Tech Meme

New York Times: The FBI says a contractor misled the agency and used NSO’s Landmark to track people in Mexico without consent; the FBI terminated the contract in April 2023  —  After a Times report, the bureau canceled its contract with a government contractor that used the tool on its behalf.  But questions remain. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: After Curve disclosed a hack, CRV dropped by ~25% in three days, prompting fears of wider market turbulence; DefiLlama: crypto using Curve fell ~50% to $1.9B  —  – Curve’s native CRV coin posted three-day, 25% slump after hack  — Drop raised concerns about wider fallout from platform’s woes Lees verder op Tech Meme

Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal: Uber reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $9.23B, gross bookings up 16% YoY to $33.6B, and a $394M net income, up from a $2.6B loss in Q2 2022, its first profit  —  Ride-hailing and delivery businesses grew in the second quarter, though freight shrank  —  Uber Technologies posted … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Charlotte Hughes-Morgan / Bloomberg: Pearson plans to launch generative AI study tools for the upcoming academic year, including an “On a Tight Schedule” feature to summarize key learning points  —  – ChatGPT-style features will be added to Pearson+ and Mastering  — New AI tools will not give students a ‘shortcut to an answer’ Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: Binance announces an exchange in Japan that complies with local rules and offers 34 tokens, open for applications in mid-August before a December 1 launch  —  – Local platform is intended to fully comply with Japanese rules  — Binance facing regulatory pressure in other parts of the world Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Rapyd, which offers payment APIs, plans to acquire Prosus’ payments unit PayU for $610M, excluding its operations in India, Turkey, and Southeast Asia  —  Rapyd, the fintech-as-a-service startup that provides APIs to enable payments, card issuing, digital wallet and other financial services … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: The UK CMA reopens its consultation on Microsoft’s Activision deal, an unusual move that could lead to a reversal of the decision to block the deal  —  CMA invites responses to tech giant’s new arguments in rare move that could pave way for $75bn takeover to close Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jeremy Hill / Bloomberg: Court filings: FTX Group details a draft plan to repay creditors, including settling claims in USD and wiping out FTT; seven classes of creditors can now vote  —  – Customer claims to be valued in US dollars as of bankruptcy  — Company hasn’t ruled out rebooting offshore exchange Lees verder op Tech Meme

The Economic Times: A regulatory filing shows that Fidelity has halved its valuation of Indian business messaging startup Gupshup to $697M, down from $1.4B in July 2021  —  Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund’s stake in the San Francisco-headquartered startup was valued at nearly $11.09 million as of April 30, 2023, which it successively marked down. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Emma Roth / The Verge: The BBC launches social.bbc, an “experimental” Mastodon server with posts from a handful of BBC accounts, and plans to try out the server for six months  —  The BBC has launched its own “experimental” Mastodon server, marking one of the first major news outlets to establish an instance on the Twitter alternative. Lees verder op Tech Meme