Techmeme: Snap launches new safety tools and resources for US educators, and says Snapchat has 20M+ US teen users; Pew says 51% of US teens used Snapchat daily in 2023 (April Rubin/Axios)

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August 28, 2024, 7:55 AM

Top News

Politico:

French administrative document: alongside Pavel Durov, French authorities issued an arrest warrant for his Telegram co-founder brother Nikolai in March 2024 — PARIS — French authorities issued arrest warrants for Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and his co-founder brother Nikolai in March …

More: Politico. Forums: r/Republican

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Emmanuel Macron invited Pavel Durov to move Telegram to Paris in 2018; in 2017, a joint operation between French and UAE spies hacked Durov's iPhone — Pavel Durov had lunch with the French president six years ago. His phone was hacked the previous year by French and U.A.E. spies.

More: Cointelegraph, The Kyiv Independent, CoinGape, Cryptonews, Watcher Guru, mofa.gov.ae, Fortune, Nairametrics, Politico, Al Jazeera, New York Times, and New York Times

Mastodon: @slothrop@chaos.social. X: @christopherjm

Financial Times:

How Telegram CEO Pavel Durov miscalculated on moderation, saying earlier in 2024 that he did not expect “significant challenges” despite new laws targeting tech — Social media billionaire's decade-long effort to avoid government scrutiny has backfired with French arrest

More: Bloomberg, Telegraph, The Guardian, Sherwood News, and The Verge

X: @ft and @1br0wn

Kevin Collier / NBC News:

US-based child safety group NCMEC, Canada-based CCCP, and UK-based IWF say their outreach to Telegram to flag CSAM on the platform has largely been ignored — Telegram's CEO was arrested in relation to an investigation into an unnamed person involving claims of “complicity” in distributing child sexual abuse material.

More: Bloomberg, BBC, CoinGeek, Platformer, Pixel Envy, MSPoweruser, and Techdirt

Threads: @anildash and @menottim

X: @kevincollier, @kevincollier, @eshumarneedi, and @youwouldntpost

New York Times:

Experts: Pavel Durov's arrest may be an outlier as the legal bar is high in the US and Europe to prosecute tech executives for content posted on their platforms

More: Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, Bitcoinist.com, and The Information

Mastodon: @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social. Bluesky: @tjmcintyre.com. X: @eddierob235 and @klonick

David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:

The crypto industry, heavily reliant on Telegram, has been Pavel Durov's loudest defender after his arrest; the Telegram-linked TON coin has a $13.7B market cap

More: DL News, Fortune, ComputerWeekly.com, CoinDesk, Cryptonews, Coinpedia Fintech News, CryptoPotato, The Crypto Basic, Nairametrics, DNyuz, and Cryptopolitan

X: @ton_society and @michaeldweiss

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Sources: Apple is laying off ~100 people in its services group, impacting Apple Books, News, and other teams, a rare move as part of a shift in its priorities — Apple Inc. took the rare step of cutting about 100 jobs in its services group, part of a shift in priorities for the critical division …

More: PYMNTS.com, MacRumors, The Verge, AppleInsider, International Business Times, 24/7 Wall St., Verdict, Silicon UK, Tech.co, Reuters, Nairametrics, Proactive, Yahoo Finance, PhoneArena, Moneycontrol, The Economic Times, Wccftech, The Week, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, Benzinga, Hindustan Times, NewsBytes, and The Indian Express

Bluesky: @migueldeicaza.bsky.social. X: @aaronp613, @markgurman, and @markgurman. Forums: r/apple

Joseph Menn / Washington Post:

Sources: China-linked hackers penetrated deep into two big US ISPs and several smaller ones in recent months, using a zero-day flaw in Versa Networks software — Beijing's hacking effort has “dramatically stepped up from where it used to be,” says former top U.S cybersecurity official.

More: Lumen, Krebs on Security, Ars Technica, Versa, Cybersecurity …, TechCircle, Business Today, SC Media, CSO, How-To Geek, Security Affairs, Bloomberg, freebeacon.com, The Record, PCMag, The Register, iTnews, CRN, Dark Reading, BleepingComputer, and TechCrunch

Mastodon: @howelloneill@infosec.exchange. X: @jfslowik, @lorenzofb, @hackingbutlegal, @homelandgop, @lumentechco, @lawrenceabrams, @rekdt, @uuallan, @ryanaraine, @dakotaindc, @ryanaraine, @ryanaraine, @k_sec, and @ericgeller

LinkedIn: Alex Stamos and Brian Krebs

Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, r/cybersecurity, r/Intelligence, r/technews, r/technology, Beehaw, and Slashdot

Christine Fernando / Associated Press:

X updates Grok to direct users to Vote.gov for election queries, after a letter from five US secretaries of state warned of spreading election misinformation — The social media platform X has made a change to its AI chatbot after five secretaries of state warned it was spreading election misinformation.

More: Engadget, Office of the State …, The Verge, Ars Technica, Beyond Search, The Hill, Cryptopolitan, New York Post, Inc.com, DNyuz, Coinspeaker, and Decrypt

Forums: r/politics and r/news

Peter Kafka / Business Insider:

Mark Zuckerberg's letter to Jim Jordan gave Republicans just enough to claim a political win, without getting Meta in more trouble amid its FTC antitrust suit — - Mark Zuckerberg runs Meta, one of the world's most valuable tech companies. — Why did he just send Congress a letter admitting that Meta has screwed up?

More: Washington Post, CNN, Washington Post, Pixel Envy, Platformer, Status, Baptist Press, The Hill, Politico, Vox, Deseret News, Racket News, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Reason, Spyglass, Louder With Crowder, RedState, The Wrap, Washington Times, The Information, Blaze Media, National Review, AOL, abc7NY, Silicon Republic, The Daily Beast, WBUR, Mediaite, Benzinga, Breitbart, Fox Business, and Wall Street Journal

Threads: @wiczipedia, @shiraovide, @kbode, @david.heath.writer, @karaswisher, @silvermanbrandon, @karaswisher, @cwarzel, @pkafka, @cwarzel, @cwarzel, @mac_ryan_, and @renee.diresta

Bluesky: @mmasnick.bsky.social, @mmasnick.bsky.social, and @mmasnick.bsky.social

X: @judiciarygop, @reprussellfry, @pbump, @congressman_jvd, @replaurellee, @repmichaelrulli, @patrickbetdavid, and @mbateman

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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

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Peter Attia is stepping aside as a contributor to CBS News, after his correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein came to light in the release of US DOJ files

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Sources: Paramount submitted a new bid for WBD that improves on its previous $30-a-share, all-cash proposal and addresses some of WBD's concerns

K.J. Yossman / Variety:

BAFTA host Alan Cumming thanks the audience for its “understanding” after outbursts from Tourette's campaigner John Davidson that weren't cut from the broadcast

More News

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Q&A with Signal President Meredith Whittaker on the app's 10th anniversary, growing in the EU, Pavel Durov's arrest, nonprofit status, X, US election, and more

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Web browser startup Brave lays off 27 employees, after cutting 9% of its workforce in October 2023; PitchBook estimates that Brave has ~191 employees

More: The Verge

Bloomberg:

Chinese meal delivery giant Meituan reports Q2 revenue up 21% YoY to ~$11.6B, above $11.3B est., as its core business expanded; its stock is up ~25% in 2024

More: Reuters and Meituan

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:

Kenya-based Wasoko and Egypt-based MaxAB, two of Africa's largest B2B e-commerce platforms, merge in an all-stock deal; the companies raised over $240M combined

Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:

MakerDAO rebrands as Sky and debuts a new USDS stablecoin, but users criticize USDS after noticing that the token lets the issuer remotely freeze the asset

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:

Self-driving truck company TuSimple, which delisted from Nasdaq in January, reaches a $189M settlement of a suit alleging fraud by overstating safety and more

Rachel Kaser / VentureBeat:

Web3 esports startup Gameplay Galaxy, focused on developing upcoming game Trial Xtreme Freedom, raised a $24M seed co-led by Blockchain Capital and Merit Circle

More: Cointelegraph, NFT News Today, NFTgators, and Decrypt

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Seattle-based startup Supio, which uses AI to help lawyers analyze documents, raised a $25M Series A led by Sapphire Ventures

More: Seattle Business Journal, Tech Funding News, Supio, TechCrunch, VC News Daily, and FinSMEs

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:

Former staff of video game payments company Xsolla say in lawsuits that CEO Aleksandr Agapitov leans heavily on company revenue for his new, flashier lifestyle

More: Game Developer. X: @cecianasta, @stephentotilo, and @edludlow

Max A. Cherney / Reuters:

Sources: ex-Intel board member Lip-Bu Tan, an industry veteran, left over what he considered a bloated workforce, risk-averse culture, and lagging AI strategy

More: Benzinga, Wccftech, and Silicon UK

Forums: r/AMD_Stock, r/nvidia, r/hardware, and Slashdot

Jay Peters / The Verge:

Instagram now lets users add text to photos right from its post editor, rather than needing a separate app, and add more photos as stickers on top of a photo

More: Instagram for Creators, PetaPixel, Business Standard, Phandroid, MySmartPrice, MakeUseOf, MacRumors, GSMArena.com, Android Headlines, WinBuzzer, Engadget, and TechRadar

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Meta says it will shut down Meta Spark, its third-party AR tools and content platform that launched in 2017, effective January 14, 2025, angering some creators

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:

Snap rolls out a native Snapchat app for iPadOS, 13 years after launching on iOS; the app can only run in portrait mode

More: MacRumors, Wccftech, iThinkDifferent, iPhone in Canada Blog, How-To Geek, PCMag, The Verge, iDownloadBlog.com, TechCrunch, Thurrott, iMore, and The Mac Observer

Forums: r/technology and Slashdot

Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:

Source: OpenAI demoed a breakthrough called Strawberry to US natsec officials; one of its top uses is to make training data for a flagship LLM codenamed Orion

More: The Information, SiliconANGLE, WinBuzzer, The Rundown AI, Emergent Behavior, Cryptopolitan, PYMNTS.com, Maginative, The Decoder, and Android Authority

Threads: @jjackyliang. Bluesky: @tylerking.bsky.social, @fack.bsky.social, and @tedunderwood.me

X: @edzitron, @ednewtonrex, @colin_fraser, @steph_palazzolo, @steph_palazzolo, @emostaque, @aaronpholmes, @mikeknoop, @amir, @gergelyorosz, and @ldrogen

Forums: Hacker News, r/OpenAI, r/singularity, and r/OpenAI

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

nOps, which helps companies optimize AWS spend, raised a $30M Series A led by Headlight Partners and says its customer base grew 450% over the past 18 months

More: FinSMEs, SiliconANGLE, and nOps

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Apple announces a September 9 event at Apple Park with the iPhone 16 lineup, new Apple Watch models, and AirPods 4 expected; the invitation says “It's Glowtime”