Techmeme
February 8, 2022, 2:30 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils Tap to Pay on iPhone, letting US merchants accept contactless payments via partner-enabled apps later in 2022; partners include Stripe and Shopify  —  Apple has officially announced a new Tap to Pay feature for iPhone.  This feature, coming later this year …
Devlin Barrett / Washington Post:
The US DOJ arrests two people in New York and seizes ~$3.6B worth of bitcoin allegedly stolen in a 2016 Bitfinex hack, its “largest financial seizure ever”  —  The Justice Department announced Tuesday it had seized more than $3.6 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen as part …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Nvidia and SoftBank call off Nvidia's Arm acquisition, following regulatory scrutiny; Arm CEO Simon Segars resigns, replaced by Arm IP group president Rene Haas  —  Nvidia's deal to acquire Arm is off, the two companies and Arm owner SoftBank announced Tuesday.  —  With this, there is also a major leadership change at Arm.
Cara Lombardo / Wall Street Journal:
Peloton CEO John Foley will step down and ex-Spotify and Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy will take over; Peloton will cut ~2,800 jobs and cancel its Ohio factory  —  Exercise-equipment maker to name former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy as successor, overhaul board and cut costs
John Markoff / New York Times:
As data centers grow, engineers at Meta, Google, and other companies worry about the reliability of ever-smaller chips and hardware failures with unclear causes  —  As the largest computer networks continue to grow, some engineers fear that their smallest components could prove to be an Achilles' heel.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out Journeys for Chrome on desktop, letting users revisit old browsing sessions, based on searches from the omnibar, organized by subject matter  —  Journeys groups your search history together by category  —  Google Chrome is rolling out Journeys, a feature that lets you revisit …
Shiona McCallum / BBC:
The UK's Online Safety Bill would mandate that porn websites verify users' ages or face fines; similar proposals were quietly dropped in 2019 after criticism  —  Porn websites in the UK will be legally required to verify the age of their users under new internet safety laws.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
TikTok updates its policies to improve safety for LGBTQ users, including banning misgendering, adds tools for age appropriate content, and more  —  Months after TikTok was hauled into its first-ever major congressional hearing over platform safety, the company is today announcing a series …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
A look at Apple's IAP changes for Dutch dating app developers: its proposal seemingly isn't compliant, reducing the commission by just 3% is spiteful, and more  —  The continuing saga of Apple's conflict with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) — the Dutch equivalent …
Dade Hayes / Deadline:
Oscar nominations for Netflix and Amazon fell; half of the Best Picture nominees had little to no time in theaters and all major studios relied on hybrid models  —  This morning's Oscar nominations suggest a rethink — or at least a collective hitting of the pause button — on the status of streaming in the awards conversation.
Wall Street Journal:
The EU details the Chips Act, which would make €43B in public and private funding available for R&D and chip production, seeking to compete with the US and Asia  —  Legislation could mobilize about $49 billion in government and private cash, though critics fear a subsidy race
Blockworks:
Blockchain game studio Gala Games plans to allocate $5B within the next year to expand NFTs: $2B for gaming, $1B for music, $1B for movies, $1B for a theme park  —  Gala Games is seeking to ramp up its presence in the NFT sector and will allocate billions of dollars to further its efforts in the coming year
More: CoinGape
Nikhil Subramaniam / Inc42 Media:
BharatPe, an Indian fintech unicorn backed by VCs such as Sequoia and Coatue, is facing allegations of embezzlement, impropriety in merchant dealings, and more  —  Calling CEO Suhail Sameer “a puppet of investors”, Grover has alleged a conspiracy behind sending him away and instituting a probe
New York Times:
Meta announces that Peter Thiel, one of Facebook's first institutional investors and longest-serving directors, will step down from Meta's board this year  —  The tech billionaire, who has been on the board of the company formerly known as Facebook since 2005, is backing numerous politicians in the midterm elections.

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Earlier Picks

Mario Gabriele / The Generalist:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk: