Techmeme
February 2, 2022, 11:20 PM

Top News

Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
Meta beats with Q4 revenue of $33.67B vs. $33.4B est., up 20% YoY, 2.91B MAUs, up 4% YoY, but misses with EPS of $3.67 vs. $3.84 est.; stock down 20%+  —  - Facebook earnings came in below expectations for the fourth quarter, and the company said numerous challenges are ahead in the first quarter.
Meta:
Meta breaks out Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp as Family of Apps, with Q4 revenue of $32.8B, up 20% YoY, and will adopt the META ticker in H1 2022  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2021.
Washington Post:
Meta reports its first-ever sequential decline in global Facebook daily active users, falling from 1.930B to 1.929B QoQ  —  The slowing growth is taking place as the company pushes into the metaverse and hardware.  —  Facebook parent Meta's quarterly earnings report on Wednesday revealed …
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Meta breaks out its AR/VR-focused Reality Labs unit, reporting 2021 revenue of $2.3B, up from $1.1B in 2020, and losses of $10.2B in 2021, up from $6.6B in 2020  —  Meta's AR and VR ambitions come with a significant price tag: Meta's Reality Labs unit lost $10.2 billion last year …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
Blockchain bridge Wormhole confirms a hacker stole $322M worth of ether, and has moved its site into maintenance mode  —  A threat actor has abused a vulnerability in the Wormhole cryptocurrency platform to steal an estimated $322 million worth of Ether currency.
J. Clara Chan / The Hollywood Reporter:
Spotify reports Q4 revenue of €2.69B, up 24% YoY, 406M MAUs, up 18% YoY, and ad-supported revenue of €394M, up 40% YoY and a record 15% of total revenue  —  The audio giant reported earnings as a growing list of musicians and podcasters leave the platform over its handling of misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A profile of US hacker P4x, who says he is responsible for ongoing North Korean internet outages and frustrated by the US' lack of response to DPRK attacks  —  Disappointed with the lack of US response to the Hermit Kingdom's attacks against US security researchers, one hacker took matters into his own hands.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Elon Musk announces $500/month Starlink Premium, claiming 150Mbps-500Mbps download speeds, up from 50Mbps-250Mbps, and doubling upload speeds to 20Mbps-40Mbps  —  The new antenna carries an upfront cost of $2500  —  SpaceX's satellite internet service Starlink is getting a pricey new high-performance tier called Starlink Premium.
James Vincent / The Verge:
DeepMind details AlphaCode, a new AI coding engine that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level”  —  AlphaCode is good, but not great — not yet  —  DeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level.”
Stephanie Bodoni / Bloomberg:
Belgium's data watchdog fines IAB Europe €250K after finding its ad-targeting tool violates GDPR, and orders a “series of remedies” within two months  —  IAB Europe, an association for online advertising companies, was fined 250,000 euros ($282,690) and handed an ultimatum …
Catalin Cimpanu / The Record:
GitHub, which owns the npm JavaScript package manager, enrolls the maintainers of npm's 100 most popular libraries into mandatory two-factor authentication  —  The administrators of the Node Package Manager (npm), the largest package repository of the JavaScript ecosystem …
Sneha Shah / The Economic Times:
Headout, an online travel experiences marketplace, adds a $30M extension to its $12M Series B from September 2021 led by Glade Brook Capital  —  Mumbai: Mumbai: Headout, an online experiences marketplace for travellers, has raised $30 million (Rs 224.3 crore) in its extended series B financing round led by Glade Brook Capital.
More: TechCrunch
Wall Street Journal:
The US Commerce Department is finalizing rules for apps deemed to be national security risks, like TikTok, including mandatory third-party audits and monitoring  —  Commerce Department proposes rule to widen restrictions on Chinese apps; Sen. Marco Rubio says administration is taking timid steps on data security

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
What's the ROI on AI?  That's the trillion dollar question.  —  Learn why Airtable's the enterprise operating system for the AI era, delivering enterprise-grade security, privacy and governance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Zoho Payroll Premium Plan: The best of Zoho Payroll  —  Zoho Payroll is on a mission to transform payroll for small, emerging, and established businesses.  To bring you closer to this goal, we're introducing a new plan: Zoho Payroll Premium Plan.
Notion:
Get up to 6 months free of Notion with unlimited AI  —  Notion is trusted and loved by thousands of startups as their connected workspace—from building product roadmaps to tracking fundraising.  Build and scale your company with one tool!
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 10/04 - AI Slop Comes To Podcasting
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:20 PM ET, February 2, 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

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:

Earlier Picks

Anna Edgerton / Bloomberg:
Aditya Kalra / Reuters:
Sam Byford / The Verge:
Jordan Novet / CNBC: