Techmeme: A US federal judge dismisses an industry group lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Utah law requiring adult websites to verify the age of their users (Sam Metz/Associated Press)

Top News

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

X now lets X Blue subscribers hide their verified checkmarks, although “the checkmark may still appear in some places” and some features “may not be available” — Social media company X, formerly Twitter, now lets paid users hide their verification checkmarks.

More: Twitter Help Center, The Verge, Thurrott, Forbes, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, Engadget, PCMag, MobileSyrup, KnowTechie, Android Headlines, BGR, IGN, Phandroid, Fast Company, Variety, Techlusive, Mashable, NBC News, Neowin, and International Business Times

Bluesky: @rhinoz.bsky.social. Twitter: @parkerortolani, @ch1w33th3d0g, @ggooooddddoogg, @kimcrayton1, @parismarx, @ianvisits, @xdaily, @xdaily, and @luciascarlet. Forums: r/NewsOfTheStupid

Abner Li / 9to5Google:

X renames TweetDeck to XPro; the URL remains tweetdeck.twitter.com and much of the copy is unchanged, including the “Tweet like a pro” tagline

More: Engadget, Mashable, The Apple Post, Neowin, gHacks Technology News, TechCrunch, Techlusive, and The Verge

Twitter: @bettertdeck, @thesheetztweetz, @parkerortolani, @lukeplunkett, @eramdam, and @eramdam

Matt Day / Bloomberg:

Amazon plans to roll out the biggest overhaul to its grocery business since buying Whole Foods in the coming weeks, including one cart for supermarket offerings — It's revamping stores, unifying online shopping carts and offering fresh-food delivery to customers who aren't Prime subscribers.

More: CNBC, GeekWire, TechCrunch, The Information, The Verge, About Amazon, PYMNTS.com, CNBC, and NPR

Twitter: @mattmday, @mattmday, @daveleebbg, @kientan74, @bizboyle, @theo_wayt, and @mattmday

Caroline O'Donovan / Washington Post:

A look at Amazon Fresh's challenges, including lawsuits, layoffs, and halted projects; a former employee says staff were told 2023 could be “make or break” — Lawsuits and layoffs now litter Amazon's years-long path to conquering the brick-and-mortar grocery store.

Bluesky: @glinden.bsky.social. LinkedIn: Brittain Ladd

Rest of World:

Interviews with people at Worldcoin booths in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong find many scanned their eyes to receive the sign-up bonuses, an “easy $50” — In Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong, our reporters found lots of people were eager to take the deal.

More: Reuters, Reuters, PYMNTS.com, Crypto Briefing, Bloomberg, CoinDesk, TechCrunch, Protos, Ethereum World News, The Block, and Crowdfund Insider

Twitter: @ryanjamesweeks, @ambokojh, @worldcoin, @thestalwart, @restofworld, @vickiturk, and @russellbrandom

Wall Street Journal:

Internal Binance data and current and former employees say Chinese users traded ~$90B in crypto assets on the exchange in May 2023, despite China's crypto ban — Retaining its Chinese footprint will be crucial for Binance as it faces a global regulatory crackdown

More: Cointelegraph, Cryptonews, Crowdfund Insider, Coinspeaker, Coinpedia Fintech News, Protos, CryptoSlate, 24/7 Wall St., Cryptopolitan, Tech in Asia, CoinDesk, Watcher Guru, The Block, Invezz, Forkast, and CoinGape

Twitter: @icebergy_, @cz_binance, @hsakatrades, @ceostroff, and @jchengwsj. Forums: r/CryptoCurrency

Joseph Menn / Washington Post:

Hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow plans to detail P2P protocol Veilid, to encrypt social media and apps, at Def Con next week, its biggest release in 10 years — Cult of the Dead Cow is a hacker collective whose members at one time included Texas politician Beto O'Rourke

Mastodon: @neurovagrant@masto.deoan.org. Twitter: @retweetablen14 and @veilidnetwork. Forums: Slashdot

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Microsoft rolls out spatial audio for Teams on Windows and macOS after a few months of testing; the audio of each person on a call now has a distinct position — After a few months of testing the feature, Microsoft has widely rolled out spatial audio for its Teams desktop app on Windows and macOS.

More: Microsoft Tech Community, Thurrott, 9to5Mac, Analytics Insight, TechRadar, XDA Developers, Techlusive, and Neowin

Bloomberg:

Sources: SoftBank's Arm is targeting an IPO at a valuation of between $60B and $70B as soon as September 2023, a sign of bullish interest in AI chips — - Chip design firm may raise as much as $10 billion in debut — Nvidia, Intel are in discussions to be anchor investors

More: Financial Times, Invezz, TNW, Tech Startups, Light Reading, Reuters, UKTN, and Tech in Asia

Twitter: @steve_e and @pelstrom

Bloomberg:

China releases draft rules to limit smartphone use by minors, including two hour limits for those age 16 to 18, although enforcement remains unclear — - Aims to prevent kids from spending too much time on phones — Beijing has pursued campaigns to alleviate burden on minors

More: Engadget, CNBC, South China Morning Post, 9to5Mac, The Verge, Wccftech, PCMag, Pocket Gamer.biz, Financial Times, and Variety

Twitter: @arjunkharpal and @pelstrom

Jen Christensen / CNN:

An early-stage study of 80,000 women in Sweden who underwent a mammogram in 2021 and 2022 finds AI-supported screening increased breast cancer detection by 20% — Artificial intelligence found more breast cancers than doctors with years of training and experience and cut doctors' mammogram …

More: The Lancet Oncology, Bloomberg, The Economic Times, Silicon Republic, The Guardian, Sky News, Cryptopolitan, BBC, The Times, Tech Xplore, and Politico

Bluesky: @claeshs.bsky.social. Forums: r/science

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft now lets Xbox owners stream gameplay from the console to Discord users, rolling out to all Xbox users in the coming months — Microsoft is improving its Xbox and Discord integration with a new streaming gameplay feature. Xbox owners will soon be able to stream their gameplay …

More: Discord Blog, Windows Central, Engadget, TechCrunch, IGN, Mashable, and OnMSFT.com

Twitter: @steinekin, @tomwarren, and @discord

Emilia David / The Verge:

Meta releases AudioCraft, a new open-source AI model that lets users create music and sounds via prompts, consisting of MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec models — It consists of three AI models, all tackling different areas of sound generation. MusicGen takes text inputs to generate music.

More: Engadget, Reuters, TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE, Meta, and Variety

Twitter: @metanewsroom. Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg

See also Mediagazer

Charlie Fink / Forbes:

Inworld, which uses AI to help developers create game characters, raised $30M led by Lightspeed at a $500M+ valuation, following a $50M Series A in August 2022 — Inworld, which makes AI-driven non-player characters (NPCs) for games and other applications has raised approximately $30 in new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

More: FinSMEs, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Axios, Voicebot.ai, businesswire.com, and Lightspeed Venture Partners

Bluesky: @thewanderingjew.bsky.social. Twitter: @inworld_ai and @kerrymflynn

Aidan Ryan / The Information:

Sources: Changpeng Zhao tried to liquidate Binance.US earlier this year, before pivoting to attempting to sell the company, holding talks with Gemini and others — Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao attempted to shut down the crypto exchange's U.S. offshoot earlier this year …

More: Coinpedia Fintech News, Cryptopolitan, crypto.news, Bitcoinist.com, Cointelegraph, Metaverse Post, Unchained Crypto, and CoinDesk

Twitter: @aidanfitzryan, @adamscochran, and @amir

Alex Ross / New Yorker:

After iTunes failed to save classical music, Apple Music Classical seems an oddly clumsy point of entry, offering some good features but falling short of rivals — As classical listeners shift to streaming, Apple's bespoke app falls short of its smaller-scale competitors.

Twitter: @ajdoug, @artsjournalnews, @ionarts, and @scurve

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:

Slack launches Slack Sales Elevate, offering deeper integration with Salesforce's Sales Cloud for $60 per month on top of existing Slack and Salesforce fees — - More Slack editions coming for customer service, marketing — New Slack CEO Lidiane Jones focuses on product updates

More: VentureBeat and Android Police

Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:

Google delists its AI Test Kitchen app, which let users test AI-powered tools, on Android and iOS, moving the service to the web to receive faster updates — Once a miniature playground for the public to test Google's blossoming AI-powered tools, the AI Test Kitchen app has been delisted …

More: TechCrunch, OnMSFT.com, and Android Headlines

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Hopin, the struggling virtual events startup valued at nearly $7.7B in June 2021, sells its Events and Session units to RingCentral for an undisclosed sum — Hopin, the virtual events startup that saw its star (and valuation) rise quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic, is most definitely coming down to earth.

More: businesswire.com, Tech.eu, Hopin, Financial Times, and UKTN

Threads: @carnage4life, @chris, and @benedictevans

Twitter: @kadhim, @kadhim, @johnnyboufarhat, and @davidspinks. Thanks:@ingridlunden

Fortune:

A look at Katie Haun's $1.5B crypto fund, launched in spring 2022 just before the crypto crash, which has now deployed ~30% of its cash to ~24 startups — On a sunny morning in April, Katie Haun trudged up a winding path around the Stanford Dish in the hills over Palo Alto.

Twitter: @leomschwartz

Financial Times:

Analysts and executives say the UK risks becoming an also-ran in the race to roll out 5G, despite starting in 2019, due to limited investment and the Huawei ban — Expansion of high-speed mobile networks hit by factors including limited investment and disruption from ban on Huawei kit

More: Light Reading, Total Telecom, Huawei Central, and DatacenterDynamics

Twitter: @financialtimes. LinkedIn: Robert Stocker

Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware:

Bernstein analysts estimate that nearly 10% of servers worldwide are powered by Arm SoCs and 40% of those are in China — The rise of Arm-based servers us clear and consistent, Bernstein says. — Due to increasing difficulty in obtaining high-performance x86 servers …

More: Wccftech and TechPowerUp

Mastodon: @shepgo@mastodon.social. Twitter: @ericjhonsa

Colin Wilhelm / The Block:

3AC co-founder Kyle Davies tells a US court he is not subjecting himself to or accepting the jurisdiction of US courts since he renounced citizenship in 2020 — - Three Arrows Capital co-founder Kyle Davies said he renounced his U.S. citizenship, and that U.S. courts no longer have jurisdiction over him.

More: DL News, crypto.news, Cryptonews, Cointelegraph, and Decrypt. Forums: r/Buttcoin

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