~techmeme | Bookmarks (1012)

Aoyon Ashraf / CoinDesk: Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital sold 1,500 BTC in January, amid a rallying crypto market, to cover some of its expenses; Marathon still holds 11,418 BTC  —  The bitcoin miner sold 1,500 bitcoin in January.  —  Marathon Digital (MARA), one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners …

Rita Liao / TechCrunch: Apple removes decentralized social networking app Damus from China App Store, two days after debut, per CAC's demand as it includes content “illegal in China”  —  Damus, one of the fastest-growing Twitter alternatives, has been pulled from China's App Store just two days after the app was approved by Apple.

Thomas Maxwell / Insider: YouTube Shorts has surpassed 50B daily views, up from 30B in April 2022; YouTube began sharing ad revenue with Shorts creators starting February 1  —  - YouTube Shorts now sees more than 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion the year prior.  — The short-form video format was launched in 2021 as a response to TikTok.

BuzzFeed News: Twitter ending free API access could have the unfortunate side effect of effectively killing off many useful bots like @MakeItAQuote, @BigTechAlert, and more  —  “I'm not paying a dime to Elon lol.”  —  Pranav Dixit  —  One of the most popular bots on Twitter is @MakeItAQuote, which has more than 565,000 followers.

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: A former employee of IoT manufacturer Ubiquiti pleaded guilty to stealing gigabytes of confidential data in December 2020 and extorting the company for ransom  —  Nickolas Sharp, a former Ubiquiti employee who managed the networking device maker's cloud team, pled guilty today …

Davey Alba / Bloomberg: Sundar Pichai says Google will make LLMs like LaMDA available “in the coming weeks and months”, and users will be able to use them “as a companion to search”  —  Google parent Alphabet Inc. reported fourth-quarter results that narrowly missed analysts' expectations …

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal: Tim Cook says iPhone revenue would have grown without supply constraints, currency fluctuations were a challenge, and layoffs are a “last resort kind of thing”  —  Revenue in holiday quarter fell for the iPhone maker for the first time in nearly four years

Yifan Yu / Nikkei Asia: Apple reports Q1 revenue in Greater China fell 7.3% YoY to $23.9B, revenue in Japan fell 5% to $6.8B, and revenue in the rest of Asia-Pacific fell 2.8% to $9.5B  —  Greater China took biggest hit with a 7.3% revenue drop  —  PALO ALTO, U.S. — Apple on Thursday reported its first quarterly revenue drop …

Tom Schoenberg / Bloomberg: Sources: US prosecutors in the DOJ's fraud unit are investigating California-based bank Silvergate over hosting accounts tied to FTX and Alameda Research  —  US prosecutors in the Justice Department's fraud unit are looking into Silvergate Capital Corp.'s dealings with fallen crypto giants FTX …

Michael Potuck / 9to5Mac: Apple reports Q1 Services revenue up 6% YoY to $20.8B and says its install base crossed 2B active devices, up from 1.8B devices the company reported in Q1 2022  —  Along with reporting its quarterly performance, Apple shared the latest details on how many of its devices are currently active.

Jon Swartz / MarketWatch: Alphabet reports Google advertising revenue down 4% YoY from $61.2B to $59B, below analyst estimates of $60.4B, and Google Search revenue down 2% YoY to $42.6B  —  Alphabet Inc.'s stock initially slipped in extended trading Thursday after it missed slightly on revenue and earnings in a ho-hum quarterly result.

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Apple Now Has More Than Two Billion Active Devices Worldwide  —  There are more than two billion active iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other Apple devices worldwide, Apple said today in the earnings report covering the first fiscal quarter of 2023.  —  During the December quarter …

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Apple Q1 revenue: iPhone down 8% YoY to $65.8B, Mac down 29% YoY to $7.7B, iPad up 30% YoY to $9.4B, and Wearables, Home, and Accessories down 8% YoY to $13.5B  —  Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT  —  Apple missed expectations for revenue, profit, and sales for many of its lines …

Apple: Apple reports Q1 revenue down 5% YoY to $117.2B, marking its largest annual quarterly revenue decline since 2016, and net income down 13% YoY to $30B  —  Installed base crosses 2 billion active devices and hits all-time high for all major product categories  —  Services set new all-time revenue record

Todd Spangler / Variety: YouTube's ad revenue dropped 7.8% YoY from $8.63B to $7.96B in Q4, below analyst estimates of $8.2B  —  Alphabet, parent company of Google and YouTube, turned in fourth-quarter 2022 earnings that missed analyst estimates, as YouTube's ad revenue again notched a year-over-year decline.

Ali Breland / Mother Jones: Kiwi Farms, a forum for online harassment campaigns, has managed to stay online after being dropped by Cloudflare, as posters congregate on Telegram and Discord  —  If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline …

Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal: EA pulls the plug on Apex Legends Mobile and the planned mobile version of its Battlefield franchise, as mobile remains a hard market to crack for the company  —  ‘Apex Legends Mobile’ misfire drives videogame publisher to pull plug amid tough period  —  When one of the biggest videogame makers …

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: Craft, whose data platform helps supply chain, procurement, and risk managers monitor their networks of suppliers, raised a $32M Series B led by BAM Elevate  —  Enterprise supply chain intelligence startup Craft Co. said today it has closed on a $32 million Series B equity financing round led by BAM Elevate …

Karissa Bell / Engadget: Meta says Facebook had 2B daily active users at the end of Q4, after adding 16M DAUs; WhatsApp crossed 2B daily active users in October 2022  —  Almost 20 years in, Facebook is still growing.  The social network now has 2 billion daily active users, Meta reported alongside its fourth-quarter earnings.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Tiger Global reduced its latest fund's target size from $6B in October 2022 to $5B; Tiger expected to raise roughly $12.7B, its prior fund size in 2021  —  Prolific startup investor is aiming to raise $5 billion, less than half its initial ambition

Sahil Patel / The Information: Sources: Netflix told advertisers that sign-ups for its ad tier doubled in January 2023 over December 2022; Netflix predicted 1.75M ad tier subscribers in Q1  —  Netflix is making progress in its plunge into advertising—slowly.  —  The streaming firm told advertisers in the past 10 days …

Nicole Herskowitz / Microsoft 365 Blog: Microsoft's Teams Premium hits general availability for $10 per user per month; AI-generated notes powered by OpenAI's GPT-3.5 arrive “in the coming months”  —  As we face economic uncertainties and changes to work patterns, organizations are searching for ways to optimize …

Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch: Mark Zuckerberg says Meta's management theme for 2023 is the “Year of Efficiency” and emphasizes the company is aiming to “become a leader in generative AI”  —  Meta is all-in on becoming a lean, mean cash-printing machine.  —  In its Q4 earnings call on Wednesday …

Emma Roth / The Verge: Netflix says US password sharing rules haven't been set yet and removes rules from its US help page saying users must connect to a “primary Wi-Fi” every 31 days  —  Based on info sourced from Netflix's support pages, The Streamable reported on Tuesday details about its upcoming anti-password sharing efforts.