Techmeme
October 11, 2022, 11:00 PM

Top News

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Meta unveils the $1,499 Quest Pro headset, offering eye and face tracking and color passthrough video for mixed reality, shipping on October 25 in 22 countries  —  Meta has finally announced the Meta Quest Pro: a $1,499 virtual reality headset it's been teasing for the past year.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Hands-on with Meta Quest Pro: feels like a sophisticated development kit with a thoughtful design, improved controllers, one to two hours of battery, and more  —  Meta's new high-end headset introduces eye tracking and mixed reality for $1,499 … The first thing I notice with the Meta Quest Pro is the fit.
Meta on YouTube:
A video of Meta's Connect 2022 keynote, showcasing the Quest Pro mixed reality headset, plans for the metaverse, new partnerships, and more  —  See how we're building the future of the metaverse together, and catch the latest updates, announcements and key moments from Connect 2022.Pre-order Meta Que...
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Meta partners with Microsoft to bring Teams, Office, Windows 365, and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Quest VR headsets in the coming months; Teams will use Meta's avatars  —  Microsoft and Meta looked like they were on a collision course last year, poised to compete heavily for the future of work in the metaverse.
Lucas Matney / TechCrunch:
Meta says the Quest Store has generated $1.5B revenue to date from apps and games; over one-third of its 400 titles grossed $1M+ and 33 grossed $10M+  —  While outside research data suggests that the number of VR headsets being shipped over the past couple years has surged, the release of new VR titles hasn't always kept pace.
Matt Robinson / Bloomberg:
Source: the US SEC is investigating whether Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, violated securities laws by selling its NFTs and ApeCoins  —  The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Yuga Labs Inc., the creator of the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of NFTs …
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Mango Markets, a DeFi platform on Solana, says a hacker drained some of its funds via an oracle price manipulation; blockchain auditor OtterSec says for $100M+  —  Mango's MNGO token was down over 40% after suffering from the latest massive decentralized finance exploit.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta announces Horizon Worlds avatars are getting legs using an AI model to predict the body's position, an avatar store, avatars are coming to Reels, and more  —  Meta's Horizon avatars will be getting legs.  So far, the company's avatars have weirdly just hovered off the ground …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Kuo predicts that, in the next three to five years, Apple may be able to supply the US market, or ~25% of global shipments, from assembly sites outside of China  —  Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is out today with some new predictions on how Apple can continue to reduce its reliance on China.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Brex, valued at $12.3B in January 2022, lays off 136, or 11% of its staff, as part of a restructuring, and its CFO departs to join HR software startup Rippling  —  The startup's CFO is departing to join Rippling, which recently entered the spend management space
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Google partners with Coinbase to let some customers pay for cloud services using crypto, starting in 2023; Coinbase will move some apps from AWS to Google Cloud  —  - Google will start allowing a subset of customers to pay for cloud services with digital currencies early next year.
Kollen Post / The Block:
Crypto exchange Bittrex agrees to a $29.3M settlement with the US Treasury Department over potential liability for sanctions violations between 2014 and 2017  —  - Bittrex is facing record fines from the U.S. Treasury Department over the exchange's lack of sanctions controls between 2014 and 2017.
The Verge:
Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on the Quest Pro, mixed reality, the Microsoft partnership, metaverse plans, TikTok, BeReal, the Discovery Engine approach, and more  —  A year after rebranding Facebook to Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is still all in on building the metaverse
Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
The Department of Labor proposes a rule that would make it harder for companies to classify US workers as independent contractors; Uber and Lyft drop 5%+  —  A proposed rule, long awaited by labor activists, would make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors.
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget:
Google announces Chromebooks for cloud gaming: the $650 16-inch Acer 516 GE, the $600 16-inch Lenovo IdeaPad, and the $400 15.6-inch ASUS Vibe CX55 Flip  —  ASUS, Acer and Lenovo built Chromebooks optimized to run services like GeForce Now.  — Three new laptops from ASUS, Acer and Lenovo
Justin Baer / Wall Street Journal:
New York grants BNY Mellon, the US' oldest bank, permission to receive some customers' BTC and ETH; BNY will store keys, offer bookkeeping services, and more  —  Founded by Alexander Hamilton, BNY Mellon is the first large U.S. bank to safeguard digital assets alongside traditional investments
Washington Post:
Under Texas' social media law, Kanye West's antisemitic posts on Twitter and Instagram would likely stay up, signaling a difficult future for social media  —  Taking down the rapper's bigoted posts was an easy call for Twitter and Instagram.  That could change if Elon Musk and some GOP leaders have their way.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Over a dozen job openings hint TikTok plans to open fulfillment centers in the US as the company looks to build an “international e-commerce fulfillment system”  —  TikTok is planning to build its own product fulfillment centers in the U.S., creating an e-commerce supply chain system …
Huw Jones / Reuters:
Financial Stability Board publishes a proposed crypto regulation framework for public consultation until December 15, plans to finalize suggestions by mid-2023  —  Cryptoasset companies should set aside capital like banks when undertaking similar activities, regulators proposed on Tuesday …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia RTX 4090 review: great 4K performance, DLSS 3 transforms frame rates, and 24GB of VRAM, but a 450W power draw, a dongle adapter, huge, and expensive  —  The RTX 40-series starts with a big performance leap  —  I had to triple check my benchmarks over and over during this review, because I couldn't quite believe my eyes.

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Financial Times:
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: