Sources: FTC to file a complaint against Amazon alleging that Alexa-powered speakers collect data about kids under 13 without parental consent, violating COPPA (Josh Sisco/Politico) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 18:41 Rating: 5

Q&A with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and EVP Sax Persson on an open metaverse, walled gardens, user-generated content, a metaverse programming language, and more (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 17:41 Rating: 5

UK's CMA drops a probe into Apple's dominance in mobile browsers and cloud gaming after Apple successfully argued the CMA waited too long to launch the probe (Reuters) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

Seattle-based crypto exchange Bittrex shuts down its US operations, saying funds should be withdrawn by April 30, but will continue to operate Bittrex Global (Mat Di Salvo/Decrypt) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

A profile of Sam Altman, whose social-minded capitalism may make him the ideal CEO for OpenAI as some say he's too commercially minded to lead a tech revolution (Wall Street Journal) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Twitter open sources a portion of its code on GitHub, including its algorithm for recommending tweets in For You but excluding its ad recommendation algorithm (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 12:41 Rating: 5

env0, which develops Infrastructure as Code workflow automation and management software, raised $18.1M led by Venture Guides, bringing Series A total to $35.1M (Meir Orbach/CTech) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 18:41 Rating: 5

Memo: Block says 44M of its 51M+ Cash App MAUs were verified via its IDV program as of December 2022, after Hindenburg claimed Block overstated user numbers (Manya Saini/Reuters) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 16:41 Rating: 5

E3 2023 has reportedly been canceled (The Verge) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

Document: Twitter plans to exempt its top 500 advertisers and 10K most-followed orgs that have been previously verified from paying $1K/month for a checkmark (New York Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Some signatories of the open letter to pause AI training walk back their positions, others turned out to be fake, and many experts disagree with its proposal (Chloe Xiang/VICE) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 12:41 Rating: 5

Synopsys says it is launching the first full-stack AI-powered EDA suite covering all stages of chip design, including architecture, design, and manufacturing (Anton Shilov/AnandTech) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

WeMeta: the median price per square meter of land in Decentraland has dropped from ~$45 in 2022 to $5 in 2023, as the hype around the metaverse has receded (Meghan Bobrowsky/Wall Street Journal) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 16:41 Rating: 5

Google launches an Ads Transparency Center, showing all the ads from verified advertisers on its platforms, in the formats, the regions, and the dates they ran (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 15:41 Rating: 5

NYC-based LeapXpert, which monitors staff business chats via apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, and iMessage for compliance, raised a $22M Series A+ led by Rockefeller (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

Sources: Gemini is preparing to launch an international crypto derivatives exchange to offer perpetual futures, which US regulations prohibit for retail traders (The Information) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Docs: investments in 4chan include $5.6M from owner Hiroyuki Nishimura and his company plus $2.4M from Japanese company Good Smile, which makes toys for Disney (Justin Ling/Wired) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 12:41 Rating: 5

Paris-based Glopal, which helps e-commerce merchants sell to global customers through localization, logistics, and payments services, raised a €20M Series A (Dan Taylor/Tech.eu) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

Cerebras open sources seven GPT-based LLMs, ranging from 111M to 13B parameters and trained using its Andromeda supercomputer for AI, on GitHub and Hugging Face (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 15:41 Rating: 5

Researchers say North Korean hackers are likely laundering stolen crypto by renting cloud compute to mine fresh coins, avoiding more scrutinized crypto mixers (Andy Greenberg/Wired) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

Filing: a California court grants Twitter's request to subpoena GitHub for information on FreeSpeechEnthusiast, the alleged leaker of some Twitter source code (Malathi Nayak/Bloomberg) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 14:41 Rating: 5

Microsoft announces a second-generation Surface Hub 2S is coming later in 2023 and will become the first "touch-enabled board" to run Teams Rooms on Windows (Zac Bowden/Windows Central) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 13:41 Rating: 5

Review of 2K+ court cases: Russia uses facial recognition and surveillance systems to find and arrest scores of protesters and even prevent them from protesting (Lena Masri/Reuters) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 12:41 Rating: 5

Clearview AI's founder says the company has run nearly 1M searches for US police and now uses 30B images scraped without users consent from sites like Facebook (BBC) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 11:41 Rating: 5

Alex Szapiro, co-head of SoftBank's nearly $8B Latin America fund, says he is confident about securing extra capital from its parent despite a ~$900M paper loss (Michael Pooler/Financial Times) - TechnW3 Reviewed by TechNW3 on 01:41 Rating: 5