Techmeme
December 8, 2022, 12:00 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Sources: US prosecutors are investigating whether Sam Bankman-Fried manipulated TerraUSD and LUNA markets, leading to the cryptocurrencies' collapse in May 2022  —  Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Sam Bankman-Fried and his hedge fund orchestrated trades in a way that led to the collapse of two cryptocurrencies in May.
Kollen Post / The Block:
The US Senate Banking Committee calls on SBF to testify on December 14, a day after a similar House hearing; House lawmakers also threatened him with a subpoena  —  - The Senate committee wants Sam Bankman-Fried to testify the day after he's been told to testify in the House of Representatives …
Erin Woo / The Information:
Source: Twitter plans to change Twitter Blue's $8 per month price to $11 per month on iOS, likely due to Apple's 30% App Store cut, and $7 per month on the web  —  Twitter has informed some employees that it plans to change the pricing of its Twitter Blue subscription product to $7 if users pay …
Tatum Hunter / Washington Post:
A look at Prisma Labs' Stable Diffusion-based portrait generation app Lensa, which launched in 2018 for $36 per year and took off after adding “magic avatars”  —  Social media is celebrating.  Artists are protesting.  What's the real cost of an AI-generated portrait?
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
A look at the reaction to Apple's E2EE news: the FBI is “deeply concerned” and says the change “hinders” its work while the EFF and others applaud the feature  —  Apple yesterday announced that end-to-end encryption is coming to even more sensitive types of iCloud data …
Wall Street Journal:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expects the crypto exchange's 2022 revenue to be half “or less” of the ~$7B the company generated in 2021, as coin prices fall  —  Coinbase Global Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said the cryptocurrency exchange's revenue is set to be cut …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Debunking claims on Twitter's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, including that Twitter engaged in election interference or violated the First Amendment  —  Hello!  Someone has referred you to this post because you've said something quite wrong about Twitter and how it handled something to do with Hunter Biden's laptop.
Wall Street Journal:
How tensions grew between Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor for months; sources: Benioff became frustrated about how Taylor was spending his time  —  Exit of Bret Taylor from role he has shared for about a year wasn't long planned  —  The Tech Sector Is Taking a Beating.  Here's Why.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: a letter by Foxconn founder Terry Gou to China's leadership, sent over a month ago during unrest in Zhengzhou, helped dismantle zero COVID-19 policies  —  Foxconn Technology Group founder Terry Gou warned that the government's strict policies would threaten its position in global supply chains
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Google plans to merge Waze's 500+ employees into its Maps group starting on December 9; Waze will remain a standalone service but CEO Neha Parikh plans to leave  —  Search giant to keep navigation apps separate, says no layoffs are planned  —  How Google Remapped the World: The Tech Behind
Andrew Liszewski / Gizmodo:
Dyson announces the $949 Dyson Zone headphones, offering active noise cancellation and filters to block unwanted airborne particles, for preorder in March 2023  —  The company's first audio product promises to eliminate both unwanted noise and unwanted air particles.  —  Alerts
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch:
Cameo launches Cameo Kids, with personalized videos from popular animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, Blippi, and CoComelon's Nina, for $25 to $30  —  Cameo today launched Cameo Kids, its new video messaging service that features personalized videos from popular animated characters …
More: Variety
Ezra Reguerra / Cointelegraph:
Some NFTs minted on FTX now show blank images instead of the original art as the metadata points to an FTX.US domain used for a bankruptcy restructuring website  —  NFTs hosted on FTX platform were affected by the firm's collapse, showing blank images instead of the original art.  —  191 Total views
Jeremy Hill / Bloomberg:
A US bankruptcy judge orders Celsius to return $50M of crypto deposits in non-interest bearing custody accounts, pending a decision on interest-bearing accounts  —  US Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn ordered Celsius Network LLC to return cryptocurrency that never touched the lender's interest-bearing accounts to its customers.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
The Pentagon awards Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle cloud contracts with a shared ceiling of $9B through 2028 under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability  —  - Of the four companies receiving cloud-computing contracts from the Pentagon, all of them had received requests for bids from the U.S. federal agency last year.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Dutch officials plan new controls on exports of chipmaking equipment to China as soon as January, potentially impacting ASML, aligning with US efforts  —  Dutch officials are planning new controls on exports of chipmaking equipment to China, according to people familiar with the matter …
Semafor:
Sources: in January 2018, Alameda got a $110M loan from Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn and a $6M loan from philanthropist Luke Ding, who back Effective Altruism  —  The big money behind Alameda Research, the sister trading firm of crypto exchange FTX, came from two influential backers …

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More News

Joseph De Avila / Wall Street Journal:
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
New York Times:
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Earlier Picks

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: