Techmeme: After criticism, DuckDuckGo says its browser will now block Microsoft tracking scripts on third-party websites, formerly exempt due to a search syndication deal (The Verge)

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August 5, 2022, 3:00 PM

Top News

Brian Heater / TechCrunch:

Amazon plans to acquire Roomba maker iRobot in a $1.7B all-cash deal; Colin Angle will remain as iRobot's CEO — Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire Roomba maker iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. — “Since we started iRobot, our team has been on a mission …

More: iRobot Corporation, VICE, CNBC, The Verge, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, International Business Times, Bloomberg, GeekWire, Barron's Online, The Register, BetaNews, PYMNTS.com, Android Authority, Thurrott, Ars Technica, Silicon Republic, Crunchbase News, Finbold, Android Central, Club386, Reuters, SlashGear, Neowin, TechHive, iPhone in Canada Blog, Gizmodo, Bloomberg, Engadget, Financial Times, 9to5Mac, The Business Journals, Tech News, CNET, Slashdot, and iClarified

Nikkei Asia:

Sources: Apple asked suppliers to ensure that Taiwan shipments to China are labeled “Taiwan, China” or “Chinese Taipei”, after Pelosi's visit stokes trade fears — Stepped up scrutiny of import documents raises disruption fears for iPhone maker

Nikkei Asia:

After Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, sources say shipments to Pegatron's factory, used by Microsoft, Tesla, and others, were being held by Chinese customs

More: DigiTimes, iMore, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, and Finbold

Tweets: @chengtingfang, @jacobhelberg, @mtdtl, @brianhioe, and @williamyang120

The Verge:

After criticism, DuckDuckGo says its browser will now block Microsoft tracking scripts on third-party websites, formerly exempt due to a search syndication deal — After an uproar over an exception, DuckDuckGo is promising transparency. — After a revelation in May that DuckDuckGo's …

More: Spread Privacy, PCWorld, BleepingComputer, GitHub, 9to5Mac, Thurrott, TechCrunch, BigTechWire, and OnMSFT.com. Tweets: @duckduckgo

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:

Twitter confirms that a now-patched bug allowed to link phone numbers and emails to some user accounts; threat actor offered 5.4M records for sale in December — Twitter has confirmed a recent data breach was caused by a now-patched zero-day vulnerability used to link email addresses …

More: Twitter Privacy Center and TechCrunch. Tweets: @campuscodi

Omer Benjakob / Haaretz:

A prototype of NSO's Pegasus for Israeli police in 2014 shows the UI and features, including real-time wiretapping, reading messages, and remote camera control — Israel Police planned to present cabinet with the system eight years ago. It was intended to be capable of turning the infected phone …

More: 9to5Mac. Tweets: @omerbenj, @zackwhittaker, @avischarf, @haaretzcom, @marwasf, @jsrailton, @omerbenj, @msuiche, @avischarf, @omerbenj, @omerbenj, and @omerbenj

CoinDesk:

How crypto developer Ian Macalinao posed as 11 independent devs and created a web of DeFi protocols that temporarily inflated the total value locked on Solana — The Macalinao brothers used a web of bogus identities to create the illusion of a dev community, juicing value on the Saber protocol and Solana blockchain.

More: CryptoSlate, Web3 is going just great, The Coin Crunch, and CoinGape

Tweets: @notbunjil, @amyhoy, @wublockchain, @carnage4life, @chainyoda, @0x7d54, @raganwald, @jwweatherman_, and @chainlinkgod

Nicola Kelly / The Guardian:

The UK government plans to require that migrants convicted of a crime scan their faces up to five times per day on a smartwatch; locations will be tracked 24/7 — Home Office and MoJ plans will require migrants convicted of crimes to take photos up to five times a day

More: Gizmodo, Tech Monitor, Engadget, and Mashable

Tweets: @nicolakelly, @mmasnick, @bigbrotherwatch, @nicolakelly, @rachelcoldicutt, @rrrrnessa, @stand_for_all, @sarah_woolley, @matthew_d_green, and @nicolakelly

Nupur Anand / Reuters:

India's Enforcement Directorate freezes assets worth ~$8.16M of Binance-owned crypto exchange WazirX, citing suspected foreign exchange rule violations — India's financial crime-fighting agency said on Friday that it has frozen the assets of WazirX, owned by the world's largest digital …

More: CoinDesk, The Block, The Block, TechCrunch, Decrypt, Cointelegraph, Web3 is going just great, and CoinGape

Tweets: @nischalshetty, @cz_binance, @mishaboar, @silvermanjacob, @mittermaniac, @debarghyawrites, @silvermanjacob, and @cz_binance

James Vincent / The Verge:

Meta releases its BlenderBot 3 chatbot, which searches the web to answer questions, to US users on the web in order to collect feedback — What could possibly go wrong? — Meta's AI research labs have created a new state-of-the-art chatbot and are letting members of the public talk …

More: Meta AI, Meta, Engadget, SiliconANGLE, Wired, Neowin, TechRadar, and UPROXX

Tweets: @metaai, @jeffhorwitz, @samsheffer, @pranavdixit, @news_by_nick, @pranavdixit, and @tomwarren

Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:

Google updates search results for queries with quotes to show where the phrase appears in the results snippet instead of an overall description of the page — Google has updated how search result snippet in Google Search for queries that contain quotes. Now, Google will show …

More: The Keyword, ZDNet, Tom's Guide, KnowTechie, Neowin, Search Engine Roundtable, and Beyond Search

Tweets: @cyrusshepard, @searchliaison, @dannysullivan, @pedrodias, @aleyda, @aarontay, and @montsecano

Joanna Ossinger / Bloomberg:

Crypto bridge Nomad says anyone returning at least 90% of stolen tokens will be viewed as a white-hat hacker and the remaining 10% will become the reward — Cryptocurrency company Nomad is offering a bounty to recoup funds spirited away in a $190 million hack that again highlighted security vulnerabilities in the digital-token sector.

More: The Block, Gizmodo, HealthcareInfoSecurity.com, Cointelegraph, CryptoSlate, Cybernews.com, and CNBC

Tweets: @slope_finance, @solanastatus, @phantom, @chainalysis, @helpedhope, @osec_io, and @0xfoobar

Alexandra S. Levine / Forbes:

Sources: former TikTok content moderators working for a third-party company say they were trained using CSAM from a shared document with wide internal access — A largely unsecured cache of pictures of children being sexually exploited has been made available to third-party TikTok content moderators …

Tweets: @forbestech and @ali_lev

Bloomberg:

As SoftBank Vision Fund managing partners Yanni Pipilis and Munish Varma leave, the fund has lost 10+ top execs since 2020, putting pressure on Masayoshi Son — Masayoshi Son is losing a growing number of top executives at SoftBank Group Corp., putting more responsibility on the founder's shoulders …

Tweets: @caixin, @pelstrom, and @athomson6

Sensor Tower:

US mobile gaming revenue fell 9.6% YoY to $11.4B in H1 2022 and downloads declined 2.5% YoY to 2.4B; only the arcade game genre saw notable revenue growth — Arcade and Tabletop were the only categories to see revenue increase during the first half of the year, Sensor Tower data shows.

More: AppleInsider and 9to5Mac

Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:

YouTube tests pinch to zoom with its Premium subscribers, letting them zoom into a video, even in landscape mode — YouTube has a program that allows Premium subscribers to access brand new features that aren't quite fully baked. Today, YouTube dropped a new one called “pinch to zoom” …

More: Thurrott, HotHardware, MacRumors, Silicon Republic, MSPoweruser, The Shortcut, Livemint, and The Verge

Tweets: @khaleejtimes and @nerdy_addict

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Microsoft tests a Game Pass widget on Windows 11, showing games that have been recently added, are leaving soon, come from certain categories, and more — Microsoft's first new Windows 11 widget — Microsoft's first new Windows 11 widget should make it even easier to find out which games are coming to PC Game Pass.

More: Windows Blog, Neowin, ExtremeTech, Tech Advisor, TechSpot, Club386, and OnMSFT.com

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft starts testing an Xbox Game Pass family plan in Colombia and Ireland, letting users add up to four people in the same country to their subscription

More: Xbox Wire, PCMag, GamingBolt, Tom's Guide, BigTechWire, Engadget, Dexerto, TrueAchievements, Pocket-lint, BGR India, Game Developer, iPhone in Canada Blog, Silicon Republic, Pure Xbox, and The Shortcut

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From Mediagazer

Reuters:

Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta plans to shut down after 30+ years, following pressure from Russian authorities and the persecution of its reporters

Gavin Blair / The Hollywood Reporter:

The Association of Japanese Animations: Japan's anime industry revenue grew 15.8% YoY to a record ~$28.5B in 2025, with overseas revenue reaching ~$16B

Selome Hailu / Variety:

Sources: Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine lays off about 30 employees, roughly 50% of its staff, as it focuses on film and TV projects and its book club brand

More News

Deena Shanker / Bloomberg:

Afresh, which uses AI to help grocery stores reduce food waste, raised a $115M Series B led by Spark Capital, bringing its total funding to $148M

More: SiliconANGLE

Financial Times:

Sources: Didi fears further retribution and sanctions by Chinese regulators; its app remains unavailable two weeks after CAC's fine was expected to lift the ban

Tweets: @sariarhohavren and @muradahmed

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Berlin-based LiveEO, which offers analytics tools for geospatial data from satellites, raised €19M led by MMC Ventures, following a €5.25M Series A in 2021

More: EU-Startups. Tweets: @aravind_raves. Thanks:@ingridlunden

Michael Bodley / Blockworks:

Sources: EU-based hedge fund Brevan Howard has raised $1B+ from institutional investors for its crypto unit BH Digital, in the largest crypto hedge fund launch

More: Coinspeaker, Crypto Briefing, and AltFi

Tweets: @michael_bodley, @thinkingcrypto1, and @silvermanjacob

Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch:

Kurtosis, a blockchain-focused developer tooling and testing system, raised a $20M Series A led by Coatue, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others

More: Kurtosis and Inside Bitcoins. Thanks:@joshconstine

Soma Biswas / Wall Street Journal:

A New York judge allows Voyager Digital to return $270M in customer cash deposits, settling one of the company's larger issues after filing for bankruptcy

More: The Block, Protocol, CoinDesk, PYMNTS.com, Yahoo Finance, Bitcoin News, CoinGape, Blockchain News, Coinspeaker, Protos, Neowin, Cryptonews, Decrypt, Ethereum World News, CryptoPotato, Reuters, CryptoSlate, Blockworks, Cointelegraph, and Forkast

Tweets: @ahcastor, @aarondbennett, @web3isgreat, and @newsasset

Michelle Price / Reuters:

Visa and Mastercard end ties with the ad arm of Pornhub owner MindGeek, after a court ruled Visa must face a lawsuit alleging it is liable for CSAM distribution

More: Meet Visa. A network working …, VICE, CNBC, Payments Dive, and Input

Tweets: @fabiansociety, @anopensecret, @billackman, @laurenshirsch, @brianroemmele, @sydney_screams, @wifexofxagony, @axelroark, and @uppittynegress

Earlier Picks

Nelson Wang / CoinDesk:

Block reports Q2 revenue down 6.6% YoY to $4.4B, $2.62B net revenue excluding bitcoin, and Cash App bitcoin revenue down 34% YoY to $1.79B

Source: Block, Inc.. More: Payments Dive, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, CryptoPotato, Bloomberg, TheBitTimes.Com's Newsletter, MarketWatch, The Economic Times, PYMNTS.com, Reuters, Benzinga, and Investor's Business Daily

Wallace Witkowski / MarketWatch:

Cloudflare reports Q2 revenue up 54% YoY to $234.5M, vs. $227.3M est., a $63.5M net loss, and forecast for both Q3 and 2022 above estimates; stock rises 20%+

More: CNBC, SiliconANGLE, and Protocol

Wallace Witkowski / MarketWatch:

Twilio reports Q2 revenue up 41% YoY to $943.4M, a $311.9M loss from operations, and 275K+ active customer accounts; the stock is down 8%+ on a weak Q3 forecast

More: Bloomberg and Benzinga

Dan Primack / Axios:

Filing: Twitter says Elon Musk's counterclaims “are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant” and don't justify ending the deal

Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal:

DoorDash reports Q2 revenue up 30% YoY to $1.6B, vs. $1.5B est., orders up 23% YoY to 426M, vs. 419M est., gross order value up 25% YoY to $13.1B; stock up 10%+

More: Fortune, PYMNTS.com, TechCrunch, and CNBC. Tweets: @michaelxbloch

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:

Clubhouse starts beta testing private communities called Houses, which can be created by a person or group looking for a more intimate alternative to Clubs

More: Newslit Daily and Social Media Today

Tweets: @pdavison, @caseynewton, @taylorlorenz, @ericrweinstein, @groovyydhruvy, @mattnavarra, @om, and @ericnewcomer