Hacked files show Insomniac's challenges juggling teams, timelines, and budgets amid possible Sony cuts; Spider-Man 2 cost ~$300M, almost 3x Spider-Man's cost
Internal documents show how a big PlayStation studio plans its future — Insomniac Games quickly established itself …
Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie doubles down on not moderating Nazi content, after 200+ authors criticize the company for “platforming and monetizing Nazis”
More than 200 Substack authors asked the platform to explain why it's “platforming and monetizing Nazis,” …
Memo: Apple won't offer hardware swaps for out-of-warranty Watch models going back to Series 6 in the US during the ITC's ban but will offer help via software
- Company will only be able to conduct software-based repairs — Hardware swaps for broken Apple Watches won't be offered in US
China publishes draft rules for online gaming, including setting spending limits and banning daily login rewards; stocks for Tencent and NetEase both drop 10%+
- Tencent, NetEase shares dive in Hong Kong after new rules — Beijing has in recent years sought to combat gaming addiction
Sources: the US DOJ, which is in the middle of a four-year probe into Apple's alleged anticompetitive behavior, has taken interest in Apple blocking Beeper Mini
Beeper Mini, which offers iPhone messaging on Android phones, has grown fast and its duel with the tech giant has gotten the attention of antitrust regulators.
ScamSniffer: Google and X ads are promoting sites containing “MS Drainer”, a cryptocurrency drainer that has stolen $59M from 63,210 victims since March 2023
Google and Twitter ads are promoting sites containing a cryptocurrency drainer named ‘MS Drainer’ that has already stolen $59 million …
Apple stops selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in its online store in the US, days before the ITC's Watch import ban goes into effect
Juli Clover / MacRumors :
A UK judge sentences Arion Kurtaj, the 18-year-old who leaked GTA VI code and hacked Nvidia, to a secure hospital until a mental health tribunal lets him leave
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg :
Microsoft plans to deprecate Windows Mixed Reality and remove the feature in a future Windows update; most Windows VR headsets launched between 2017 and 2021
Paxos plans to expand its products to the Solana blockchain on January 17, 2024, after receiving approval from the NY financial regulator
The leading stablecoin issuer Paxos has received regulatory approval to expand its products to the Solana blockchain, which it plans to launch on January 17, 2024.
Revolut publishes delayed 2022 accounts, removing a hurdle in its UK banking license bid, reporting revenue up 45% YoY to £922.5M and a £25.4M pretax loss
- Auditors at BDO say issues for 2021 data have been resolved — Fintech reports pretax loss; sees $2 billion revenue this year
The Apple-Masimo patent battle is a dramatic demonstration of the collision of different IP regimes when tech companies move into new markets, like health care
Apple AI researchers publish papers on using human gaussian splats to generate animated 3D avatars from videos and deploying LLMs on devices with limited memory
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat :
Email: Meta's India policy head, Shivnath Thukral, says the government could choose to apply its proposed telecom law to Meta's OTT services at a “future date”
Chandra R. Srikanth / @chandrarsrikant :
EU member states reject a provisional deal that would have required platforms like Uber and Deliveroo to give full employment status to around 5.5M gig workers
- Rules will go through further negotiations with EU lawmakers — Deal could have cost industry billions of euros annually
Boston-based knownwell, which provides virtual and in-person primary care and obesity treatment for patients, raised a $20M Series A led by a16z
Knownwell, a startup that provides primary care and metabolic health for people who are overweight and obese, raised a $20 million Series A round that Andreessen Horowitz led: https://endpts.com/... @...
Spotify pulls support for two music festivals in France, in protest against a new tax that will impose a levy of 1.5% to 1.75% on all music-streaming services
Spotify is pulling support for two music festivals in protest against a controversial new tax directed at music-streaming platforms operating …
After the Jedi cloud contract fell apart, the US DOD has allocated less than 2% of its $9B Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program, started in December 2022
In the past year, less than 2 percent of $9 billion set aside to upgrade the U.S. military's computing technology has been committed
Prosecutors: Pornhub operator Aylo admits to profiting for years from porn depicting sex trafficking victims, will pay a $1.8M+ fine, and be assigned a monitor
The company that operates Pornhub and other adult websites has agreed to pay damages to women who said pornographic videos of them were posted online without their consent.
ImpriMed, which builds AI-powered drug response prediction tech for cancer in dogs, cats, and soon humans, raised a $23M Series A led by SoftBank Ventures Asia
Kate Park / TechCrunch :
Cisco acquires cloud-native security and networking startup Isovalent, which had raised $69M and has helped develop open-source projects eBPF and Cilium
How SoftBank's $500M bet on US mortgage lender Better, once valued at $7B, backfired; BETR is down 90%+ since its August 2023 IPO after a US SEC investigation
Multibillion-dollar investment in start-up soured as interest rates rose and Spac craze ended — In April 2021 …
US consumer groups and lawmakers say Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, and other BNPL services may encourage younger and lower-income Americans to take on too much debt
New York Times :
France's AMF watchdog gives Coinbase a virtual asset service provider approval, as the company pushes deeper in Europe amid its regulations rift with the US SEC
Toshiba sees power management chips as a profit driver and plans to spend ~$175M to double production, as private equity firm JIP completes its $14B buyout
Makiko Yamazaki / Reuters :
Analysis: ABBA Voyage, the London show performed by 3D avatars of the band created using motion capture, made £322.6M in revenue in the 12 months since May 2022
As other artists see how much money there is to be made I wonder if we'll see such shows from long dead artists …
A US appeals court finalizes a mandate for the forfeiture of 69,370 BTC and other crypto connected to Silk Road, handed over by Silk Road hacker “Individual X”
Former staff say Meta considered exempting underage Facebook and Instagram user accounts from encryption but chose not to due to costs and potential liability
Wall Street Journal :
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