Techmeme: South Korea tells Apple and Google to stop accepting play-to-earn games, which require in-app purchases before playing, and remove existing ones from app stores (Brian Newar/Cointelegraph)

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December 30, 2021, 1:30 PM

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Brian Newar / Cointelegraph:

South Korea tells Apple and Google to stop accepting play-to-earn games, which require in-app purchases before playing, and remove existing ones from app stores — The Games Committee has strengthened its stance against P2E games by saying those games should not receive an age rating needed to get listed on app marketplaces.

More: Gizmodo, Tech in Asia, Protocol, iPhone in Canada Blog, thegamer.com, iPhone Hacks, Micky, Waivly, BitcoinExchangeGuide, CoinCodeCap, AppleInsider, Bankless Times, CoinGape, and Benzinga

Tweets: @johnnyboufarhat and @cointelegraph

Reuters:

Samsung cuts output at its two fabs in Xian, China, which account for 42.5% of its NAND production capacity, amid COVID-19 lockdown; Micron output also affected — Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and Micron Technology (MU.O), two of the world's largest memory chip makers …

More: Micron Technology, Inc., The Korea Economic …, Samsung Newsroom, RTÉ, Tom's Hardware, iPhone in Canada Blog, Bloomberg, WRAL TechWire, Benzinga, TechSpot, and Businesskorea

Brian Quarmby / Cointelegraph:

Ethereum scaling project Polygon says it quietly fixed a bug that put $23.6B in MATIC tokens at risk, but not before $2.04M in tokens was stolen — “Considering how much was at stake, I believe our team has made the best decisions possible given the circumstances,” said Polygon's co-founder Jaynti Kanani.

More: Polygon | Blog, The Crypto Basic, Business Insider, Tom's Hardware, CryptoPotato, Decrypt, CoinDesk, and Crypto Briefing

Tweets: @kaibadefi, @wublockchain, @evai_io, and @0xpolygon

Reuters:

Six women who work at Foxconn's Indian iPhone plant describe crowded dorms and food crawling with worms, which sickened 250+ workers, leading to protests — For women who assembled iPhones at a Foxconn plant in southern India, crowded dorms without flush toilets and food sometimes crawling …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Apptopia: Amazon ranked #4 in global shopping app installs in 2021, down from first in 2020, as e-commerce apps Shopee and Shein rose to #1 and #2, respectively — Amazon's leading position in U.S. e-commerce is well-documented, but the latest global rankings for app installs show the potential …

More: Apptopia Blog, iPhone in Canada Blog, KnowTechie, and Fossbytes

Tweets: @adamblacker25, @rbxnews_, and @julieverhage

Wall Street Journal:

Google, Microsoft, and Oracle invest in potential cloud clients to beat AWS; Google claims 6% cloud market share, behind AWS at 41% and Microsoft at 20% — Alphabet company and others invest in potential clients as they look to close gap with Amazon in fast-growing sector

More: Thurrott. Tweets: @sub8u and @aatilley

Washington Post:

As the US faces record COVID-19 infections, effective use of exposure notification apps is unlikely, given slow adoption and poor data on their efficacy — The United States is grappling with record-high infections, but adoption of the system is still far behind what its creators and proponents envisioned

More: 9to5Mac, PhoneArena, and KnowTechie

Tweets: @cha_myoung, @digiphile, @mikemadden, @jeffnolan, @vickerysec, @andrewmartonik, @robpegoraro, @gerritd, @washingtonpost, @trippmickle, and @markseibel

Richard Lawler / The Verge:

Fortnite servers are back online after a major five-hour outage prevented players from logging on, among other issues — The hit battle royale game told players “You do not have permission to play Fortnite.” — There was some bad news if you're on winter break and hoping to play some Fortnite …

More: Forbes, Bloomberg, TechRadar, Polygon, CNET, CNN, WRAL TechWire, RealSport101, Bleeding Cool, Destructoid, Game Rant, MarketWatch, IGN, Input, SlashGear, Forbes, KnowTechie, Digital Trends, MobileSyrup, Epic Games Public Status, and Engadget

Tweets: @fortnitestatus, @fortnitestatus, @fortnitestatus, @epicgames, @happypower, @fransbouma, @mobleytakeover, @jenswo8, @hannahtaylorpro, @playz_stevo, and @verge

Akayla Gardner / Bloomberg:

Research: Binance Coin (BNB), the third largest digital token by market value, Solana, and Fantom gained over 1,000% in 2021; BTC gained 65% and ETH gained 408% — - Binance's BNB surged as Binance Smart Chain rivaled Ethereum — Smaller alt coins also saw returns upward of 1,000% this year

Rebecca Feng / Wall Street Journal:

SenseTime closes up 7.3% in its Hong Kong trading debut after rising as much as 23%; the company raised $740M in its IPO at a $16.4B valuation — U.S. government had added SenseTime to an investment blacklist that barred Americans from buying shares in the firm

More: Yahoo Finance, The Irish Times, Reuters, DealStreetAsia, Bloomberg, Coinspeaker, South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia, and Bloomberg

Entrackr:

OneCard, which offers an app-based card to help users in India build credit, raises a $75M Series C at a $722M post-money valuation, following a $35M Series B — Mobile-first credit card company OneCard has scooped up $75 million in a new round led by existing investor QED Fund.

More: Inc42 Media and Crowdfund Insider

Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge:

HDMI Forum will introduce HDMI 2.1a, the latest standard, at CES 2022, with minor updates that only further complicate the system's haphazard device support — Brace yourself for yet another new HDMI standard — The HDMI standards are a mess. HDMI 2.1, in particular, is a uniquely frustrating mess …

More: MobileSyrup, KnowTechie, TechCircle, Fossbytes, Pocketnow, Pocket-lint, Ubergizmo, XDA Developers, Forbes, TweakTown, Gizmodo, Trusted Reviews, Michael Tsai, TechSpot, Dot Esports, GSMArena.com, MacDailyNews, AppleInsider, HotHardware.com News, and 9to5Mac

Tweets: @rjcc, @rstephens, @bdsams, @idlesloth84, @samitsarkar, @nut_bunnies, @tha_rami, @edzitron, and @backlon

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) agree to buy WildBrain's 41% stake in Peanuts Holdings for ~$457M, raising Sony's slice to 80%

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:

YouTube's head of products for podcasts Steve McLendon says viewers streamed 700M+ hours of podcasts on TV in October, up from 400M hours in October 2024

Shane O'Neill / Washington Post:

Q&A with Christopher Anderson, who photographed Trump's inner circle for VF: “My job is to ... draw on my experience as a journalist and photograph what I see”

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Eileen Yu / ZDNet:

China plans to become a global innovation hub for robotics by 2025; its manufacturing robot density in 2020 was 246 per 10,000 people, double the global average

More: SiliconANGLE, Nikkei Asia, The Robot Report, Slashdot, TechCircle, ChinaTechNews.com, and South China Morning Post

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:

Intel closes the first phase of the sale of its SSD and NAND businesses to SK hynix and says SK hynix's Solidigm subsidiary will operate the Dalian fab in China

More: HotHardware.com News, Intel, SK hynix Newsroom, TechSpot, TechRadar, VideoCardz.com, AnandTech, and Reuters. Tweets: @donal888. Thanks:@paulyalcorn

Bloomberg:

Didi Global reports Q3 revenue of $6.6B, down 13%+ QoQ, and a net loss of $4.7B, as China's cybersecurity probe forced it to take down many of its apps

More: Reuters, Pandaily, South China Morning Post, BBC, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Wire, and Tech in Asia. Tweets: @next_china

Youkyung Lee / Bloomberg:

Six of the 10 best-performing South Korean stocks in 2021 are linked to the metaverse or NFTs, including Wemade Max, up 1,500%, and Giantstep, up 1,200%

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

T-Mobile confirms reports of a data breach caused by SIM swap attacks on a “very small number of customers”, following six other data breaches since 2018

Earlier Picks

New York Times:

How tech founders and investors use the Qualified Small Business Stock tax break, a 1990s-era provision for SMBs, to minimize taxes on their investment profits

More: thegamer.com, Insider, Bloomberg, Kotaku, and Common Sense Daily

Tweets: @feardept, @ericgeller, @dealbook, @poppy_haze, @donmoyn, @_cingraham, @jswatz, @jyuter, @rbreich, @tomphilpott, @wolfiesmom, @victorlavalle, @timothynoah1, and @maureenmfarrell

Paul Butler:

Web3 game Axie Infinity's play-to-earn model blurs the lines between “player” and “worker”, creating a Ponzi scheme with built-in deniability

More: Something Profound?, brave new bird, and Bricks & Stones

Tweets: @trubloeu, @akramsrazor, @jerrycap, @rjcc, @swombat, @paulgb, @carnage4life, @carnage4life, @carnage4life, and @arvidkahl

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:

Autonomous trucking startup TuSimple says its semi truck completed an 80-mile route in Arizona without a human on board and no human intervention

More: Associated Press, The Logistics Rundown, SiliconANGLE, CNET, FreightWaves, Electrek, TuSimple, The Hill, and Forbes

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: following Haugen's leaks, Meta sought to divide lawmakers along partisan lines to forestall regulation, as Zuckerberg told employees not to apologize

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

Some LastPass users say their master passwords were compromised and used in blocked login attempts from unknown IPs; LastPass blames “credential stuffing”