Techmeme
November 2, 2022, 10:40 AM

Top News

Elon Musk / @elonmusk:
Elon Musk says the blue checkmark system is “bullshit” and Twitter Blue will be $8/month with half the ads, priority in replies, mentions, and search, and more  —  Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sony plans to launch the PlayStation VR2 on February 22 for $550, £530, or €600; preorders open November 15  —  Sony will launch its PS VR2 headset on February 22nd priced at $549.99.  The PS VR2 will be priced at $549.99 in the US, €599.99 across Europe, £529.99, and ¥74,980 in Japan.
Washington Post:
Internal email: Twitter appears to be rushing out a “high”-risk “Paywalled Video” feature, letting users charge to view their videos, with Twitter taking a cut  —  The tool would let video creators charge users for access.  The team working on it flagged big potential pitfalls.
Kali Hays / Insider:
Comedian and verified Twitter user Tim Heidecker puts the site's moderation practices to the test by starting #TrumpIsDead, which began trending on November 1  —  - A comedian intentionally started the claim, in what could be a test for Elon Musk.  — The claim was trending on Twitter.
New York Times:
Twitter's Chief Customer Officer Sarah Personette “resigns”; sources say ad company IPG recommended that clients pause Twitter spending over moderation concerns  —  At least three Twitter executives have left in recent days, as one of the world's largest ad companies said clients …
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
Elon Musk says Twitter will not reinstate banned accounts “until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks”  —  The pledge means that accounts including former president Donald Trump won't be allowed back online before the midterms
Chelsey Cox / CNBC:
FinCEN: US financial firms processed ~$1.2B in likely ransomware payments in 2021, up almost 3x YoY; ~75% of H2 2021 ransomware incidents were linked to Russia  —  - U.S. banks and financial institutions processed more than $1 billion in potential ransomware-related payments in 2021.
Elisa Lipsky-Karasz / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of, and interview with, Jony Ive, covering life before and after Apple, his artistic process, LoveFrom, the importance of words, and more  —  can always write an awful lot that I can't draw,“ Jony Ive, the mastermind behind Apple's most revolutionary products, says as he holds up a Space Age-style coffee cup. ”
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Dropbox says hackers stole code and some API keys from 130 GitHub repositories via a phishing campaign, but its core apps and infrastructure were unaffected  —  Dropbox disclosed a security breach after threat actors stole 130 code repositories after gaining access to one of its GitHub …
Karen Hao / Wall Street Journal:
China's Zhengzhou industrial park, where Foxconn makes iPhones, begins a weeklong lockdown to counteract the “severe and complicated” spread of COVID-19  —  HONG KONG—The industrial park where Foxconn Technology Group's iPhone assembly plant is struggling to maintain production amid …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Apple TV 4K (2022) review: affordable, snappy performance, and USB-C remote, but no AirTag-like remote tracking, lackluster live TV, and somewhat stale design  —  Packing more speed than ever (and now HDR10 Plus) at a cheaper price, the Apple TV 4K is the best overall streamer on the market — even if tvOS is falling behind in places
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Sydney-based Blackbird raised an AU$1B+ fund, the largest Australian VC fund yet, including AU$284M for early-stage in Australia and AU$668M for follow-on bets  —  Blackbird Ventures has raised the largest Australian venture capital fund yet, securing more than A$1 billion ($640 million) …
Washington Post:
Sources: the US is exploring whether it has legal authority to review Elon Musk's Twitter deal, which gives large foreign investors access to confidential data  —  Terms of the deal give large foreign investors access to confidential information about the social media platform
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Tumblr updates its community guidelines to allow nudity, mature subject matter, and sexual themes, but says sexually explicit acts “remain off-limits”  —  Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity — but not sexually explicit images — on the platform.
Ewen Callaway / Nature:
Meta researchers create ESMFold, an LLM to predict the structures of 617M+ metagenomic proteins that is less accurate than DeepMind's AlphaFold but ~60x faster  —  When London-based Deep Mind unveiled predicted structures for some 220 million proteins this year, it covered nearly every protein from known organisms in DNA databases.
Raksha Kumar / Rest of World:
A look at the everyday sexism faced by Indian women working in tech; around 36% of India's 5M tech workers are women, of which 7% hold executive-level positions  —  Tech helped more Indian women join the workforce, but they're still fighting to be treated equally.
William Turvill / Press Gazette:
Source: Meta plans to end human curation of its UK Facebook News tab, contracted to a team of ~15 journalists at Upday, and switch to an AI system in early 2023  —  Meta plans to end human curation of the UK Facebook News tab, turning it into a fully automated product, Press Gazette has learned.

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More News

Andy Baio / Waxy.org:

Earlier Picks

Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch: