Techmeme
January 6, 2022, 11:25 AM

Top News

Maria Shen / Electric Capital:
Research: with 4,000+ monthly active developers, Ethereum has the largest open source ecosystem in crypto, followed by Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, and Bitcoin  —  Executive Summary  —  Web3 developers are at an all-time high and growing faster than ever.  — 18,000+ monthly active …
Henry Updegrave / Chainalysis:
A record $14B flowed to criminal crypto addresses in 2021, up from $7.8B in 2020, driven by DeFi scams; total transaction volume reached $15.8T, up 567% YoY  —  This blog is a preview of our 2022 Crypto Crime Report.  Sign up here to reserve your copy and we'll email you the full report when it comes out in February!
Elisa Braun / Politico:
France's data regulator, the CNIL, fines Google €150M and Meta €60M for failing to let French users easily reject cookie trackers  —  PARIS — French data regulator the CNIL is set to fine Google €150 million and Facebook €60 million for violating EU privacy rules.
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Google partners with Acer, HP, and Intel to bring Fast Pair to select Windows PCs later in 2022 and announces improvements to Phone Hub on Chromebooks  —  Google wants to do for Android and Chrome users what Apple does for people in its ecosystem.  It's announcing a set of news today …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
José Adorno / 9to5Mac:
Instagram tests the ability to switch between a Home feed, a Favorites feed, and a Following chronological feed, rolling out to all users in H1 2022  —  Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, announced today that the app is rolling out for some users the ability to switch between different feeds.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Meta says it is still working on a “highly specialized OS” for its AR/VR devices, and it is not “halting or scaling back” operations in building AR/VR software  —  It's still interested in a custom OS  —  Meta reportedly pulled the plug on a custom operating system …
Reuters:
China's copyright authority bans digital music platforms from signing exclusive copyright agreements except in special circumstances  —  China's copyright authority said on Thursday digital music platforms are not allowed to sign exclusive copyright agreements except in special circumstances …
NetBlocks:
Kazakhstan faces internet disruptions and a subsequent nationwide shutdown since Tuesday evening, amid protests against energy price increases  —  Network data from NetBlocks confirm a significant disruption to internet service in Kazakhstan from the evening of Tuesday 4 January 2022 …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
HTC announces the Vive Wrist Tracker, a watch-like controller that tracks hand-to-elbow positions for its Vive Focus 3 VR headset, launching in Q1 2022 for $129  —  Set to launch later this quarter  —  HTC is announcing a new wrist-based controller for its Vive Focus 3 virtual reality headset.
Brave Browser:
Brave reports 15.5M+ DAUs and 50M+ MAUs at the end of 2021, up from 24M MAUs at the end of 2020, 10M+ mobile downloads in 2021, and Brave Ads revenue up 4x YoY  —  Brave Search now at 2.3 billion annualized queries  — Key new products from Brave this year included Brave Search …
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica:
Sony details PlayStation VR2 for PS5: a 4K HDR OLED display, 2000×2040 pixels per eye, 110° FoV, eye tracking, haptic feedback, inside-out cameras, and more  —  Sexy specs include dedicated eye tracking, over 4 million pixels per eye.  —  Sony's trickle of information about its future …
Miles Kruppa / Financial Times:
PitchBook: US startups raised a record $329.8B in 2021, up from a record $166.6B in 2020; over half, or $190.8B, came from $100M+ rounds  —  Sum nearly doubles from 2020 in a financing rush one fund manager deems ‘not rational’  —  Investors poured a record $330bn into private start-ups …
More: PitchBook

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Earlier Picks

Jordan Finneseth / Cointelegraph:
Li Yuan / New York Times:
Anita Ramaswamy / TechCrunch:
Monica Chin / The Verge:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Ben Winslow / KSTU: