Techmeme
January 17, 2022, 2:40 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Game publishers' plans to add NFTs to games have sparked a fierce backlash from gamers, who have long resented the growing number of micro transactions in games  —  Game publishers are offering NFTs, but skeptical gamers smell a moneymaking scheme and are fighting back.
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo:
Apple clarifies it will still collect a commission from Dutch developers using third-party payments; Google will too in South Korea, just lowering its fee by 4%  —  On December 24th of last year, the Netherlands' competition regulator, the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) …
Kirsten Grind / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Activision Blizzard has fired or pushed out 36+ employees and disciplined ~40 more since July, after sexual harassment and other misconduct allegations  —  Company's actions have come in the wake of pressure from investors, business partners and employees to address complaints over its handling of misconduct issues
Alberto Nardelli / Bloomberg:
Amazon reverses its plan to ban the use of Visa credit cards in the UK, set to start on January 19; the company had cited high transaction fees  —  Amazon.com Inc. has emailed U.K. customers to say that a planned ban on Visa credit cards will no longer take place.
Lauren Thomas / CNBC:
Recent filings from Walmart, including seven US trademark applications, indicate a possible plan to develop and offer virtual goods, NFTs, and a cryptocurrency  —  - Walmart appears to be venturing into the metaverse with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of NFTs.
Financial Times:
In February, Spain will start requiring influencers and sponsors promoting cryptocurrencies to pre-notify authorities and warn of investing risks or face fines  —  Watchdog imposes landmark restrictions amid concerns for investors in unregulated sector  —  Spain is imposing restrictions …
Max Seddon / Financial Times:
Ukraine's digital transformation ministry says “all evidence points to Russia being behind the attack”, which took down about 70 government websites  —  Proof of involvement could meet threshold for west to impose sanctions but incident yet to be formally attributed
Microsoft Security Blog:
FingerprintJS Blog:
A flaw in Safari 15's IndexedDB API can leak browser activity and user identifiers, like Google ID, to other sites; Apple was alerted of the flaw on November 28  —  DISCLAIMER: FingerprintJS does not use this vulnerability in our products and does not provide cross-site tracking services.
Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
French startup Exotec, which builds autonomous industrial warehouse robots, raises a $335M Series D led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management at a $2B valuation  —  Exotec, a French robotics company used by some of the world's biggest retailers and enterprises, has raised $335 million …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple will expand CarKey availability beyond BMW by this summer, starting with Hyundai's Genesis line; a look at potential Apple headset names  —  As Apple Inc.'s first mixed-reality headset runs behind schedule, here's a look at what the company could name the product.
José Adorno / 9to5Mac:

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

Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Weird, Big Business of Microdramas
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Big Technology Podcast:
How AI Should Handle News, Politics, Medicine, and Mental Health — With Campbell Brown
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.
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.
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 2:40 PM ET, January 17, 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

Earlier Picks

James Ball / Rolling Stone: