Good morning, it’s Tuesday November 8th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

IRS Seizes Another Silk Road Hacker's $3.36 Billion Bitcoin Stash. The legendary dark web market for drugs known as the Silk Road was designed to be an anarchic underworld economy that evaded all government control. Instead, years after it was torn offline, it's proven to be the IRS's gift that keeps on giving. (Andy Greenberg / WIRED)

China's Business Elite Sees the Country That Let Them Thrive Slipping Away. For decades, China's business class had an unspoken contract with the Communist Party: Let us make money and we'll turn a blind eye to how you use your power. Like most Chinese people, they bought into the party's argument that its one-party rule… (Li Yuan / The New York Times)

Musk discusses putting all of Twitter behind a paywall. If Friday brought massive layoffs to Twitter, Monday brought fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall, Platformer has learned. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure… (Casey Newton / Platformer)

YouTube Shorts are coming to your TV - and taking over the platform. YouTube Shorts is working. That much Todd Sherman knows for sure. Sherman, the product manager behind YouTube's endless-scrolling short-form TikTok competitor, is quick to quote the numbers: 1.5 billion users a month are watching Shorts, and… (David Pierce / The Verge)

Apple Built Its Empire With China. Now Its Foundation Is Showing Cracks.. Every September, Apple unveils its latest phones at its futuristic Silicon Valley campus. A few weeks later, tens of millions of its newest handsets, assembled by legions of seasonal workers hired by its suppliers, are shipped from Chinese… (Tripp Mickle, Chang Che, Daisuke Wakabayashi / The New York Times)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Monday November 7th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week. Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could be among the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry's rapid growth during the pandemic. (Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal)

Twitter Said to Delay Changes to Check Mark Badges Until After Midterm Election. Twitter is delaying the rollout of verification check marks to subscribers of its new $7.99 a month subscription service until after Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to an internal post viewed by The New York Times… (Ryan Mac / The New York Times)

Apple warns Covid restrictions in China are hurting iPhone production. iPhone 14 production has been temporarily reduced because of Covid-19 restrictions at its primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly plant in Zhengzhou, China. The factory, operated by Foxconn, is operating at 'significantly reduced… (Kif Leswing / CNBC)

Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back. Twitter Inc., after laying off roughly half the company on Friday following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition, is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return. Some of those who are being asked to return… (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

Electric cars can strengthen the US grid through V2G tech, experts say. Millions more electric vehicles on the road could make the US power grid more resilient. An innovation called vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G, lets EVs supply electricity to the grid in times of need, but it's still in early stages. Someday, EVs… (Tim Levin / Business Insider)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Friday November 4th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

The world is missing its lofty climate targets. Time for some realism. To accept that the world's average temperature might rise by more than 1.5°C, declared the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands in 2015, would be to sign the “death warrant” of small, low-lying countries such as his. To… (The Economist)

Stripe Cutting Headcount by 14% as It Readies for 'Leaner Times'. Stripe Inc., one of the world's most valuable startups, will cut more than 1,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn. The payments company will cut its workforce by 14% this week, returning headcount to the almost 7,000… (Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg)

Elon Musk's first Hyperloop tunnel in California is gone. Elon Musk's first prototype Hyperloop tunnel is no more. Bloomberg reports that the roughly one-mile-long white steel tunnel running along Jack Northrop Avenue near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, has been removed and will be replaced… (Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge)

Substack targets Twitter with launch of discussions feature, Substack Chat. Another company hoping to capitalize on Twitter's upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk's takeover is the newsletter platform Substack. The company has openly targeted Twitter's user base over the past few days and has now thrown its hat into the ring… (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over. “We have observed an uptick in people deactivating their accounts and also Twitter suspending accounts,” says Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel's founder. Bouzy and Bot Sentinel arrived at their numbers by looking at the proportion of… (Chris Stokel-Walker / MIT Technology Review)

Take care and see you next week!

— Jose Montes de Oca

P.S. if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Good morning, it’s Thursday November 3rd. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Musk Plans to Eliminate Half of Twitter Jobs in Cost-Cut Drive. Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company's workforce, in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Twitter's new… (Edward Ludlow & Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

OpenAI will give roughly 10 AI startups $1M each and early access to its systems. OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the… (Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch)

The 'Viral' Secure Programming Language That's Taking Over Tech. Whether you run IT for a massive organization or simply own a smartphone, you're intimately familiar with the unending stream of software updates that constantly need to be installed because of bugs and security vulnerabilities. People make… (Lily Hay Newman / WIRED)

Jony Ive on Life After Apple. I can always write an awful lot that I can't draw,” Jony Ive, the mastermind behind Apple's most revolutionary products, says as he holds up a Space Age–style coffee cup. “If I draw this, it only captures certain… (Elisa Lipsky-Karasz / Wall Street Journal)

TikTok tells European users its staff in China get access to their data. TikTok is telling its European users of the platform that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the site. The… (Dan Milmo / The Guardian)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Wednesday November 2nd. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Food Prices Soar, and So Do Companies' Profits. A year ago, a bag of potato chips at the grocery store cost an average of $5.05. These days, that bag costs $6.05. A dozen eggs that could have been picked up for $1.83 now average $2.90. A two-liter bottle of soda that cost $1.78 will now set you… (Isabella Simonetti / The New York Times)

NSA Watchdog Concluded One Analyst's Surveillance Project Went Too Far. An “experienced” analyst working at the National Security Agency developed a surveillance project about a decade ago that resulted in the unauthorized targeting and collection of private communications of people or organizations in… (Jason Leopold / Bloomberg)

Tumblr will now allow nudity but not explicit sex. Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity — but not sexually explicit images — on the platform. The company updated its community guidelines earlier today, laying out a set of rules that… (Adi Robertson / The Verge)

Welcome to Geriatric Social Media. Weirdos like myself, who pay too much attention to tech platforms, are currently mulling a question: Is social media dying? The New York Times' Kevin Roose formally kicked this off in a guest post in The Morning newsletter last week, chronicling… (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)

YouTube's Primetime Channels bring streaming movies and TV into the YouTube app. Streaming services are coming to YouTube. The company is rolling out a new feature called Primetime Channels that will bring shows and movies from more than 30 services directly into the YouTube interface. It's a big bet for YouTube that it can be… (David Pierce / The Verge)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Tuesday November 1st. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

Today’s pick

Instagram outage tells millions their accounts are suspended. An Instagram outage that started Monday morning is locking users out and telling many of them that “we suspended your account on October 21, 2022.” The platform confirmed the issue on Twitter… (Emma Roth / The Verge)

Elon Musk Is Busy With Twitter. I don't know if you noticed, but I have spent much of the last six months writing about how Elon Musk, the world's richest person, doesn't really care about his contractual obligations. Musk signed a binding merger agreement to buy Twitter Inc. for… (Matt Levine / Bloomberg)

'Planet Killer' Asteroid Spotted That Poses Distant Risk to Earth. Astronomers on the hunt for modestly sized asteroids that could vaporize a city or bulkier beasts that could sterilize Earth's surface have spotted a new potential threat. But there's no immediate need to worry — it'll be many generations… (Robin George Andrews via The New York Times)

How will we remember the age of cheap money? The end of low interest rates is stripping off a veneer of affluence Receive free UK interest rates updates We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest UK interest rates news every morning. After the end of every era, a handful… (Sarah O'Connor via Financial Times)

Women in venture capital are writing the rules of maternity leave and bending the male-dominated culture to their will. Sitting in her Bay Area home office, Anarghya Vardhana, a venture capitalist, cradled her one-week-old baby at her breast and logged on to a Zoom video call. In the days since she had given birth, the founder of a cash-strapped portfolio company… (Melia Russell / Business Insider)

Thanks for reading to the bottom and soaking in our Newslit fuelled highlights for your morning.

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Good morning, it’s Monday October 10th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration: Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse Struggles. The team at New York Times took a look at the past year of metaverse developments at Meta and the ups and downs Mark Zuckerberg has gone through to convince consumers (and his own employees) that he made the right call in changing his company's focus to virtual reality. (Ryan Mac / The New York Times)

'The Owner of This iPhone Was in a Severe Car Crash'-or Just on a Roller Coaster. Apple’s crash detection for the iPhone 14 and new Apple Watch models can alert 911 and emergency contacts in the event of a collision. But it sometimes triggers when people aren’t in danger. (Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal)

Twitter locks Kanye West's account for anti-semitic tweet following warm Elon Musk welcome. Kanye West posted anti-semitism on Instagram and got his account frozen. Elon Musk immediately gave him a green light to say the same stuff on Twitter, so he did and worse — but Musk doesn't own Twitter yet. (Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch)

Supply Chain 'Normal' Appears on Horizon, With Sights Set on March. Several gauges show ship congestion continues to clear up even as shortages persist. (Brendan Murray / Bloomberg)

Europe's Plan to Beat Silicon Valley at Its Own Game. WIRED spoke with Skype cofounder about why the burgeoning European startup scene is poised to lead the technological revolution. (Stephen Armstrong / WIRED)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Good morning, it’s Monday September 26th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Sterling falls to record low of $1.035 against the dollar. The pound tumbled to a record low on Monday while government bonds extended heavy losses, stirring expectations of an emergency rise in UK interest rates in the wake of chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s package of tax cuts last week. (Stephanie Findlay / Financial Times)

TikTok Seen Moving Toward U.S. Security Deal, but Hurdles Remain. The Biden administration and TikTok have drafted a preliminary agreement to resolve national security concerns posed by the Chinese-owned video app but face hurdles over the terms, as the platform negotiates to keep operating in the United States without major changes to its ownership structure. (Lauren Hirsch / The New York Times)

Girls Who Code founder speaks out after school district bans her books. Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani is speaking out after her company's book series was banned from a Pennsylvania school district. The books were just added to PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, a list of restricted literature around the country. (Bethany Biron / Business Insider)

NASA's Asteroid-Deflection Mission Spotlights Planetary Defense Effort. An uncrewed spacecraft will try to slam into a distant space rock to shift its orbit in a test of technology that one day might protect Earth from a catastrophic impact. (Aylin Woodward / Wall Street Journal)

Thanks for reading and soaking in our Newslit fuelled highlights for your morning.

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Good morning, it’s Monday September 19th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Clearview AI, Used by Police to Find Criminals, Now in Public Defenders' Hands. After a Florida man was accused of vehicular homicide, his lawyer used Clearview AI’s facial recognition software to prove his innocence. But other defense lawyers say Clearview’s offer rings hollow. (Kashmir Hill / The New York Times)

The $300bn Google-Meta advertising duopoly is under attack. For the past decade there were two more or less universally acknowledged truths about digital advertising. First, the rapidly growing industry was largely impervious to the business cycle. Second, it was dominated by the duopoly of Google (in search ads) and Meta (in social media). Now The pair face a weak economy and powerful new rivals. (The Economist)

GTA 6 gameplay leaks online in 90 videos. Footage of Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar’s next entry in its open-world franchise, has leaked online. PC Gamer reports that a user on the GTA Forums has posted a 3GB file full of 90 videos of GTA VI footage. (Tom Warren / The Verge)

Apple Flexes Muscle as Quiet Power Behind App Developer Group. The App Association brands itself as the leading voice for thousands of app developers around the world. In reality, the vast majority of its funding comes from Apple. (Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg)

How to Use DuckDuckGo's Privacy-First Email. Having offered a privacy-focused search engine since 2008, DuckDuckGo is now turning its attention to email: Its new Email Protection service gives you an @duck.com email address, which you can use as a buffer between your actual email inbox and… (David Nield / WIRED)

Thanks for reading and soaking in our Newslit fuelled highlights for your morning.

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Good morning, it’s Thursday September 8th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Leaked memo reveals how Snap plans to turn itself around. After a stock price collapse and brutal layoffs, CEO Evan Spiegel yesterday told employees how he plans to still grow Snapchat’s users to 450 million. Goal is to hit $6 billion in revenue next year. (Alex Heath / The Verge)

The 1,000 Chinese SpaceX engineers who never existed. LinkedIn users are being scammed by fake connections posing as graduates of prestigious universities and employees at top tech companies. These are the latest iteration of “pig-butchering scams” that drained millions of dollars from victims, with the help of crypto. (Zeyi Yang via MIT Technology Review)

Disney knew Twitter had bots but wanted to buy it anyway. Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter. Then he decided he didn't. In 2016, Bob Iger, then the CEO of Disney, had convinced himself that his company should own Twitter, Then, shortly before the 2016 US presidential election, he bailed out. (Peter Kafka / Vox)

Startup Behind AI Image Generator Stable Diffusion Is In Talks To Raise At A Valuation Up To $1 Billion. Stability AI, the startup behind AI text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, is looking to raise $100M at a valuation up to $1B. The talks follow Stable Diffusion's buzzy release just two weeks ago. (Kenrick Cai / Forbes)

Apple's Killing the Password. Here's Everything You Need to Know. The reality of a passwordless future is taking a big leap forward, With iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, Apple is introducing passkeys—a more convenient and secure alternative to passwords. (Matt Burgess via WIRED)

Thanks for reading and soaking in our Newslit fuelled highlights for your morning.

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!
— Jose Montes de Oca

P.S. Want to advertise with us? We’d love to hear from you.