Techmeme
August 18, 2023, 2:50 PM

Top News

Todd Spangler / Variety:
In a post on X, Elon Musk says “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs” as it “makes no sense”, without giving further details  —  “Block is going to be deleted as a ‘feature’, except for DMs,” the tech mogul posted on X Friday.  “Makes no sense.”
More: TechCrunch, PCMag, Thurrott, The Economic Times, MacRumors, XDA Developers, Neowin, IGN, Mediaite, MobileSyrup, Mashable, iMore, The Hollywood Reporter, Tech Startups, and iPhone in Canada Blog
David Jeans / Forbes:
London-based credit card processor Checkout.com abruptly terminates its contract with Binance citing reports of regulatory actions and money laundering concerns  —  Checkout.com, the London-based credit card processing company that ballooned its business model by servicing billions …
Zeke Faux / Bloomberg:
An excerpt from the book Number Go Up traces “wrong number” texts to Chinese gangs in Cambodia and Myanmar using forced labor to run pig butchering Tether scams  —  The mysterious WhatsApp message arrived one night in August 2022, while I was out at a bar with a friend: “Hi David, I'm Vicky Ho don't you remember me?”
MK Manoylov / The Block:
OpenSea plans to make creator fees optional for new collections from August 31, and enforce creator fees on certain existing collections through February 2024  —  - OpenSea has opted to make creator fees optional for new collections, starting in September.  — The platform will disable …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta updates Threads with a Repost tab on users' profile pages and adds reposts to the reverse-chronological Following feed  —  Threads is adding reposts (aka retweets) to its reverse-chronological “Following” feed, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced in a Threads post on Thursday.
Bloomberg:
Email: Amazon offers some creators up to $12,500 for 500 videos, or $25 per video, for its TikTok-like shopping feed; creators typically charge $200+ per video  —  - Content creators typically charge more than $200 a pop  —  Amazon.com Inc., looking to amp up its TikTok-like shopping feed …
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Private equity firm EQT plans to take German software company SUSE private at €16/share, below its 2021 IPO's €30 price but above August 17's €9.6 closing price  —  Buyout offer is at €16 per share, compared to €30 at its 2021 IPO  —  Linux-loving software house SUSE …
Zeba Siddiqui / Reuters:
Mandiant: the use of AI-generated images and video in politically motivated online influence campaigns has grown in recent years but overall use remains limited  —  Google-owned U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant said on Thursday it had seen increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Twitch plans to roll out a long-requested anti-harassment feature within weeks that automatically blocks a streamer's banned users from watching their streams  —  Twitch's chat ban tools have been around for ages, but the platform is about to hand streamers a way to control who can watch a stream to begin with.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Viome, which sells supplements to customers based on AI-based assessments of their microbiomes, raised an $86.5M Series C, bringing its total funding to $175M  —  Research on the human microbiome — microorganism communities that live in a part of your body such as your mouth or gut …
More: GeekWire
CNN:
Lyft and Uber threaten to leave Minneapolis if the mayor signs a minimum wage ordinance by August 23 mandating at least $1.40/mile and $0.51/minute for drivers  —  New York CNN —  —  Lyft and Uber threatened to stop doing business in Minneapolis after the city council adopted a new rule Thursday …

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More News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Tom Warren / The Verge: