Techmeme: Dutch chip manufacturer STMicroelectronics plans to invest €730M to build a chip materials plant in Italy for a more self-reliant supply chain amid shortages (Lauly Li/Financial Times)

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October 6, 2022, 9:05 AM

Top News

Financial Times:

Sources: Twitter agreed to delay a deposition of Elon Musk by its lead litigation attorney on October 6 in Austin, as both sides hash out the $44B deal — Tesla chief and social media group are negotiating end to legal fight to finalise $44bn buyout — Twitter has agreed to delay …

New York Times:

Sources: in the weeks before Elon Musk's revived $44B bid, his representatives asked Twitter about doing the deal at an up to 30% discount, or a ~$31B valuation — Before Mr. Musk renewed his $44 billion proposal, he and the company haggled in discussions that ultimately did not advance.

More: The Daily Beast, Insider, Bloomberg, PYMNTS.com, The Economic Times, and The Block

Tweets: @annmlipton, @sherman4949, @reckless, @esqueer_, @sawyermerritt, @ncweaver, @waltlightshed, @parismarx, @reckless, @karaswisher, @cararlombardo, and @wsj

Alexa Corse / Wall Street Journal:

Elon Musk's Twitter deal comes as the company is weakened by macroeconomic trends and Musk's own actions; analysts expect just 4.5% revenue growth in 2022

More: Insider, Vox, Barron's Online, Associated Press, The Hill, Axios, Tech Xplore, and CoinDesk. Tweets: @eddie1perez

Jeremy C. Owens / MarketWatch:

Elon Musk claims that buying Twitter “is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”; in August 2022, Musk teased launching X.com as a social media site

Source: @elonmusk. More: Bloomberg, Axios, New York Magazine, Garbage Day, Reuters, BBC, International Business Times, Observer, MacDailyNews, Bitcoin News, ZDNet, Financial Times, Mike's List, Marketing Dive, CoinGape, Quartz, HotHardware, and Digital Trends

Tweets: @broderick, @unsubtledesi, @elonmusk, @jgriffiths, @steinkobbe, and @saylor

Bloomberg:

Elon Musk's revived $44B Twitter acquisition could rely on banks providing $12.5B at a time when offloading risky debt is difficult, leading to potential losses

More: Protocol, Livemint, New York Times, The Register, Associated Press, Vox, New York Post, Axios, Bloomberg, New York Magazine, and CNBC

Tweets: @twitterir, @blueboxdave, @calichicacine, @oneunderscore__, @sandofsky, @ddayen, @riggsreport, @wholemarsblog, @5_min_macro, @bondhack, @thepacketrat, @reckless, @patrickw, @adammilstein, and @theryanford

Cade Metz / New York Times:

A US federal court jury finds ex-Uber Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan guilty for not disclosing a 2016 breach of customer and driver records to regulators — A jury found Joe Sullivan, who led security at the ride-hailing company, guilty on two different counts.

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:

Fake LinkedIn executive profiles, which pair AI-generated photos with text from real accounts, are becoming headaches for HR departments and invite-only groups — A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site …

More: Silicon Republic, Bloomberg, Beyond Search, and PYMNTS.com

Tweets: @briankrebs, @fbajak, and @briankrebs

Allison Johnson / The Verge:

iPhone 14 Plus review: multiday battery, bright screen, and lightweight, but hard to use one-handed, no ProMotion, and adopting eSIM will be painful for some — Excellent battery life and a large display make the 14 Plus upgrade-worthy … This is the new iPhone that most people want.

More: Marques Brownlee on YouTube, Engadget, AppleInsider, CNET, MacRumors, iMore, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, Wall Street Journal, TechRadar, BGR, Pocket-lint, Tom's Guide, TheStreet, Mashable, SlashGear, Tech Guide, Wccftech, iLounge, 9to5Mac, iClarified, CNBC, ZDNet, and Inverse

Tweets: @joannastern, @trickholland, @allisonjo1, @mkbhd, and @julianchokkattu

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Google unveils two text-to-video AI generators: Imagen Video, a higher image quality system, and Phenaki, which prioritizes coherency and length over quality — Not to be outdone by Meta's Make-A-Video, Google today detailed its work on Imagen Video, an AI system that can generate video clips given …

More: Google Brain, Google Brain, Metaverse Post, The Economic Times, The Register, The Verge, PetaPixel, AI Supremacy, Fossbytes, Ars Technica, SiliconANGLE, Boing Boing, and PCMag

Tweets: @rachelmetz, @ashleevance, @rachelmetz, @kevinroose, @dennycloudhead, @simonw, @kevinroose, @hardmaru, @rachelmetz, @mark_riedl, @hardmaru, and @kevinroose

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Minnesota-based Arctic Wolf, which offers cybersecurity tools and on-site experts, raised $401M in debt, after raising $150M at a $4.3B valuation in July 2021 — In a sign that pure equity financing is getting harder to come by, cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf, which last July raised $150 million …

More: Reuters and Arctic Wolf

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:

Minneapolis-based NetSPI, which offers penetration testing and attack surface management services, raised $410M from KKR, bringing its total funding to $500M

More: Bloomberg, Channel Futures, Star Tribune, DataBreachToday.com, CRN, VentureBeat, SiliconANGLE, and SecurityWeek

CoinDesk:

Court filing: Celsius ex-CEO Alex Mashinsky, ex-CSO Daniel Leon, and CTO Nuke Goldstein withdrew $30M+ between May and June 2022 before the lender's bankruptcy — Ex-CEO Alex Mashinsky, ex-CSO Daniel Leon and CTO Nuke Goldstein pulled bitcoin, ether, USDC and CEL holdings from their custody accounts in May …

More: Gizmodo, Finbold, Coinspeaker, Crypto Daily, and Watcher Guru

Tweets: @simondixontwitt, @doombergt, @kadhim, @kadhim, @kadhim, @dennisbhooper, and @drnicka

David Cohen / Adweek:

Twitter rolls out its mixed media feature globally, letting Android and iOS users include up to four videos, images, and GIFs in the same tweet — Up to 4 GIFs, photos and/or videos can be included

More: Twitter, PCMag, TechCrunch, XDA Developers, Search Engine Journal, GSMArena.com, TechCircle, BGR India, Silicon Republic, Pocket-lint, OnMSFT.com, MobileSyrup, Digital Trends, Android Headlines, The Verge, 9to5Mac, and iMore

Tweets: @twittersupport and @twittersupport

Financial Times:

An investigation shows Amazon, Microsoft, and others destroy millions of data storage devices each year, creating huge waste when software wiping methods exist — Companies like Amazon and Microsoft routinely destroy used hard drives in the name of data security — but industry insiders say there is a better option

Tweets: @pt, @halvarflake, @amanwy, @financialtimes, @solutionicist, @alexandraheal, @rubenvezzoni, and @rubenvezzoni

Renju Jose / Reuters:

Australia proposes changes to its consumer privacy rules post the Optus hack, enabling telcos to share IDs with banks for better monitoring during data breaches — Australia on Thursday proposed an overhaul of consumer privacy rules that will help facilitate targeted data sharing between …

More: Treasury Ministers, ABC News, The World According to Spart, The Guardian, and ZDNet

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Altana, which uses AI to find supply chain anomalies and identify potential risks and bad actors, raised a $100M Series B, bringing its total funding to $123M — Trade wars, military conflicts, the rise of e-commerce and sustainability concerns are driving changes to supply chain networks and trade flows.

More: Insider and Business Wire

Brendan Vaughan / Fast Company:

Fast Company brings its site, Inc, and Mansueto back online after eight days, saying a cyberattack hit its CMS and no customer or advertiser info was disclosed — Eight days. That's how long FastCompany.com was offline after we were targeted in a cyberattack, first on the afternoon of Sunday …

More: Engadget and 9to5Mac

Tweets: @corintxt, @scottnover, @harrymccracken, and @bvaughan71

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:05 AM ET, October 6, 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.

From Mediagazer

Brian Stelter / CNN:

CNN, MS NOW, and Politico amend their lawsuit against the White House, alleging it kept all three off press pool duty since September 18 despite an injunction

Mark Stenberg / Adweek:

A source and internal figures: Condé Nast forecasts $130M in Q4 US advertising, $35M+ below its goal; Condé Nast says the figures are “materially inaccurate”

Scott Nover / Washington Post:

Analysis: Jezebel has removed 100+ articles with racy or abortion-related headlines; Paste, which bought Jezebel in 2023, says they were temporarily unpublished

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More News

Bloomberg:

Amazon plans to hire 150,000 seasonal workers, the same as in 2021, ahead of the holidays; Walmart plans to hire 40,000, down from 150,000 in 2021

More: London Evening Standard and Amazon

Osato Avan-Nomayo / The Block:

DeFiLlama: Circle has burned a record ~$9B of its USDC stablecoin in the past 90 days, decreasing supply from $55.55B to $46.57B, as DeFi yields decline

Tweets: @whale_alert, @whale_alert, and @whale_alert

TechCrunch:

Two weeks ahead of China's 20th communist party congress, censors seem to be blocking TLS-based circumvention tools that locals use to bypass the Great Firewall

More: GitHub and The Register

Tweets: @byron_wan, @zackwhittaker, and @julianku

David Erickson / Missoulian:

Montana-based onX, which makes navigation apps for hunting, hiking, off-roading, and other outdoor activities, raised an $87.4M Series B led by Summit Partners

More: Summit Partners and FinSMEs

Tweets: @david__erickson, @missoulian, and @laura_scheer

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:

A look at Iranian activists' fight for internet access amid the regime's crackdowns, including using Tor servers inside Iran to bypass internet blockades

More: The Guardian, CNN, and CNBC. Thanks:@mikebutcher

Jay Alammar:

An illustrated guide showing how Stable Diffusion generates images from text using a CLIP-based text encoder, an image information creator, and an image decoder

More: Search Engine Land. Tweets: @jayalammar, @jayalammar, and @paraschopra

Lauly Li / Financial Times:

Dutch chip manufacturer STMicroelectronics plans to invest €730M to build a chip materials plant in Italy for a more self-reliant supply chain amid shortages

More: iTnews. Tweets: @chengtingfang

Yousef Saba / Reuters:

Chainalysis: MENA's crypto market grew the fastest from July 2021 to June 2022, with transaction volume up 48% YoY to $566B; Latin America was second at 40% YoY

More: Chainalysis, TechCrunch, and Cointelegraph

Tweets: @chainalysis, @chainalysis, @chainalysis, @chainalysis, and @chainalysis

Earlier Picks

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:

DeepMind uses its AlphaTensor AI to solve a matrix multiplication problem by building a 3D TensorGame board game, beating a record that has stood for 50+ years

More: Nature, DeepMind Blog, VentureBeat, and SiliconANGLE

Tweets: @demishassabis, @sebaaltonen, @deepmind, @jonst0kes, @infoecon, @kevinroose, @deliprao, @codeorg, @tedchris, @tihmstar, @balajis, @amcafee, @functi0nzer0, @sweis, @marcelsalathe, @perrymetzger, @bneiluj, @erictopol, and @deepmind

Jeff John Roberts / Fortune:

Source: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong commissioned a documentary about his company and himself as he thinks the media has a malicious agenda to smear tech execs

More: Coinbase on YouTube, CryptoGlobe, and The Daily Hodl

Tweets: @bitfinexed, @ashleevance, @yoda, @antoniogm, @coinbase, @jeffjohnroberts, @brian_armstrong, @brian_armstrong, @brian_armstrong, @jeffjohnroberts, @chafkin, and @rrhoover

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:

Investing via outside VCs for the first time, Amazon plans to give $150M through 2023 to 10+ funds backing underrepresented founders at or before the seed stage

More: Amazon, dot.LA, SiliconANGLE, and PYMNTS.com

Anna Edgerton / Bloomberg:

Experts say political ads on Facebook no longer result in a good ROI, due to a stagnating user base and policy changes that make it harder to target voters

More: Gizmodo. Tweets: @mattnavarra, @jason_kint, @mediumbuying, @mediumbuying, @mediumbuying, @travisfain, @onelikeapp, and @fboversight

Jon Fingas / Engadget:

What to expect from the “Made by Google” event on October 6: Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel Watch, and potentially Nest hardware and previews of Pixel devices

Steve Dent / Engadget:

Meta details updates to the Facebook Feed that let users show more or fewer posts from friends, Groups, and Pages, helping improve Meta's AI-based ranking

Associated Press:

A US judge sentences Paige Thompson, who accessed the data of 100M+ Capital One customers in 2019, to five years of probation; the DOJ is “very disappointed”

More: The Register, SiliconANGLE, Seattle Business Journal, Wall Street Journal, GeekWire, and The Verge

Tweets: @wdwanews and @joetidy

Mariella Moon / Engadget:

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra says Overwatch 2 servers are “experiencing a mass DDoS attack”, preventing users from joining the game's early access launch