Techmeme: SEC filing: NYC-based digital lender Better.com plans to go public via a SPAC merger, raising $750M, after announcing plans in May 2021 for a $7.7B SPAC merger (Connie Kim/HousingWire)

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August 11, 2023, 6:30 PM

Top News

Luc Cohen / Reuters:

A US judge revokes SBF's bail after the DOJ accused him of tampering with witnesses, such as by sharing former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison's diary with the NYT — Sam Bankman-Fried's bail was revoked ahead of his October fraud trial, a U.S. judge said on Friday, after prosecutors accused …

More: CNBC, New York Times, New York Times, The Messenger, The Register, PYMNTS.com, Unchained Crypto, CNN, The Hill, Financial Times, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Engadget, The Verge, Finextra, The Information, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Block, Decrypt, Insider, CoinDesk, Reuters, Neowin, Politico, Tech Startups, Newser, Ethereum World News, CoinJournal, Cryptopolitan, Matthew Russell Lee's …, Cryptonews, Bitcoin News, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Associated Press, Cointelegraph, Axios, Bitcoinist.com, CoinGape, NBC Bay Area, NBC News, Watcher Guru, Crowdfund Insider, and New York Post

Mastodon: @KimPerales@toad.social. X: @innercitypress, @innercitypress, @jeffjohnroberts, @innercitypress, @innercitypress, @teddyschleifer, @verge, @innercitypress, @innercitypress, @innercitypress, @molly0xfff, @molly0xfff, and @adamscochran

Forums: r/amcstock and r/technology

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Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:

After a contentious public hearing, the California Public Utilities Commission allows Waymo and Cruise to operate driverless cabs 24/7 throughout San Francisco — Waymo and Cruise were approved to operate their robotaxi services 24/7 in San Francisco after a contentious six-hour public hearing …

More: California Public …, Waypoint, Ars Technica, The Information, NPR, New Scientist, SiliconANGLE, GovTech, PCMag, Gizmodo, Mashable, Big Technology, Fortune, SlashGear, 24/7 Wall St., The Robot Report, CNN, Newser, Silicon Valley Business …, Internet of Things News, MarketWatch, The San Francisco Standard, Washington Post, The Last Driver License Holder, Silicon Republic, Emerging Tech Brew, Bloomberg, Wired, Engadget, Financial Times, Associated Press, Forbes, New York Times, TechCrunch, DigiTimes, and Reuters

Bluesky: @epro.social. X: @kvogt, @waymo, @wholemarsblog, @lorenasgonzalez, @californiapuc, @kvogt, @davidzipper, @martynday, @ibt350_sandoval, @eshear, @kane, @mcwm, @levie, @edludlow, @karpathy, @jul_mcgoldrick, @kvogt, and @piratewires

LinkedIn: Ludovic Basset and Robert Chen. Forums: r/sanfrancisco

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:

Poland arrests five people as Europol and the DOJ take down the Lolek “bulletproof” host for allegedly facilitating Netwalker ransomware and other attacks — Update 8/11/23: Updated with information from DOJ about alleged Netwalker Ransomware involvement.

More: Europol, US Department of Justice, The Record, CNBC, DeviceSecurity.io, Tech Monitor, and HackRead

X: @uuallan and @europol

Bloomberg:

The US Cyber Safety Review Board, created by Biden, plans to investigate cloud computing attacks, including the recent government email Microsoft breach — - Cyber Safety Review Board to examine targeting of cloud — Senator Wyden had called for investigations of Microsoft

More: Department of Homeland …, SiliconANGLE, CRN, BleepingComputer, CyberScoop, Infosecurity, Nextgov/FCW, TechCrunch, Metacurity, Windows Central, OnMSFT.com, Reuters, Neowin, and The Record

X: @ericgeller, @cisajen, @williamturton, and @dinabass

Connie Kim / HousingWire:

SEC filing: NYC-based digital lender Better.com plans to go public via a SPAC merger, raising $750M, after announcing plans in May 2021 for a $7.7B SPAC merger — Shareholders at SPAC partner Aurora Acquisitions voted in favor of the merger proposal — New York-based digital lender Better.com …

More: TechCrunch and US Securities …

X: @bayareawriter. LinkedIn: Roger Moore

Financial Times:

US VC and PE firms are assessing how Biden's executive order on Chinese tech impacts their holdings and are weighing strategies to comply or exit China — Private equity and venture capital funds targeted in Biden administration's crackdown — After President Joe Biden announced a ban …

More: Insider Intelligence, CNBC, Cryptopolitan, HPCwire, ChinaTechNews.com, fmprc.gov.cn, and Tech in Asia

Threads: @carnage4life. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @rmantri. LinkedIn: William Louch. Forums: Slashdot

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

Teens replicated a 2008 hack of Boston's subway fare system; the transit authority invited them to present their work, a contrast to its response 15 years ago — In 2008, Boston's transit authority sued to stop MIT hackers from presenting at the Defcon hacker conference on how to get free subway rides.

Mastodon: @jennifer@defcon.social. X: @kurtopsahl and @a_greenberg. Forums: r/boston

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

X lowers its eligibility threshold for ad revenue sharing from 15M to 5M impressions in the past three months; Musk: “only views from verified handles count” — Elon Musk-owned social network X, formerly Twitter, said late Thursday that it is lowering requirements for its creator payout program.

More: Mashable, The Verge, Neowin, Thurrott, Android Headlines, The Economic Times, Social Media Today, and Business Today

X: @elonmusk, @support, @ptraughber, @jessehawken, @bharatunnithan, @rustybrick, @dvassallo, @jappleby, and @gailalfaratx

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Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:

Researchers deployed exposed Windows servers as honeypots for hackers, recording 190M events and 100 hours of video of their actions, like installing malware — Imagine being able to sit behind a hacker and observe them take control of a computer and play around with it.

More: Wired. Mastodon: @RonaldTooTall …. Bluesky: @lorenzofb.bsky.social. X: @dennis_kipker and @marshacollier. LinkedIn: Micho Schumann

Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, and r/cybersecurity

Josh Taylor / The Guardian:

At an Australian parliamentary hearing, an X executive defended restoring a user who shared CSAM as an example of posting “out of outrage to raise awareness” — At Australian parliamentary hearing, company points to content being shared ‘out of outrage to raise awareness of an issue’

More: Forbes, Mashable, and The Windows Club

Mastodon: @tamitha@indiepocalypse.social, @stopthatgirl7@famichiki.jp, and @Sheencr@fediscience.org

Bluesky: @faineg.bsky.social, @danilo.redeem-tomorrow.com, @jessicashortall.bsky.social, and @faineg.bsky.social

X: @paleofuture, @flglmn, @thatjenmonroe, @jessehawken, @joshuaphilll, @paleofuture, @nelson, and @nash076

LinkedIn: Dr Margaret Merga and Lianna McDonald. Forums: r/EnoughMuskSpam

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Victoria Song / The Verge:

How yesteryear's screenless fitness bands were largely replaced by either more powerful and cheaper smartwatches or wearables with pricey monthly subscriptions — Smartwatches are the default wearable option these days, but why is it so hard to find simple yet affordable alternatives like the fitness bands of yesteryear?

More: The Verge. Forums: r/technews

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Oracle, SUSE, and CIQ launch the Open Enterprise Linux Association to foster RHEL-based distribution development, after Red Hat limited RHEL source code access — The fallout from Red Hat's recent decision to make it harder to access to the source code of its flagship Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution continues.

More: ZDNet, OpenELA, Network World, InfoWorld, SiliconANGLE, OSnews, WRAL TechWire, insideHPC, and Phoronix

Mastodon: @jwildeboer@social …. Bluesky: @mranthropology.bsky.social. X: @ctrliq, @oracle, @suse, @sjvn, and @dpvleeuwen

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:30 PM ET, August 11, 2023.

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.

From Mediagazer

Catharine Tunney / CBC News:

CBC/Radio-Canada plans to cut ~10% of its workforce, or 600 workers, and cut CA$40M in programming over the coming year to cope with a CA$125M budget shortfall

Max Tani / Semafor:

An interview with Megyn Kelly about co-hosting the Dec. 6 GOP presidential primary debate on NewsNation, her pivot to audio, being “un-cancellable”, and more

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:

Comcast president Mike Cavanagh says Peacock now has 30M paying subscribers, with an ARPU of $10 per month, and saw $2.8B in losses in 2023

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More News

Jay Peters / The Verge:

Zoom updates its terms of service and a recent blog post to explicitly say that the company won't use “communications-like customer content” to train AI models

More: Gizmodo, Ars Technica, SlashGear, Variety, Engadget, USA Today, and Axios. X: @linkletter

See also Mediagazer

Reuters:

ION Group, which sells trading, analytics, and other financial market tools, plans to acquire Italian credit management company Prelios, sources say for €1.35B

Richard Nieva / Forbes:

Sources and docs detail Worldcoin's struggle to define its purpose, the orb not scanning Asian people's eyes and allowing multiple signups per person, and more

More: CryptoPotato and Financial Times

Bluesky: @pczki.bsky.social. X: @sarahnemerson and @alexrkonrad

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:

DCG and Barry Silbert file a motion to dismiss Gemini's fraud lawsuit, claiming Gemini fails to properly claim fraud and engages in “character assassination”

More: Ethereum World News, Cryptonews, The Daily Hodl, and Axios

X: @stackersatoshi, @dcgco, and @dcgco

Earlier Picks

Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:

Circle has $1B+ in cash and had $779M in revenue in H1 2023, compared to $772M for all of 2022; USDC in circulation is down to ~$26B from ~$45B in January 2023

More: The Block, Coinspeaker, Cryptopolitan, NewsBTC, CryptoSlate, PYMNTS.com, Watcher Guru, crypto.news, Cointelegraph, and The Block

X: @jerallaire, @stevenkelly49, @ldrogen, @yueqi_yang, @yueqi_yang, @ddisparte, @yueqi_yang, @wublockchain, and @wublockchain

Reuters:

Filing: Bittrex agrees to pay $24M to settle US SEC claims that the crypto exchange failed to register with the agency; Bittrex doesn't admit to the allegations

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:

Hosting provider Uberspace takes down youtube-dl's website, which linked to YouTube ripping software, while appealing a German court order forcing the takedown

More: TechRadar, Reclaim The Net, and Plagiarism Today. Forums: Hacker News

See also Mediagazer

Emma Roth / The Verge:

CISA releases a report detailing Lapsus$'s key techniques, calls for passwordless logins, and asks the FTC and the FCC for stricter SIM swapping protections

More: Cybersecurity …, Cyber Safety Review Board, Department of Homeland …, BleepingComputer, Ars Technica, TechRadar, CNN, DataBreaches.net, InfoRiskToday.com, ITPro, SC Media, WebProNews, SiliconANGLE, and The Record

X: @argvee, @dhs_policy, and @snlyngaas