Experts weigh in on Meta's impending decision to lift Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram ban; source: the announcement will be made later than January 7 (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 22:41 Rating: 5

Google has agreed to pay $29.5M to settle lawsuits with Washington DC and Indiana over location tracking practices, after agreeing to pay ~$392M to 40 US states (Jared Gans/The Hill) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 22:41 Rating: 5

First pretrial hearing in the FTC's case against Microsoft's $69B bid to take over Activision Blizzard set for January 3, 2023 (Alexandra Alper/Reuters) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 21:41 Rating: 5

Employment in tech occupations grew 12% YoY to a record 6.39M in November 2022, as workers eye banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing amid tech layoffs (New York Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 18:41 Rating: 5

A look at ABBA Voyage, the hit London concert performed by 3D digital avatars of the band created from motion capture, as its producers plan a global expansion (Jenni Reid/CNBC) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 16:41 Rating: 5

Leaked screener copies of big movies tend to surface at year's end, but didn't in 2022, probably due to more security, streaming, and shorter release windows (Ernesto Van der Sar/TorrentFreak) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Sources: founder Richard Liu berated JD.com executives for poor performance and remains the undisputed decision maker despite having quit many frontline roles (Ben Jiang/South China Morning Post) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 21:42 Rating: 5

A look at the disastrous 2022 for NFT-based games, after interest from EA, Ubisoft, Zynga, Niantic, and others, as the community grew more niche and scam-filled (Ryan Broderick/Polygon) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 18:41 Rating: 5

FTX says it would seek the return of its digital assets held by the Bahamas, claiming the value was ~$296M when transferred on November 12 and is now ~$167M (Nathan Crooks/The Block) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 17:42 Rating: 5

Italy's parliament approves a 26% tax on gains of €2,000+ from crypto trading per tax period and offers incentives for declaring crypto profits for tax purposes (Sandali Handagama/CoinDesk) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 15:41 Rating: 5

Source: Sam Bankman-Fried will likely plead not guilty to fraud and other charges at a January 3 hearing; SBF returns to Twitter to deny he moved Alameda funds (Wall Street Journal) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Crypto created a toy financial system and had a toy financial crisis; in order to work in the long run, crypto must prove its real usefulness outside of finance (Matt Levine/Bloomberg) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft plan to connect data centers to heating systems in Europe; Meta began in 2020 in Denmark, and Google is assessing its opportunities (Sam Schechner/Wall Street Journal) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 22:41 Rating: 5

Report: Twitter is closing its Seattle office, the company's second-largest engineering hub outside of San Francisco, asking employees to work from home instead (Taylor Soper/GeekWire) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 19:41 Rating: 5

Sources: the FBI is investigating the leak of ~100K API keys linked to users of crypto trading service 3Commas, as a victims group claims to have lost over $20M (Sam Kessler/CoinDesk) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 17:42 Rating: 5

Sources detail Elon Musk's Twitter cost-cutting measures, including closing a data center, reducing training for new staff, and canceling janitorial services (New York Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 16:41 Rating: 5

An obituary of Dark Sky, which changed how people consume weather forecasts but is disparaged by scientists, as Apple shuts the iOS app down on January 1 (Russell Jacobs/Slate) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

A look at India's plan to build a semiconductor supply chain, including via a ~$10B incentive program, issues with the Foxconn-Vedanta joint venture, and more (Dylan Patel/SemiAnalysis) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

The SEC says FTX made two $100M investments using customer funds in fintech company Dave in March 2022 and blockchain startup Mysten Labs in September 2022 (CNBC) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 21:41 Rating: 5

A US appeals court revives a lawsuit accusing Google and others of violating children's privacy state laws by tracking their YouTube activity for ad targeting (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 20:41 Rating: 5

Some Twitter users are reporting widespread service interruptions; Downdetector: the issues mainly affect its website and started around 7 PM ET on Wednesday (Kate Conger/New York Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 19:41 Rating: 5

Q&A with Christopher Phillips, head of the Google Geo group, which runs Maps, on the future of navigation, making maps more immersive, and more (Danny Lewis/Wall Street Journal) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

A hacker leaks API keys belonging to users of crypto trading service 3Commas, which said its users were "phished"; 3Commas CEO confirms the leaked data (Sam Kessler/CoinDesk) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

CCS Insight: global shipments of VR and AR devices fell 12%+ YoY to 9.6M in 2022; NPD Group: US sales of VR headsets fell 2% YoY to $1.1B as of early December (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

Source: the DOJ launches a criminal investigation into $370M+ in assets stolen from FTX as the exchange collapsed, separate from its fraud case against SBF (Ava Benny-Morrison/Bloomberg) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

LastPass' breach update was full of spin, omitted helpful but damning info, provided rosy interpretations hiding a failure to contain August's breach, and more (Wladimir Palant/Almost Secure) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 10:41 Rating: 5