Newslit Daily

Today’s pick

Amazon's Twitch Seeks to Revamp Creator Pay With Focus on Profit. Twitch, the Amazon.com Inc. -owned live-streaming website, is weighing potential changes to how it pays top talent, said people familiar with the planning, an effort that would boost its profits but would also risk alienating some of its biggest… (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg)

Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B… but the 2030s will be 'exciting'. Do you hear that? It's the sound of every Meta executive breathing a deep sigh of relief, because unlike last quarter, Facebook's daily active users (DAUs) are up… a little. For the second time since its rebrand from Facebook, Meta has… (Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch)

Conservative Twitter accounts got boost in followers after Musk acquisition, data shows. It's not your imagination: follower counts on Twitter really have been shifting wildly in response to news that Elon Musk had finalized a deal to acquire the platform. Data compiled by The Verge from social media statistics site Social Blade shows… (Corin Faife / The Verge)

Autocorrect Explained: Why Your iPhone Adds Annoying Typos While Fixing Others. It occurred to me recently that I Duolingo know why my iPhone makes these kidneys of mistakes. Ugh, duck you, autocorrect! I get it, complaining about autocorrect feels very 2000-and-late. Yet here in 2022, nearly 15 years since the iPhone's debut… (Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal)

Music artists are making what they'd earn from 1 million streams in '2 minutes' with NFTs. Now, they're turning towards Web3-right alongside Snoop Dogg. Snopp Dogg said he was bringing his music to the metaverse. He wasn't lying. On 4/20, the rapper, songwriter and entrepreneur dropped Death Row Session: Vol. 2 as a non-fungible token, or NFT, on platform Sound.xyz. All 1,000 copies quickly sold… (Taylor Locke / Fortune)

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Today’s pick

Tech Giants Duped Into Giving Up Data Used to Sexually Extort Minors. Major technology companies have been duped into providing sensitive personal information about their customers in response to fraudulent legal requests, and the data has been used to harass and even sexually extort minors, according to four federal… (William Turton / Bloomberg)

Twitter Admits It Hid Tweets About HBO's QAnon Docuseries. For the past year, Twitter has censored tweets about a documentary exploring the origins of the QAnon movement. The documentary, Q: Into the Storm, debuted as a six-part series on HBO Max in March 2021. Twitter decided to “limit the… (Dell Cameron / Gizmodo)

Delta, facing a union drive, says it will start paying flight attendants during boarding. Delta says it will start paying flight attendants during boarding, a first for a U.S. carrier. The announcement came amid a unionization drive. Delta is the only major U.S. airline whose flight attendants aren't unionized. (Leslie Josephs / CNBC)

Robinhood to lay off 9% of full-time employees. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev announced Tuesday that it was laying off 9% of its full-time employees. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Robinhood had 3,400 employees, and though that did not specify full-time versus contract, it looks like this… (Christine Hall / TechCrunch)

Locked down in Shanghai, I've caught a glimpse of our techno-dystopian future. I never imagined living through history could be this boring. At the end of March, the Chinese government responded to an outbreak of the Omicron variant in Shanghai by embarking on the largest city-wide lockdown in history. Most of Shanghai's 25m… (Don Weinland / The Economist)

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

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Today’s pick

How Elon Musk Won Twitter. Elon Musk became the new owner of Twitter on Monday, after completing a stunning $44 billion takeover of the social media platform, ending a process that has vacillated between a done deal and dead in the water in the last three weeks. (Chris Stokel-Walker / WIRED)

Fidelity to Allow Retirement Savers to Put Bitcoin in 401(k) Accounts. Fidelity Investments plans to allow investors to put a bitcoin account in their 401(k)s, the first major retirement-plan provider to do so. Employees won't be able to start adding cryptocurrencies to their nest eggs right away, but later this year… (Anne Tergesen / Wall Street Journal)

Are America's Biggest Cities Shrinking or Booming? Pop quiz: What do the metros of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., have in common? They are all among the 20 largest metropolitan… (Derek Thompson / The Atlantic)

New York judge holds Donald Trump in contempt for failing to comply with subpoena of business documents. A New York judge held former President Donald Trump in contempt of court on Monday for failing to comply with a subpoena for business documents related to an investigation by the state attorney general's… (Dan Mangan / CNBC)

Inflation Got You Down? At Least You Don't Live in Argentina. Shopkeeper Jonathan Faez has a word of advice to people around the world obsessing about inflation: Chill out. “I have friends in the United States and Spain and they're telling me they're going crazy with their annual… (Silvina Frydlewsky / Wall Street Journal)

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

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— Jose Montes de Oca

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Today’s pick

Twitter Re-examines Elon Musk's Bid, May Be More Receptive to a Deal. Twitter Inc. is re-examining Elon Musk's $43 billion takeover offer after the billionaire lined up financing for the bid, in a sign the social-media company could be more receptive to a deal. Twitter had been expected to rebuff the offer, which Mr. (Cara Lombardo / Wall Street Journal)

WeChat wants people to use its video platform. So they did, for digital protests. “I made a video to document [the life] as objectively and authentically as possible, to remember the voices of April,” the creator, a Shanghai-based filmmaker, wrote alongside the video. Perhaps aware of the censorship risks, he also… (Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review)

Hopin: virtual events start-up struggles as real gatherings return. British group gained $7.8bn valuation in pandemic, but lay-offs and slump in secondary market trades have followed. ( Financial Times)

SpaceX's Starlink to provide Wi-Fi on Hawaiian Airlines flights with free service for passengers. SpaceX will start providing wireless internet on Hawaiian Airlines flights from the Starlink satellite network as early as next year, the airline said. Hawaiian told CNBC that it plans to offer Starlink service to passengers for free. The deal… (Michael Sheetz / CNBC)

Scammers used AI-generated faces to pose as a Boston law firm. Nicole Palmer is a lawyer who graduated from Columbia University. Her profile states that she “specializes in the application and protection of industrial design” and has “been building her career successfully for 30… (Ben Dickson / The Next Web)

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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Today’s pick

Coinbase launches NFT marketplace in hopes of appealing to crypto and mainstream users. It might be a good morning — or perhaps “gm” — for the hundreds of thousands of NFT community members who will now get another marketplace to trade their digital collectibles. Six months ago, Coinbase, the largest crypto… (Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch)

Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets. They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics. (James Pogue / Vanity Fair)

Elon Musk's Boring Co. Raises Funding at Nearly $6 Billion Valuation. Elon Musk's tunneling startup Boring Co. has raised $675 million in a funding round led by Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital. The round values the startup at $5.675 billion, the company said in a press release on Wednesday. (Sarah McBride via Bloomberg)

This firm made Republicans go viral - now it's falling apart. In the breathless world of conservative online politics, Arsenal Media is here to help you go viral. Co-founded by gadfly meme enthusiast Benny Johnson, the firm lists clients like Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Dana Loesch and takes credit for more… (Makena Kelly / The Verge)

How the AI industry profits from catastrophe. Despite threats from Appen to retaliate against her, she chose to go on the record as a named source. She wants people to understand what her life is like to be a critical part of the global AI development pipeline yet for the beneficiaries of her… (Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review)

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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Today’s pick

Netflix Loses 200,000 Customers, Its First Decline in a Decade. After a decade of meteoric growth that shook Hollywood to its core, Netflix Inc. has run into a wall. The streaming service lost 200,000 customers in the first quarter, according to a statement Tuesday, the first time it has shed subscribers since… (Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg)

Artificial intelligence is creating a new colonial world order. An MIT Technology Review series investigates how AI is enriching a powerful few by dispossessing communities that have been dispossessed before. (Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review)

The Fake Federal Agents Case Baffling US Intelligence Experts. Two weeks after FBI agents surged through a luxury apartment building in Washington, DC, and arrested two men who allegedly spent years pretending to be Homeland Security officers, the case continues to baffle even some of the nation's most… (Garrett M. Graff / WIRED)

Florida Gov. DeSantis Seeks to End Walt Disney World's Special Tax District. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis asked the state's legislature on Tuesday to consider ending special tax districts established before 1968, including one that effectively lets the Walt Disney Co. govern the land its Walt Disney World theme… (Joseph Pisani / Wall Street Journal)

Chipotle launches $50M venture fund in bid to foster new restaurant tech. In a bid to position its brand as more tech-forward — and, in the process, foster new culinary innovations — Chipotle today announced the launch of Cultivate Next, a venture fund… (Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch)

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.

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— Jose Montes de Oca

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Today’s pick

Hot Economy, Rising Inflation: The Fed Has Never Successfully Fixed a Problem Like This. The Federal Reserve is setting out to do something it has never accomplished before: reduce inflation a lot without significantly raising unemployment. Central bank officials think it is possible with calibrated interest rate increases that slow… (Jon Hilsenrath / Wall Street Journal)

Web scraping is legal, US appeals court reaffirms. Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling. The landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals ends a long-running legal battle… (Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch)

Apollo is said to be considering participating in a bid for Twitter. Investors have been skeptical that Elon Musk would be able to cobble together the funds needed to buy Twitter. (Lauren Hirsch / The New York Times)

Beanstalk cryptocurrency project robbed after hacker votes to send themself $182 million. On Sunday, an attacker managed to drain around $182 million of cryptocurrency from Beanstalk Farms, a decentralized finance (DeFi) project aimed at balancing the supply and demand of different cryptocurrency assets. Notably, the attack exploited… (Corin Faife / The Verge)

Crypto Is Poised to Reshape Taxes-and Cities. Taxes, CityCoins founder Patrick Stanley says, can stop being a mind-numbing civic ritual and become an exercise in freedom—if we tokenize and calibrate them the right way. Stanley's crypto-based invention is what he calls “an opt-in… (Adam Willems / WIRED)

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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Today’s pick

Utilities Plan Huge Electric Grid Upgrades, Adding to Power Bills. American utilities are planning their biggest spending increases in decades to upgrade aging grids, prepare for electric vehicles and make the transition to renewable energy—moves poised to further boost power costs as consumers face… (Katherine Blunt / Wall Street Journal)

Twitter Takeover Battle: Elon Musk-And Jack Dorsey-Turn Up Pressure On Board. After Twitter's board on Friday moved to shore up its defenses against a hostile takeover bid by Elon Musk, Musk has sought to use the company's platform against it, launching a series of critical tweets this weekend at the board seeking to… (Abram Brown / Forbes)

Open source Calendly rival Cal.com raises $25M. Open source Calendly alternative Cal.com has raised $25 million in a series A round of funding and launched an "app store for time." (Paul Sawers / VentureBeat)

The Future of the Web Is Marketing Copy Generated by Algorithms. As we move further into the 21st century, more and more aspects of our lives are being controlled by algorithms. Facebook decides which posts we see in our newsfeed, Google shows us the results of our searches based on their complex ranking system… (Tom Simonite / WIRED)

Rivian CEO Warns of Looming Electric-Vehicle Battery Shortage. Much of the battery supply chain isn’t built, challenging an industry aiming to sell tens of millions of EVs in coming years, RJ Scaringe says. (Sean McLain / Wall Street Journal)

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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Today’s pick

Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmed as First Black Woman on U.S. Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, making history as the first Black woman to ever join its ranks while leaving the ideological balance on the nation's highest court unchanged. (Laura Litvan / Bloomberg)

LEAKED MEMO: The New York Times has issued a Twitter 'reset,' urging reporters to 'meaningfully reduce how much time you're spending on the platform. NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet said in a memo that Twitter is now 'purely optional' for staffers. Baquet said that the newsroom will provide support to journalists experiencing harassment. He added that Twitter attacks on colleagues are not… (Steven Perlberg / Business Insider)

Inside the Takedown That Shredded the Myth of Bitcoin's Anonymity. They thought their payments were untraceable. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The untold story of the case that shredded the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity. (Andy Greenberg / WIRED)

Web3 is yet to take off despite the hype. So far, it's hard to discern mainstream uses for this technology… (Richard Waters / Financial Times)

Twitter's Edit Button Isn't Just a Simple Fix. It Could Be a Mistake. Twitter users may soon get their greatest wish: the ability to edit tweets. But unless the social network includes guardrails, users may come to rue that wish. There are lessons in how other social-media platforms designed their edit features. (Dalvin Brown / Wall Street Journal)

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 on Monday!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Today’s pick

Apps With Hidden Data-Harvesting Software Are Banned by Google. Google has yanked dozens of apps from its Google Play store after determining that they include a software element that surreptitiously harvests data… (Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal)

Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users. The startup promises a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income. So far all it's done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor. (Eileen Guo / MIT Technology Review)

Meta is reportedly making 'Zuck Bucks'. Meta may have given up on its Diem cryptocurrency, but the company is still exploring finance products, according to a new Financial Times report. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reportedly has a few irons in the fire, including… (Jay Peters / The Verge)

Miami Gets Its Own 'Charging Bull' Statue for Crypto Week. Miami is kicking off a multiday Bitcoin conference by unveiling a larger-than-life bull statue, as the city looks to cement its image as a crypto hub. The installation, named “Miami Bull,” bears the likeness of Wall Street's… (Vildana Hajric / Bloomberg)

Europe Is Building a Huge International Facial Recognition System. Lawmakers advance proposals to let police forces across the EU link their photo databases—which include millions of pictures of people’s faces. (Matt Burgess / WIRED)

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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