Bookmarks (1019)

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Cranz / The Verge: Amazon Kindle Scribe review: great battery, display, and accessories, but lackluster notetaking, outdated document syncing and software, and small writing delay  —  Amazon's biggest Kindle ever is also the first to let you pair it with a stylus for note-taking.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

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  —  India's banking regulator has declined a payment aggregator licence for the One 97 Communications Ltd (PAYT.NS) …

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  —  Editor's note: In this four-part series, we explore the impact of artificial intelligence startups on multiple sectors.

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  —  In a widely cited anecdote about the power of the Chinese workforce, a manager at an iPhone factory was once able …

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  —  Fierce local competition in the ride-hailing sector and economic uncertainty have forced Uber to scale back its presence in South Asia.

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  —  XanPool—a cross-border payments infrastructure provider—is accelerating expansion plans across Europe, Middle East …

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  —  They're barely noticeable, but promoted items on digital sales platforms are at the vanguard of an industry worth tens of billions of dollars

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  —  Hong Kong CNN Business —  Hikvision, a leading Chinese surveillance company, has denied suggestions that it poses a threat …

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  —  - States including Alabama are looking into crypto firms and whether they violated securities laws.

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”  —  US regulators imposed a ban on electronic equipment from Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp., continuing a years-long effort …

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  —  As websites selling horrific child-abuse images have proliferated on the “darknet,” a new breed of company has boosted their criminal business: cryptocurrency exchanges.

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  —  FTX's collapse is one of the reasons why countries in the region should adopt regulation, noted the monetary fund.  —  120 Total views

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  —  Aimed at offering a complete and total understanding of medical patient care realities, Munich-based Temedica …

Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post: Twitter plans to restore next week suspended accounts that haven't “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”, after 72.4% of 3M+ voted yes in Musk's poll  —  The Twitter chief says he will reinstate accounts suspended for harassment, abuse and misinformation beginning next week.

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  —  Google has disclosed several security flaws for phones that have Mali GPUs, such as those with Exynos chipsets.

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  —  Mercedes are charging $1200 a year for an “Acceleration Increase”  —  For a few years now some car companies …