Newslit Daily

Today’s pick

NFTs Are a Privacy and Security Nightmare. Venmo's baffling decision to turn payments into a social media feed, where public transactions are the default, has rightly been met with criticism. But at the very least, it's always been possible to make Venmo transactions private. Now, imagine a… (Eric Ravenscraft / WIRED)

Elon Musk Got a Twitter Board Seat. Should Twitter have an edit button, letting you edit tweets after you post them? The answer to this question is obviously “no,” but for some reason a lot of Twitter users vocally believe the answer is “yes.” Here I do… (Matt Levine / Bloomberg)

Block confirms Cash App breach after former employee accessed US customer data. Block has confirmed a data breach involving a former employee who downloaded reports from Cash App that contained some U.S. customer information. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)… (Carly Page / TechCrunch)

Amazon to Spend Billions on Space Launches as SpaceX Ramps Up Satellite-Internet Service. Amazon.com Inc. is stepping up plans for its proposed fleet of internet satellites that would compete with a service operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, buying dozens of space launches from three rocket companies. Amazon's Project Kuiper said it… (Micah Maidenberg / Wall Street Journal)

Twitter is adding an edit button. It's a feature that Twitter users have been requesting for so long that it's become a meme, but now the mythical “edit button” is actually becoming a reality. Twitter has announced that it's working to allow users to edit their tweets… (Jon Porter / The Verge)

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Today’s pick

'It's Now Or Never': We Have 3 Years to Reverse Course, Major Climate Report Finds. In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the world needs to make a serious U-turn over the next three years to curb our emissions, a stark new report finds. (Molly Taft / Gizmodo)

Why People Are Adding a Second Shift at Night. After two years of working from home, I don't have one unified period of getting things done. I have several mini periods. Work isn't a contiguous landmass of focus; it's more like an archipelago of productivity amid a sea of chores, meals, mental… (Derek Thompson / The Atlantic)

Britain announces plans to mint its own NFT as it looks to 'lead the way' in crypto. U.K. Finance Minister Rishi Sunak has asked the Royal Mint to create and issue the NFT 'by the summer,' a government minister said Monday. City Minister John Glen announced a number of steps the U.K. will take to bring digital assets under more… (Ryan Browne / CNBC)

With Peloton Guide, the Fitness Company Bets Big on Body Tracking. Peloton has made a device that uses a camera to track your strength-training workouts. The “camera” part, though, still needs to prove itself. (Lauren Goode / WIRED)

These are the words Amazon's planned employee chat app reportedly won't let you say. Amazon reportedly plans to add a content filter to an internal messaging app in the making and would ban words that reflect the company's working conditions or pertain to organizing a union, according to internal documents obtained by The… (Emma Roth / The Verge)

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

Elon Musk buys 9.2 percent of Twitter amid complaints about free speech. Tesla CEO Elon Musk now owns 9.2 percent of Twitter according to a 13G filing released today, Bloomberg News reports. According to the filing, Musk purchased the stake on March 14th. Musk has long been one of Twitter's highest profile users with… (Jon Porter / The Verge)

The Future of NFTs Lies With the Courts. SuperFarm touted the sale as “a groundbreaking landmark—both for the crypto space and the broader music industry.” The newly minted NFT of Jay-Z's debut album Reasonable Doubt would, it said, “provide ownership of the… (Jessica Rizzo / WIRED)

How Amazon Workers in New York Became First to Unionize. For about a year, Chris Smalls has stood almost daily near Amazon.com Inc.'s largest warehouse in Staten Island, N.Y., campaigning to bring the first union to the tech giant's sprawling U.S. operations. A former employee at the facility, Mr. Smalls… (Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal)

The metaverse will fuel massive innovation (and Facebook isn't the metaverse). Here’s a hot take: The metaverse is not what Mark Zuckerberg says it is. It’s not a place or alternate reality we will all migrate into. It’s not a game. It’s not a land grab (although that is happening). And it’s not just a massive branding opportunity. (Faisal Galaria / VentureBeat)

How one company embraced the four-day week - and actually made it work. This Friday, most Americans will be hard at work, counting down the minutes until the weekend finally arrives. But almost all of the 700 or so employees at Bolt, a tech startup based in San Francisco, will be taking the day off. Some will be… (Aki Ito / 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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Today’s pick

Facebook's algorithm was mistakenly elevating harmful content for the last six months. A group of Facebook engineers identified a “massive ranking failure” that exposed as much as half of all News Feed views to “integrity risks” over the past six months, according to an internal report on the incident… (Alex Heath / The Verge)

Losing 5% Was Best You Could Do in Stocks and Bonds This Quarter. War, inflation and the lingering impact of a global disease made the first quarter a historically rough one for stock and bond investors. Across equity and fixed-income markets broadly, the least-bad performance among U.S. assets were declines of… (Lu Wang / Bloomberg)

First 'Gapless' Human Genome Map Is Unveiled, Years After Earlier Effort. Scientists have unveiled what they call the first truly complete map of a human genome, filling in significant gaps that persisted for almost 20 years and setting the stage for new discoveries about human evolution and fresh insights into cancer… (Amy Dockser Marcus / Wall Street Journal)

The serious business of being a social influencer. IT IS A sure sign that a hot trend has reached the mainstream when the tax authorities catch up. This week China promised a tax-evasion crackdown on social-media influencers, who are paid by brands to promote products online to armies of followers. (The Economist)

Is it time to start worrying about startup layoffs?. Startups are once again considering layoffs as a way to control cash consumption and attract new capital. News that Fast, a one-click checkout software provider targeting the e-commerce market, is offering sharp staff cuts to investors in hopes of… (Alex Wilhelm / 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.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Today’s pick

Etsy sellers will go on strike in April and want customers to boycott. In February, Etsy CEO Josh Silverman had good news to share with investors: sales and revenue were at an all-time high, sending Etsy stock soaring. At the same time, Silverman had less welcome news for sellers, delivered via email: transaction fees… (Mia Sato / The Verge)

How Google and Amazon bankrolled a 'grassroots' activist group of small business owners to lobby against Big Tech oversight. The Connected Commerce Council, which pitches itself as a grassroots movement representing small business owners, is actually a well-financed advocacy group funded by tech heavy hitters Google and Amazon. (Eamon Javers / CNBC)

People are sending 7 billion voice messages on WhatsApp every day. To mark the milestone, WhatsApp is introducing a host of new features and refinements, including the ability to pause a voice note recording and then getting back to it later. (Manish Singh / TechCrunch)

Apple Working to Bring More Financial Services In-House. Apple Inc. is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products, part of an ambitious effort that would reduce its reliance on outside partners over time, according to people with knowledge of the… (Mark Gurman / Bloomberg)

SoftBank to slow investments following crash in tech holdings. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has warned his top executives of the need to slow down further investments, as the world's largest tech investor scrambles to raise cash amid a rout in tech stocks and regulatory crackdown in China. (Antoni Slodkowski, Miles Kruppa, Arash Massoudi and Ryan McMorro / Financial Times)

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

DeepMind accused of mishandling sexual misconduct allegations. A former DeepMind employee has accused the artificial intelligence group's leadership of mishandling multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment, raising concerns over how grievances are dealt with at the Google-acquired company. (Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times)

Dyson's bizarre new headphones have a built-in air purifier. Dyson is getting into headphones in the most Dyson way possible: the Zone, a pair of noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones with air purification technology built in, thanks to a bizarre-looking magnetic face visor. (Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge)

Hackers steal $620M in Ethereum and dollars from Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis' Ronin network. Sky Mavis reported its network has been hacked, with thieves taking 173,600 in Eth and $25.5 million, taking a total of $620 million. (Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat)

Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here's why that's a terrible idea. The vision of a know-it-all AI that dishes out relevant and accurate information in easy-to-understand bite-size chunks is shaping the way tech companies are approaching the future of search. And with the rise of voice assistants like Siri and… (Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review)

Forcing WhatsApp and iMessage to Work Together Is Doomed to Fail. The newest law designed to rein in Big Tech aims to make all your favorite messaging apps work seamlessly together. Sounds great, right? Well, we have some bad news. Every day, billions of messages are sent using end-to-end encryption. (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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Today’s pick

My own phone number is now spam texting me. This morning, I received a very blatant spam text offering me “a little gift” for supposedly paying my phone bill. Normally I'd groan, roll my eyes, and quickly delete such a thing, but there was something different about this… (Chris Welch / The Verge)

FedEx Says Fred Smith to Step Aside as CEO, Remain Executive Chairman. FedEx Corp. founder Fred Smith is stepping down as chief executive of the company he started more than 50 years ago with a handful of planes and built into a global delivery network that moves millions of packages a day. Mr. Smith, 77 years old, is… (Paul Ziobro / Wall Street Journal)

Leaked Details of the Lapsus$ Hack Make Okta's Slow Response Look More Bizarre. In the week since the digital extortion group Lapsus$ first revealed that it had breached the identity management platform Okta through one of the company's subprocessors, customers and organizations across the tech industry have been scrambling to… (Lily Hay Newman / WIRED)

Environmental Groups Pressure Bitcoin Community to Lower Energy Use. A consortium of environmental groups launched a campaign on Monday seeking to change bitcoin's code to decrease its energy use, which has grown substantially in the past few years. Bitcoin is popular among some investors, but its energy use has… (Paul Vigna / Wall Street Journal)

A Bookstore Revival Channels Nostalgia for Big Box Chains. Fond feelings for the big chains of the ‘90s help to explain a renaissance for mall bookstores in the U.S. (Alexandra Lange / Bloomberg)

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

Why U.S. Population Growth Just Crashed to an All-Time Low. The U.S. population grew at the slowest pace in history in 2021, according to census data released last week. That news sounds extreme, but it's on trend. First came 2020, which saw one of the lowest U.S. population-growth rates ever. And now we… (Derek Thompson / The Atlantic)

A Wave Of Billion-Dollar Language AI Startups Is Coming. See here for the first part of this article series: Language Is The Next Great Frontier In AI Language is at the heart of human intelligence. It therefore is and must be at the heart of our efforts to build artificial intelligence. No sophisticated… (Rob Toews / Forbes)

Morning Brew tops 4 million newsletter subscribers as it looks to expand with M&A. Morning Brew's primary newsletter has surpassed 4 million subscribers after hitting 3 million just eight months ago. Morning Brew generated about $50 million in revenue in 2021, during what's been a boom time for newsletters. (Alex Sherman / CNBC)

The Most Shocking Moment in Oscars History. This year's Oscars had a slightly chaotic air to them from the start, with awards choppily edited in from earlier in the night, three hosts awkwardly trading off zingers, and bizarre fan-voted prizes given to the films of Zack Snyder. But nothing… (David Sims / The Atlantic)

Elon Musk Says He's Thinking About Creating a Social Media Platform. Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, said in tweets that he is giving serious thought to creating a social media platform because Twitter is “failing to adhere to free speech principle.” “Given that Twitter serves as the… (Chester Yung / Bloomberg)

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

Uber Reaches Deal to List All New York City Taxis on Its App. Uber is becoming friends with a former foe. The company has reached an agreement to list all New York City taxis on its app, an alliance that could ease the ride-hailing giant's driver shortage and temper high fares while… (Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal)

Instacart Slashes Its Valuation by Almost 40% to $24 Billion. Instacart Inc. is slashing its valuation by almost 40% to about $24 billion, a move it says will help the company attract talent and adapt to market conditions. The company had been valued at $39 billion in its most recent fundraising round, when… (Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg)

Apple will reportedly sell the iPhone as a subscription service. Apple is reportedly working on selling iPhones and iPads themselves as part of a hardware subscription service, according to a new report from Bloomberg, whose author Mark Gurman writes the service could arrive next year. (Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge)

Why energy insecurity is here to stay. Energy and commodities lie at the dark heart of Vladimir Putin's regime and the threat it poses to the world. Four trillion dollars of oil and gas exports over the two decades of his rule have paid for the tanks, guns and Grad missiles now killing… (The Economist)

An Amazon drone crash in Oregon set a wheat field ablaze. An Amazon drone crashed during a test flight in Oregon last summer, setting off a brush fire. Amazon's drone delivery program has been plagued by internal conflict, high turnover, and delays. Wing, a drone project from Amazon rival Google, has… (Katherine Long / 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 have a great weekend!

— Jose Montes de Oca

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Today’s pick

Stephen Wilhite, creator of the GIF, has died. Stephen Wilhite, one of the lead inventors of the GIF, died last week from COVID at the age of 74, according to his wife, Kathaleen, who spoke to The Verge. (Mitchell Clark / The Verge)

Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's Leadership Take Remote Work to the Extreme. As more companies begin their return to the office, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. is becoming more remote than ever before. The company's management team, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, is scattering to locations far from its… (Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal)

Snap buys brain-computer interface startup for future AR glasses. Meta, Apple, and a slew of other tech companies are building augmented reality glasses with displays that place computing on the world around you. The idea is that this type of product will one day become useful in a similar way to how smartphones… (Alex Heath / The Verge)

Google Play to pilot third-party billing option globally, starting with Spotify. Amid increasing global regulations over app stores and their commission structures, Google today announced the launch of a pilot program designed to explore what it calls “user billing choice.” The program will allow a small number of… (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

Nothing's Carl Pei Wants to Start a Smartphone Revolution (Again). What if we told you 2021 was just a warm-up? Sounds like a threat in 2022, doesn't it? It is actually the tagline behind the latest news from Nothing, a tech company headed by OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei. The “warm-up” was the Nothing… (Andrew Williams / 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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