Techmeme: A look at Toontown Rewritten, an unofficial recreation of Disney's Toontown Online game that shut down in 2013; Toontown Rewritten now has 10K DAUs and 50K MAUs (J. Clara Chan/Wired)

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December 25, 2024, 9:50 PM

Top News

Gleb Bryanski / Reuters:

Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments to counter Western sanctions — Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments following legislative changes …

More: Axios, SiliconANGLE, The Daily Hodl, BeInCrypto, Cryptonews, The Crypto Basic, Cointelegraph, CoinGape, Coinpedia Fintech News, CCN.com, The Coin Republic, Crypto Briefing, CryptoSlate, Benzinga, and The Crypto Times

Bluesky: @sactosteve, @hybridcap, @lehtimaeki, @schizanon, and @vernster

Forums: r/Buttcoin and r/Bitcoin

Bloomberg:

Taiwan's FTC blocks Uber's $950M acquisition of Delivery Hero's Foodpanda, arguing it would decrease competition as their combined market share would be 90%+ — - Fair Trade Commission concerned deal would limit competition — Uber had sought Delivery Hero's Foodpanda unit in Taiwan

More: The Information, Seeking Alpha, Reuters, The Straits Times, Taipei Times, Axios, Benzinga, The Week, Taiwan News, Tech Xplore, and Tech in Asia

X: @newsbfm, @newsbfm, and @newsbfm

Qwen:

Alibaba's Qwen unveils QvQ-72B-Preview, an experimental research model focused on “enhancing visual reasoning capabilities”, built upon Qwen2-VL-72B — Language and vision intertwine in the human mind, shaping how we perceive and understand the world around us.

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:

Analysis: roughly two-thirds of 39 public digital health companies have lost value in 2024, while the Nasdaq is up 32% — If the Covid era marked a boom time for digital health companies, 2024 was the reckoning. — In a year that saw the Nasdaq jump 32%, surpassing 20,000 for the first time this month …

X: @ashleycapoot and @paul_sonnier. LinkedIn: Ashley Capoot

The Block:

Analysis: Coinbase International saw its total trading volume grow 124% week-over-week to $119B+ this past week; it averaged just $2.5B per day in November 2024 — - The weekly total is 124% higher than the previous week's total. — The following is an excerpt from The Block's Data and Insights newsletter.

More: The Block, Cointelegraph, BeInCrypto, Cryptopolitan, Motley Fool, Coinpedia Fintech News, and Coinspeaker

X: @pancakeswap, @daancrypto, @martypartymusic, and @kyledoops

Jody Godoy / Reuters:

Filing: Apple asks to participate in the remedial phase of Google's US antitrust case, saying it can't rely on Google to defend their revenue-sharing agreements — Apple (AAPL.O) has asked to participate in Google's upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely …

More: TechSpot, MacRumors, Beyond Search, BGR, iPhone in Canada Blog, SiliconANGLE, Wall Street Journal, TechIssuesToday.com, Hindustan Times, Tech in Asia, iClarified, AppleInsider, Benzinga, Invezz, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Wccftech, 9to5Mac, Thurrott, Chrome Unboxed, MediaPost, PhoneArena, Investing.com, Finimize, Moneycontrol, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and The Verge

Bluesky: @paulsemenza, @megangray, @megangray, @kint, and @kint

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to and @lapcatsoftware@mastodon …. Threads: @grantjallen

X: @counternotions, @parkerortolani, @appleinsider, @9to5mac, @timsweeneyepic, @marionawfal, @laralogan, and @balancecrafting. LinkedIn: Jody Godoy

Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, r/google, r/apple, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums

Politico:

Examining Biden's tech legacy and the CHIPS Act, as the White House says $446B has been announced for chips and electronics manufacturing since he took office — President Joe Biden had just a single term to try to transform the nation's approach to energy, climate change, technology and jobs.

Martin Matishak / The Record:

President Biden signs the $895B 2025 defense policy bill, including $3B for the FCC's “rip and replace” program to get rid of Chinese networking equipment — The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove …

More: CHINAdaily, CHINAdaily, CHINAdaily, The White House, CHINAdaily, UPI, Military.com, Newsweek, The Korea Times, The White House, SecurityWeek, TechRadar, SiliconANGLE, Politico, The Cyber Express, and Associated Press

X: @martinmatishak and @wolfejosh. Forums: Slashdot

J. Clara Chan / Wired:

A look at Toontown Rewritten, an unofficial recreation of Disney's Toontown Online game that shut down in 2013; Toontown Rewritten now has 10K DAUs and 50K MAUs — Thanks to a bunch of game-makers who were still teens when Toontown Online disappeared, the beloved online world lives on as Toontown Rewritten.

Bluesky: @joeyz.io and @toontownrewritten.com. X: @pandaphilplays

Forums: r/Toontown, r/toontownrewritten, and r/pcgaming

Tharin Pillay / Time:

A look at the more challenging AI evaluations emerging in response to the rapid progress of models, including FrontierMath, Humanity's Last Exam, and RE-Bench — Despite their expertise, AI developers don't always know what their most advanced systems are capable of—at least, not at first.

Bluesky: @iseff.com. X: @tharin_p and @tharin_p. LinkedIn: Ross Dawson

Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu / Financial Times:

Opensignal ranks Japan #1 in G7 mobile reliability experience between July 1 and September 28, followed by France, Germany, the US, Canada, Italy, and the UK — Research highlights impact of poor network performance on consumers — Mobile users in the UK had the least reliable experience …

More: ISPreview UK and iPhone in Canada Blog

Bluesky: @seanfionn. X: @workmj. Forums: r/ukpolitics and r/unitedkingdom

Bloomberg:

Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace approves lifting its ban on “certain widely used foreign platforms”, naming WhatsApp and Google Play as the first two apps — - Allowing WhatsApp and Google Play may placate opponents — Major social networking sites have been blocked for years

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From Mediagazer

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:

Sources: Netflix users aren't opening the app on as many days a month as they did a couple of years ago, and the average user is spending less time watching

Derrick Bryson Taylor / New York Times:

Elvis Presley's rightsholders sue Anthropic over 274 songs allegedly used to train its models, seeking $41M+; Anthropic says it disagrees and will defend itself

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:

Ex-60 Minutes EP Bill Owens, who left after clashing with CBS execs, will join YouTube journalism startup Newpress, which raised $12M led by Emerson Collective

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More News

Dylan Patel / SemiAnalysis:

Benchmarking AMD's MI300X and Nvidia's H100 and H200; in theory, AMD's GPU has advantages in specs and total cost of ownership, but software bugs hold it back

More: TechSpot. Bluesky: @halvarflake. Mastodon: @pbloem@sigmoid.social. X: @cudahandbook, @cudahandbook, @benbajarin, @cudahandbook, @cudahandbook, @realgeorgehotz, @cudahandbook, @vintrotweets, @youjiacheng, @devnull_0, @dylan522p, @lemire, @benthompson, and @theycallmemr_. Forums: r/nvidia

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:

Kaiko: the share of BTC-USD trades in US market hours has now climbed to ~53% from 40% in 2021, with crypto liquidity back at levels seen before FTX's collapse

More: Cointelegraph, DL News, and Cryptopolitan. X: @crypto

Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:

Singapore issued 13 crypto licenses in 2024, pulling ahead of Hong Kong, where authorities have been more cautious, in the race to become a regional crypto hub

More: BeInCrypto, Coinpedia Fintech News, Cointelegraph, Bitcoinist.com, crypto.news, Cryptonews, Bitcoin Insider, Tech in Asia, and Cryptopolitan. X: @crypto

Ann Cao / South China Morning Post:

Ant splits Alipay into the Digital Payment Business Group focused on new payment products, and the Alipay Business Group focused on user growth and monetization

More: Tech in Asia and Pandaily. Forums: r/baba

Niket Nishant / Reuters:

Fiserv to acquire Toronto-based Payfare, which lets gig workers on platforms like Uber access their wages early, for $140M, expected to close in H1 2025

More: Fiserv, Inc., Crowdfund Insider, FinTech Futures, FinTech Global, and SiliconANGLE

The Information:

A look at OpenAI's interest in robotics, from investing in startups like Figure and Physical Intelligence to, sources say, considering making a humanoid robot

More: Cryptopolitan, TechCrunch, Interesting Engineering, Gadgets 360, SiliconANGLE, and San Francisco Business Times

X: @rohanpaul_ai and @steph_palazzolo

Forums: r/singularity and Slashdot

Earlier Picks

Dan Primack / Axios:

Sources: Founders Fund seeks ~$3B for its third growth equity fund; it raised $3.4B for its second growth fund and $1.8B for its eighth early-stage fund in 2022

More: The Information and Tech in Asia. Bluesky: @laurenmeidasa

Isaac Schorr / Mediaite:

Elon Musk is one of two paid subscribers of an X account that has implied South Africa was better off under apartheid, slammed “Black ruled” countries, and more

Bluesky: @joyannreid, @jim-stewartson, @mobiledom, @murshedz, @bft.wtf, @petedavidsonny, @timescarcass, @dennycarter, @garymarcus, and @juddlegum

Mastodon: @KimPerales@toad.social and @cdarwin@c.im

Threads: @bennjordan, @hunterwalk, @carnage4life, and @barrykatz41

X: @mehdirhasan, @deanobeidallah, and @meidas_laurena

Forums: r/Law_and_Politics, r/EnoughMuskSpam, r/FoxFiction, r/EnoughMuskSpam, and r/RepublicanValues

The Information:

Two major China-based Amazon merchants say Amazon reps have recently been offering incentives like free ads and lower commissions if they stop selling on Temu

More: TechNode, South China Morning Post, and Tech in Asia. X: @theo_wayt

Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times:

The biggest online dating companies are in crisis, as women and younger users increasingly look elsewhere, toward niche apps, websites, or real-life meetups

More: Wired and The US Sun

Bluesky: @emilprotalinski. X: @eric_seufert. Forums: r/redscarepod

Paresh Dave / Wired:

West Bank residents, who have long complained of missing and outdated data on Google Maps, say the Israel-Hamas war has made the app even worse for navigation

More: NBC News and CBS News

Bluesky: @katie-drummond, @lmatsakis, and @peard33

Mastodon: @evacide@hachyderm.io and @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org. Forums: r/Palestine

Sheldon Reback / CoinDesk:

US and Japanese law enforcement say North Korean hackers were responsible for stealing 4,502.9 BTC, worth $308M, from Japanese crypto exchange DMM in May 2024