Techmeme
August 31, 2022, 3:45 PM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Memo: on top of cutting ~20% of its staff, Snap cancels its original shows, in-app games, and Zenly and Voisey apps; the layoffs could save $500M annually  —  Snapchat's original shows, in-app games, and camera drone are no more  —  Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: Snap plans to start laying off ~20% of its 6,400+ employees on August 31, 2022, including cuts to its hardware group; Snap stock is down ~80% in 2022  —  Snap's stock price has declined nearly 80 percent this year  —  Snap is planning to lay off approximately 20 percent …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:
Washington, DC sues Michael Saylor for tax fraud and his company MicroStrategy “for conspiring to help him evade taxes” “on hundreds of millions of dollars”  —  The attorney general's office is also suing the business software company for allegedly helping him evade taxes on his earnings in the district.
Joseph Cox / VICE:
After an outcry over having transphobic forum Kiwi Farms as a client, Cloudflare says denying security services due to “despicable” content is the wrong policy  —  The company has faced mounting pressure to stop providing security services to Kiwi Farms, whose users regularly dox and stalk trans people.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
a16z releases free “Can't Be Evil” licenses for NFTs, inspired by Creative Commons, on GitHub; NFT licensing has been attempted before, including by Dapper Labs  —  Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm is releasing a free licensing system, aiming to help the NFT sector fulfil its “economic potential.”
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt:
Crypto.com sues an Australian woman after erroneously sending her AU$10.5M in May 2021 instead of a AU$100 refund; the woman reportedly bought a AU$1.35M house  —  A woman asked for a $100 refund from the crypto platform but instead received $10.5 million—and then went on a spending spree, according to reports.
ProPublica:
An investigation details an Instagram verification scheme using fake profiles on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and more; Meta removes badges from 300+ accounts  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.
Bloomberg:
Apple VP of Corporate Development Adrian Perica resigned from Didi's board, which he joined in 2016 after Apple's $1B investment in the ride-hailing company  —  An Apple Inc. executive has left the board of Didi Global Inc., as the Chinese ride-hailing company struggles to regain ground …
Chris Scullion / Video Games Chronicle:
Sony and Tencent's Sixjoy acquire a combined 30.34% of Elden Ring game company FromSoftware; FromSoftware's parent Kadokawa retains the remaining 69.66%  —  FROMSOFTWARE SAYS THE INVESTMENT MAY HELP IT PUBLISH GAMES GLOBALLY  —  Elden Ring studio FromSoftware has announced that it's selling shares …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Q&A with Chris McKillop, the former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, on the past, present, and future of the OS, Nexus Q failures, and more  —  The former director of engineering for Google's Fuchsia project, Chris McKillop, has shared with us some insights …
Tweets: @technacity
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: foldable OLED display with a comfortable keyboard and professional look, but $3,500 is expensive and the software has glitches  —  It's a 17-inch foldable that actually works  —  Ever since Samsung Display showed off a 17-inch foldable OLED screen last May …
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Researchers: self-harm posts are surging on Twitter, including graphic photos with bloody practices; one hashtag grew to close to 30,000 tweets by July 2022  —  Self-harm related hashtags have increased roughly 500 percent since October, a new report says  —  A Twitter user in apparent distress turned …

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
The quiet power of email marketing to maximize impact for nonprofits  —  A life changed.  A problem solved.  A community strengthened.  A future made a little better than it was yesterday.For nonprofits, that's the metric.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Cheeky Pint:
The company building America's uranium supply from scratch
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Grit:
The Difference Between 1% Improvements and 10x Growth | Immad Akhund
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:45 PM ET, August 31, 2022.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Simon Sharwood / The Register:

Earlier Picks

Andy Baio / Waxy.org:
Jack Stebbins / CNBC:
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Jordan Middler / Video Games Chronicle: