Techmeme
January 6, 2022, 12:45 PM

Top News

Henry Updegrave / Chainalysis:
A record $14B flowed to criminal crypto addresses in 2021, up from $7.8B in 2020, driven by DeFi scams; total crypto transaction volume hit $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!
Maria Shen / Electric Capital:
Research: with 4,000+ monthly active developers, Ethereum has the largest open-source crypto ecosystem, 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 developers commit code …
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.
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.
Steven Zeitchik / Washington Post:
On the January 6 riot anniversary, data scientists say AI models can help forecast similar events, as some question their accuracy and potential for misuse  —  A year after the attack on the Capitol, data scientists say artificial intelligence can help forecast insurrection — with some caveats
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 a reality OS  —  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 …
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:
NetBlocks:
Kazakhstan faces internet disruptions since Tuesday evening and a nationwide blackout on Wednesday afternoon, amid protests over 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.
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
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 …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Signal quietly made its MobileCoin-based cryptocurrency payments feature available to all users globally in November 2021, after a test in the UK  —  A beta “payments” feature now lets some users of the popular encrypted messaging app send MobileCoin around the globe.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho connected apps for Google Gemini  —  Note: Now available to organizations in the Indian data center.  Support for other Zoho data centers will be available soon.AI assistants have gotten remarkably …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Training Data:
Parallel's Parag Agrawal: Building a New Web for AI Agents
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
Neil Movva - Making AI 10x Cheaper
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Data Centers in Orbit by 2028: Baiju Bhatt on His Plans After Robinhood
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
How to close $100K+ enterprise deals, step by step | Jen Abel
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Insane Hidden AI Spending, Ranking Anthropic vs. OpenAI, AI For Travel Debate
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:45 PM ET, January 6, 2022.

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.

More News

Fatos Bytyci / Reuters:

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:
Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica: