement for the rapper to buy …

Jay Peters / The Verge: Epic makes RealityScan app, which lets users scan real-life objects to turn them into 3D models, available for free on iOS, after a limited beta launch in April  —  Epic Games' RealityScan app, which lets you scan real-life objects and turn them into 3D models for video games or other projects …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is ramping up work on a mixed-reality headset to be introduced as early as next year and has renamed the headset's OS from realityOS to xrOS  —  Apple Inc. is ramping up work on a mixed-reality headset, its first major new product category since the Apple Watch …

James Hale / Tubefilter: Discord renames Premium Memberships as Server Subscriptions and makes them available for all US creators; Discord will take a 10% cut of subscriptions  —  Over the past year, Discord has been testing creator monetization through what it called “Premium Memberships”-a monthly paid tier similar …

Insider: Source: a16z's Future is shutting down; Future hasn't published a new article in months, most of its editorial staffers have left, and its newsletter is defunct  —  Future was the next big thing in media.  —  Launched in June of 2021, it was billed as a buzzy new tech publication …

Varun Mishra / Counterpoint Research: Apple reached 25% smartphone market share in China in October, retaining its top OEM spot for a second month; one in four devices sold in China was an iPhone  —  - One in every four devices sold in China during October 2022 was an iPhone.  — While the sales for other key OEMs declined in October, Apple grew 21%...

Cade Metz / New York Times: A look at Anthropic, which raised $580M led by SBF in April to research “AI safety”, and 70 AI-related organizations SBF and FTX executives invested $530M+ in  —  Mr. Bankman-Fried and his colleagues spent more than $530 million to battle what they saw as the dangers of artificial intelligence.

@coinbasewallet: [Thread] Coinbase says Apple “blocked our last” Wallet iOS app release until the exchange disabled sending NFTs, claiming Apple wanted a 30% cut from gas fees  —  You might have noticed you can't send NFTs on Coinbase Wallet iOS anymore. This is because Apple blocked our last app release until we disabled the feature. 🧵

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Twitter alternative Hive temporarily shuts down after researchers found vulnerabilities that would have let hackers access DMs and edit others' Hive posts  —  The team at the newly popular Twitter alternative Hive is in over their head.  The company has now taken the fairly radical step …

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Mozilla acquires Pulse, which made an automated status updater for Slack before shuttering, and plans to use its ML tech to improve personalization in Pocket  —  Firefox developer Mozilla is making a rare foray into the world of mergers and acquisitions, with news that it has snapped …

Annie Lowrey / The Atlantic: A look at Black American crypto investors, many of whom bought in near the top, as the market declines from its 2021 peak and some lose significant sums  —  Two years ago, a Maryland-based information-technology specialist—who asked to remain anonymous for reasons that will become apparent in a minute …

Olivia Carville / Bloomberg: A look at TikTok's role in spreading the “blackout challenge”, leading some kids to choke themselves to death, as critics say the company could be doing more  —  “Sissy's tangled!”  —  The 5-year-old boy's panicked cries echoed down the hallway of the Arroyos' three-bedroom clapboard house in Milwaukee.

Alex Cranz / The Verge: Amazon Kindle Scribe review: great battery, display, and accessories, but lackluster notetaking, outdated document syncing and software, and small writing delay  —  Amazon's biggest Kindle ever is also the first to let you pair it with a stylus for note-taking.

Financial Times: A UK court rules Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Luno, and other exchanges must give customer details to an unnamed UK exchange to track down $10.7M in stolen funds  —  Six exchanges ordered to disclose customer details to help trace funds overseas  —  A London court has ordered cryptocurrency …

Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg: Memo: DoorDash plans to lay off around 1,250 employees, aiming to curb expenses; sources say that represents around 6% of its workforce  —  DoorDash Inc. is cutting about 1,250 jobs to rein in expenses, acknowledging that a rapid expansion during the pandemic boom has led to mounting losses.

Tom Matsuda / The Block: Brussels-based crypto market maker Keyrock raised a $72M Series B led by Ripple, following a €4.3M Series A in October 2020  —  - Ripple has led a $72 million Series B funding round into digital asset market maker Keyrock.  Six Fintech Ventures and Middlegame Ventures also participated in the round, which closed in September.

Gregory Zuckerman / Wall Street Journal: Sources detail Alameda's early years, starting in fall 2017, as SBF shrugged off concerns about risky investments, leading several employees to quit in 2018  —  ‘We ended up not really knowing how much money we even had,’ one former employee says  —  Why FTX Picked the Bahamas, and What Happens Now to the Crypto Hub

Ariel Shapiro / The Verge: Spotify releases Wrapped 2022 for users, adding a “music personality” feature, and says Joe Rogan, Emma Chamberlain, and others were its top podcasters  —  Spotify Wrapped is here, and with it, a slew of year-end charts, data, and graphics ripe for sharing.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: The European Central Bank says that bitcoin is “rarely used for legal transactions” and is on the “road to irrelevance”, without citing any strong data points  —  European Central Bank officials alleged on Wednesday that bitcoin is “rarely used for legal transactions …

Juliana Liu / CNN: Chinese state media: a five-day COVID-19 lockdown in Zhengzhou, home to Foxconn's iPhone plant, has been lifted; an analyst says disruptions cost Apple $1B/week  —  Hong Kong CNN Business —  The central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, home to the world's largest iPhone factory …

Financial Times: A look at China's growing interest in the open-source Risc-V chip architecture after US sanctions, including enlisting Alibaba and Tencent to help design chips  —  Chinese government steps up push to use Risc-V in move aimed at boosting domestic production of semiconductors

Nikkei Asia: Sources detail Huawei's plans to stealthily build a domestic chip supply chain with partners in Beijing, Wuhan, Qingdao, and Shenzhen, investing over $55.8B  —  Battered by sanctions, Huawei leads the way in stealthily building a domestic semiconductor supply chain

Financial Times: SpaceX's Starlink increases the price for new Ukrainian customers to $700, far above the $385 cost from earlier in 2022; monthly subscriptions rise to $75  —  Cost of communications devices made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX set to rise due to Russian assault on electricity grid

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg: Emboldened by FTX's collapse, the disgraced founders of Terra, Celsius, and Three Arrows Capital have reemerged, offering their thoughts on SBF, FTX, and more  —  Welcome to Bloomberg Crypto, our twice-weekly look at Bitcoin, blockchain and more.  If someone forwarded this to you, sign up here.

Josh Horwitz / Reuters: Analysis of Apple's supply chain data shows 44% to 47% of suppliers were China-based between 2014 and 2019, dropping to 41% in 2020 and 36% in 2021  —  Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) wide exposure to Chinese manufacturing, notable both for its low costs and rising risks, has receded since the COVID-19 pandemic began …

Bloomberg: AWS announces a new Graviton3E chip for high-performance computing tasks like weather forecasting and gene sequencing, competing with Intel, Nvidia, and others  —  Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud-computing unit is rolling out new chips designed to power the highest-end of computing …

Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: Singapore-based Igloo, an AI-based insurtech platform for underserved groups in SE Asia, raised a $27M Series B extension, bringing the round's total to $46M  —  Igloo, a Singapore-based insurtech focused on underserved communities in Southeast Asia, announced it has raised a Series B extension …

Financial Times: BlockFi sues Sam Bankman-Fried's Emergent Fidelity Technologies to seize Robinhood shares that SBF had pledged as collateral under an agreement on November 9  —  Complaint against FTX founder comes as crypto company becomes the latest to seek bankruptcy protection

Haje Jan Kamps / TechCrunch: Apple Watch Ultra and Oceanic+ review by a scuba diver: better than other dive computers in user interface and screen but misses some high-end features  —  In short: dive computer makers should be worried  —  In September, Apple launched the Apple Watch Ultra, which is not only waterproof to 100 meters …

Wall Street Journal: FTX's collapse was exacerbated by centralization; FTX being a decentralized exchange, based on smart contracts, could have prevented SBF draining customer funds  —  Automated market makers can obviate the need to hold customer money and the opportunity for fraud.

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg: Memo: Evan Spiegel told Snap employees that he expects them to be in the company's offices 80% of the time, or four or more days a week, starting February 2023  —  Snap Inc. Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel told employees that he expects them to be in the social media company's offices …

Platformer: Sources: Twitter has begun reinstating ~62K accounts with more than 10K followers after Musk's poll on general amnesty; one of those accounts has 5M+ followers  —  They're skeptical of their workers, too.  PLUS: New details on Musk's ‘general amnesty’ for banned Twitter users  —  and Zoë Schiffer

Jay Peters / The Verge: The FTC and seven US states settle with Google and iHeartMedia, requiring the companies to pay $9.4M for allegedly paying radio hosts for deceptive Pixel 4 ads  —  Google and iHeartMedia are settling with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and seven state attorneys general for allegedly paying radio hosts …

Morgan Meaker / Wired: Sources: Twitter only has one staffer left on a team dedicated to removing CSAM after layoffs, despite Musk saying “removing child exploitation is priority #1”  —  Just one person remains to enforce the company's ban on child sexual abuse content across Japan and the Asia Pacific region.

Washington Post: Analysis: high-profile Republican members of Congress saw an uptick in Twitter followers in the first few weeks of Musk's reign, while Democrats lost followers  —  Shift in follower counts for Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz show how the platform is beginning to change under Musk

Washington Post: Source: in Q1 2022, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter, spending $48M and accounting for over 4% of Twitter's revenue that quarter  —  In a series of tweets, the billionaire says Apple also has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter  —  Elon Musk on Monday went on a tear against Apple …

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  —  Google announced today that it has licensed its AI research model for breast cancer screening to medical technology company iCAD.

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  —  The crypto exchange, which had been under investigation for violating U.S. sanctions, agreed to pay $360,000 to settle the allegations.

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  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) is likely to offer remedies to EU antitrust regulators in the coming weeks to stave off formal objections …

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  —  Apple has cut back on its Twitter advertising, according to Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Reuters: Elon Musk claims “all-time high” new Twitter signups, averaging 2M+ a day in the last seven days till November 16, up 66% YoY, and ~8B daily user active minutes  —  Nov 27 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk has said that new user signups to the social media platform are at an …

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  —  Vlad, Niki, Diana and Nastya party on yachts, ride in Ferraris and travel the world.  Their massive audience of fellow kids can't get enough.

Debjyoti Roy / Livemint: New Delhi-based diabetes management app BeatO raised a $33M Series B led by Lightrock India, with Flipkart and others participating  —  Diabetes management app BeatO has raised $33 million in its Series B round of funding led by impact investor Lightrock India.

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  —  The DOJ will examine whether RealPage helped landlords coordinate rent increases.  Questions also swirl around a 2017 merger deal with its largest competitor.

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  —  The advice “dig two graves, before you set out” applies to anyone bent on revenge.  An old aphorism is hardly going to divert …