Techmeme
January 26, 2022, 5:15 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta-backed Diem Association is talking to investment bankers about selling its IP to return capital to investors and giving its engineers a new home  —  The controversial cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg once defended in front of Congress is unraveling after regulatory pressure.
Microsoft - Investor Relations:
Microsoft Q2: revenue of $51.7B, up 20% YoY, net income of $18.8B, up 21% YoY, Windows OEM revenue up 25%, LinkedIn revenue up 37%, and Surface revenue up 8%  —  Earnings Release FY22 Q2 - REDMOND, Wash. — January 25, 2022 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft will keep Activision Blizzard agreements for three new Call of Duty games on PlayStation in the next two years, but long-term plans are hazy  —  Activision Blizzard Inc., which is being bought by Microsoft Corp., will release at least the next three games in its hit Call …
Eric Martin / Bloomberg:
The IMF's board urges El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks, a major obstacle to the country's $1.3B loan request  —  The International Monetary Fund's board urged El Salvador to strip Bitcoin of its status as legal currency due to its large risks …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's gaming head who oversaw big deals to poach Twitch's star streamers, leaves to grow Ethereum scaling startup Polygon's developer ecosystem  —  Ryan Wyatt will be at YouTube until the end of February  —  Ryan Wyatt, YouTube's head of gaming who oversaw some of its big deals …
Shannon Liao / Washington Post:
Activision Blizzard declines to voluntarily recognize a union formed by 34 QA testers at Raven Software, after failing to reach an agreement with the CWA  —  Activision Blizzard did not respond to workers' request for recognition of a union formed by quality assurance testers at Raven Software, the workers said Tuesday evening.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google shutters FLoC, its controversial ad tech for replacing third-party cookies, and proposes Topics, which categorizes the sites users visit into 300+ topics  —  FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), Google's controversial project for replacing cookies for interest-based advertising …
Bloomberg:
The US Commerce Department says the global chip shortage will stretch into at least H2 2022, based on information from 150+ companies in the chip supply chain  —  The Biden administration has concluded that a global semiconductor shortage will persist until at least the second half of this year …
Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer:
Researchers find a 12-year-old vulnerability in Polkit that local attackers can use to gain root privileges on all major Linux distributions; an exploit is out  —  A vulnerability in Polkit's pkexec component that is present in the default configuration of all major Linux distributions …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
In a YouTube creator update, Susan Wojcicki defends hiding dislikes, discusses adding NFT support, says creators making over $10K/year jumped 40% YoY, and more  —  YouTube is touting the explosive popularity of its TikTok-style short-form Shorts video feature — and says it's going to test …
Jason Koebler / VICE:
President Biden backs consumers' right to repair and acknowledges the anticompetitive practices of electronics manufacturers  —  “Too many areas, if you own a product, from a smartphone to a tractor, you don't have the freedom to choose how or where to repair that item you purchased.”
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Samsung announces its Galaxy Unpacked “The Epic Standard” event will be held virtually on February 9 at 7am PT, where it's expected to unveil the Galaxy S22  —  After its president TM Roh teased “the most noteworthy S series device we've ever created”, Samsung is announcing today when we can learn more.
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters:
Twitter: governments made 43,387 content removal demands from a record 196,878 accounts in H1 2021; 95% came from Japan, Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea  —  Twitter said governments around the world made requests to remove content from a record number of user accounts between January …
Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times:
The FTC and Fashion Nova reach a $4.2M settlement over allegations that the fast-fashion clothing site suppressed product reviews of less than four stars  —  Fashion Nova held lower-starred reviews for approval before they could be posted, the F.T.C. said in a complaint.
Aaron Gordon / VICE:
Google's three years of security updates for its older phones like 2018's Pixel 3 is planned obsolescence; new Pixels get five years of support vs. iPhones' ~6  —  Three years ago, my Pixel 3 was the latest and greatest Google phone.  Now, the company has stopped providing software updates, making it a security risk to use.
Chester Wisniewski / Sophos News:
The immediate threat of attackers mass exploiting Log4Shell was averted because the severity of the bug galvanized digital and security communities into action  —  Sometimes, when a software crisis doesn't cause the kind of devastation everyone expects, it is because there may not have been a crisis in the first place.

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