Adobe announced Photoshop and Illustrator web apps, for improved collaboration and easy edits.
Adobe is clearly following Figma's successful browser-based solution. They say that the idea is not to do complex work from the browser, but allow collaborators to view your work from a browser to provide comments and feedback, like a Google Doc. It will also allow users to make "minor tweaks and quick edits". Link

Microsoft passes Apple as the world's most valuable company, which it last achieved in July 2020.
Apple's market cap dropped to $2.43T after its earnings report on Thursday and Microsoft increased 1.1% to $2.46T. Apple shares fell even though their revenue was up 29% in Q4, to $83.36B, since they were estimated to be $84.85B. Link

Facebook Meta is dropping the Oculus brand in favor of Meta starting in early 2022.
In a quiet blog post that was posted 15 minutes after the official Meta announcement, Facebook's CTO, Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth said that Oculus Quest will be renamed to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App. He also mentioned that Facebook Reality Labs will be renamed to Reality Labs. Facebook has used the Oculus brand since they bought Oculus VR in 2014. Link

Facebook renames to Meta to focus on the metaverse and connecting people.
They just ended their Facebook Connect live event where Mark Zuckerberg said that "Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product, but over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company". The well polished online event showed the future of AR/VR and the how the metaverse will encompass our entire lives. Link

Photo credit: Facebook

Facebook's News Feed algorithm treated angry emoji reactions as 5x more valuable than Likes, amplifying controversial content.
Internal documents reveal that starting in 2017 Facebook gave extra value to emoji reactions, including 'angry', pushing more emotional and provocative content into users' news feeds. The theory was that posts that prompted lots of reaction emoji tended to keep users more engaged, and keeping users engaged was the key to Facebook's business. This was revealed in disclosures made to the SEC and Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Link

LinkedIn launches a global freelance services marketplace to compete with Fiverr and Upwork.
They previously ran a quiet US beta of their "Service Marketplace" and got 2M users (out of their 800M total users). It lets people advertise themselves for short-term engagements to those looking to hire people for such roles. Service Marketplace is not currently charging any fees and is launching with 250 job categories, planning to expand to 500. Link

The top 10,000 individuals who own Bitcoin hold about 33% of Bitcoin in circulation, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study.
The study looked at wallet addresses which means that the concentration is most likely an understatement since they cannot tell which addresses are controlled by the same entity. Link

Facebook will spend $10B this year on Facebook Reality Labs, Facebook's metaverse division, which creates AR and VR hardware, software, and content.
Facebook sees AR and VR as being core to "the next generation of online social experiences". The company will implement a new financial reporting structure that will divide Reality Labs from Facebook's other apps (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger), as a sign to investors that the Reality Labs business matters and should be judged separately from Facebook. Link

Blue Origin plans to launch a private space station called Orbital Reef between 2025 and 2030.
They released a video showing a rendition of the space station. The station will accommodate up to 10 people at a time and be geared toward commerce, tourism, and research. Blue Origin calls it a "mixed-use business park" in space and will offer end-to-end solutions including transportation, robotics services, and more. It could eventually take over after the ISS is retired in the latter 2020s. Link

Photo credit: Blue Origin

Internal documents show Facebook struggling to attract US users under the age of 30, with US teenage users declining by 13% since 2019.
Teenage users are projected to drop 45% over the next two years, driving an overall decline in daily users in the company's most lucrative ad market. Young adults between 20 and 30 are expected to decline by 4% during the same timeframe. If it doesn’t correct course, Facebook could, for the first time, lose out on an entire generation. Instagram remains popular with teens, but Facebook's own data shows that they are starting to engage with the app less. The internal documents are part of disclosures made to the SEC and provided to Congress by Frances Haugen, the ex-Facebook employee turned whistleblower. Link

Hertz, the rental car company, ordered 100k Teslas for $4.2B, after exiting bankruptcy in July.
The deal is the largest order ever for an electric vehicle fleet. Tesla will deliver the Model 3s over the next 14 months, and will be available for rent in major US markets and parts of Europe starting in early November. The size of the order implies that Hertz is paying close to list prices. Link

Tesla rolls back its Full Self-Driving version 10.3 beta to 10.2 after "seeing some issues".
Testers published videos about phantom forward collision warnings (FCW) and other bugs. Version 10.3 began rolling out a few days ago with a long list of release notes, including things like better brake light and turn signal detection, and reduced false slowdowns and improved offsetting for pedestrians. Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla is "Seeing some issues with 10.3, so rolling back to 10.2 temporarily". Link

Walmart has launched over 200 Bitcoin ATMs across the US.
Shoppers can use cash to buy BTC at Coinstar machines inside Walmarts. Coinstar is known for letting consumers exchange coins for paper bills or gift cards. The ability to buy bitcoin is enabled by Coinme, a crypto wallet and payment firm that specializes in bitcoin ATMs. Link

Photo credit: Coinstar

Twitter now lets all Android and iOS users host a Space, after previously limiting access to accounts with at least 600 followers.
Twitter's live audio chat rooms (their take on Clubhouse) have been quite successful over the past year since they launched with limited access, so they're now giving access to all mobile users. For some reason launching a Twitter Space is a bit hidden (not sure if that's by design or poor design), to start a live audio room you need to long press the compose tweet button and then you get more options. Link

WeWork's first day of trading on the NYSE closed up 13.5% after the company went public through a SPAC with BowX.
WeWork has a market cap of about $9.5B (compared to the $47B valuation before its failed IPO in 2019). They accumulated $6B in fresh losses during the 18 months ending in mid-2021. WeWork's founder Adam Neumann holds 11% of the company (worth about $1B), after being pushed out by WeWork's largest investor SoftBank, in 2019. He held a party for WeWork's first 100 employees to celebrate the SPAC. SoftBank has put more than $17B into WeWork since 2017. Link

Google lowers its Play Store subscription fees to 15% and fees for ebooks and on-demand music streaming services to "as low as 10%".
They're lowering their cut from 30% to 15% starting Jan. 1, 2022. They previously had a reduction only on the first $1M in revenue and for users who subscribed longer than a year. IAP aren't affected by this change. Google says 99% of developers on its platform qualify "qualify for a service fee of 15% or less". Link

Photo credit: Rajeshwar Bachu

Apple Search Ads now account for 58% of iOS app installs from ads, up from only 17% a year ago.
This is due to Apple's recent ATT change in May (with iOS 14.5). Apple's privacy changes made it difficult for rival ad networks (Facebook, Google, Snap, Tiktok) to track and attribute mobile ad conversions. So many advertisers just moved to Apple's ad network which does a better job at showing advertisers which audiences and keywords got conversions. Analysts project Apple will make $5B off ads this year and $20B per year by 2024. Quite a move by Apple, in the name of user privacy! Link

Photo credit: Apple

PayPal has offered to buy Pinterest for $45B.
PayPal's offer represents a 26% premium to Pinterest's closing price of $55.58. The news sent Pinterest's stock up 14% to $63.51 and PayPal's shares fell over 4%. PayPal has a market cap of $304B. Link

Update: PayPal says they are not interested in buying Pinterest. This news sent PayPal's stock up 6.1% and Pinterest down 13.2% in premarket trading.

ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF gained nearly 5% in its NYSE debut, with ~$981M in trading volume, making it the second most traded ETF debut ever.
The first Bitcoin-focused ETF, based on Bitcoin futures closed at $41.94. Invesco canceled its plans to launch a Bitcoin futures ETF, saying it would instead pursue an ETF holding crypto. Link

Facebook is planning to change its name next week . It wants to be known for building the metaverse.
Mark Zuckerberg wants to be known for building the metaverse and the new name will reflect that. He plans to talk about it at the company's annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil it sooner. In July he said that over the next several years, "we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company". The rebrand would likely be similar to Google's Alphabet and have the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more.
Faceverse? 😀
Link

Photo credit: Thought Catalog

Google launches $600 Pixel 6 and $900 Pixel 6 Pro, both with 50MP rear camera, coming Oct. 28.
The Pixel 6 has a 90Hz 6.4" display and the Pixel 6 Pro has a 120Hz 6.7" display. Both have 128GB of base storage, the 6 goes up to 256GB, the 6 Pro up to 512GB, and are available for preorder October 19th. The pricing is aggressive compared to similar iPhones, Samsungs, or even OnePlus phones. Both have Google's new custom-designed ARM SoC (System on a Chip) processor called Tensor. Both phones are quite big, the Pixel 6 is effectively as big as an iPhone 13 Pro Max and the 6 Pro is even larger. Their website however keeps crashing for many people, preventing orders from being placed. Link

Photo credits: Google

Tesla launched an insurance service in Texas that uses real-time driving behavior.
Tesla already offers insurance in CA but the new Texas launch uses behavior data to set premiums based on the owner's "safety score". Typically insurance providers look at credit, age and gender, but Tesla says they won't even look at customers' claim history and driving records. The premium can change every month based on the driver's behavior: every forced collision warning and forced Autopilot disengagement will affect their score. Following vehicles too close, braking too hard and turning corners aggressively could lower their score, as well. The same safety score was recently used to screen applicants for Tesla's Full Self Driving feature. Link

Apple's AR/VR headset is expected to face production delays due to its complex design.
According to reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's industrial design requirements for the new head-mounted display are "much higher than competitors' products". Apple wants to have a solid ecosystem of hardware, software, and services at launch so as a result, the product could be delayed. It was previously scheduled for the second quarter of 2022 but now people are saying it will be ready for Christmas 2022. Link

Photo credit: Antonio De Rosa

Apple Oct 18th event summary: new 14" and 16" MacBooks Pros, M1 Pro/Max chips, and AirPods 3.
Apple just finished their event, here's a summary of the important things they announced:

AirPods 3 ($180): they look like the AirPods Pro, including the battery case, and support spacial audio. Unlike the AirPods Pro, the new AirPods 3 have a universal fit instead of the adjustable silicone tips. They don't have Active Noise Cancellation or Transparency Mode. Increased battery life to up to 6 hours, and support MagSafe charging.

M1 Pro and M1 Max chips: M1 Pro is 70% faster than M1 and has 2x the GPU performance. M1 Pro supports 32GB RAM and M1 Max supports 64GB RAM.

14-inch and 16-inch new MacBook Pros (14-inch starts at $2000, 16-inch starts at $2500): they finally got rid of the butterfly keyboard, have a new design, the display has a notch like the iPhone (but no FaceID), support 120Hz, and use the M1 Pro/Max chips. They also brought back the SD and HDMI ports, MagSafe 3 charging, no more Touch Bar, and up to 21 hours of battery life.

HomePod mini in new colors ($100): yellow, blue, and orange in addition to the current white and space gray. Price remains the same.

New "Voice Plan" for Apple Music: $5 per month and you can access Apple Music exclusively through Siri.

Link

Photo credits: Apple

Foxconn, the iPhone maker, reveal they're making three electric vehicles: a bus, a sedan, and an SUV.
Foxconn released a video teasing three new electric vehicles it plans to unveil on Oct 18 during its Hon Hai Tech Day. The cars are made by Foxtron, a joint venture between Foxconn and Taiwanese car maker Yulon. The video barely shows the sedan but there's a Pininfarina badge on the side, so apparently the Italian design house that designs Ferraris and Maseratis was involved. They did show the SUV and bus, photos below and in the video. Link

Photo credits: Foxconn

Bitcoin ETFs are expected to start trading as early as Tuesday if approved by the SEC.
The SEC has received applications from several funds including ProShares, Invesco, and Valkyrie, to start trading bitcoin ETF futures. The SEC has 75 days to review ETF proposals and ProShares, the first bitcoin ETF application, will hit its 75th day on Monday. Many other funds are expected to follow. Bitcoin passed $61K this week because of the news of bitcoin ETFs. ProShares is expected to trade under the ticker "BITO". Link

Photo credit: André François McKenzie

Valve quietly updates Steam's rules to ban blockchain games and NFTs.
Steam, one of the most well known game stores, apparently made the change because the company doesn't allow game items that could have real-world value and potentially exchange NFTs for real money. Valve hasn't made a statement explaining its reasons. Once this news broke, Epic Games' CEO tweeted that the Epic Games Store welcomes games that use the blockchain. Link

Facebook reveal a research project called Ego4D, in partnership with 13 universities, that uses 1st-person video to improve AI perception.
As part of its push into AR, Facebook is working on AI that will analyze peoples' lives using first-person video, recording what they see, do, and hear in order to help them with everyday tasks. Facebook's researchers outlined skills it wants these systems to develop, including "episodic memory" (answering questions like "where did I leave my keys?") and "audio-visual diarization" (remembering who said what when). Link

WhatsApp rolling out end-to-end encryption for chat history backups in iCloud and Google Drive.
WhatsApp chats have been encrypted but users had no way to protect the backup of those chats stored in the cloud (in iCloud for iPhone users, and Google Drive for Android users). Now WhatsApp's 2B users will have the option to encrypt their chat history backup in iCloud or Google Drive. This has been a major loophole that has been exploited by governments to obtain and review private communication between individuals. This is a privacy win for WhatsApp vs. Apple, which encrypts iMessages but still holds the keys to encrypted backups (that Apple can hand over to law enforcement). Link

Photo by Mika Baumeister, Unsplash

Investigation finds Amazon puts its own brands first, even above better rated products.
An investigation found that Amazon places products from its house brands ("Amazon Basics") and products exclusive to the site ahead of those from competitors, even competitors with higher ratings and more sales. These listings are not visibly marked as "sponsored" and they're part of regular organic Amazon search results. In 2019 Amazon told Congress that its search results do not take into account whether a product is an Amazon-owned brand. Link

Credit: Bryan Angelo

Microsoft is closing LinkedIn in China and replacing it with a job board.
The company said that it has faced a "significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China". Sources say in March China told LinkedIn to better regulate content and gave them 30 days to do so. In response, LinkedIn said it would be temporarily pausing new sign ups in China as it ensured it was in compliance with local law, now deciding to shut it down completely. Link

Apple may add health features to AirPods, including enhancing hearing, reading body temperature, and monitoring posture.
AirPods would use motion sensors and alert wearers of slouching and to improve their posture. AirPods Pro already offer features to improve hearing, including "conversation boost" that increases the volume and clarity of people in front of the wearer. Apple wants to add health and wellness features to devices beyond the Apple Watch, where most of their health functions exist today and they're also working on using iPhones to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline. Link

Apple slashes iPhone 13 production by as much as 10M units due to the global chip shortage.
Apple was expected to produce 90M units of the new iPhone models by the end of this year, but Apple told its manufacturers that the number of units would be lower because chip suppliers including Broadcom and Texas Instruments are struggling to deliver components. Link

Coinbase is launching an NFT platform to compete with OpenSea.
Coinbase announced they're launching an NFT marketplace and social feed, with the goal of making NFTs more accessible. Expected by the end of this year, it will let people mint, purchase, showcase, and discover NFTs easily. It will include a social feed so people can follow other users and artists to see what NFTs are popular. For now, there's a waitlist available. Link

Photo credit: Coinbase

Canva is adding video creation to its product line, including the free tier.
Canva, the $40B startup that makes design accessible to everyone, just announced they're adding a video editing suite that offers video templates, similar to their graphic design solution. It has a scene-based interface, the ability to manage multiple audio tracks, and animations and automatic transitions in an easy-to-use interface. Canva video also lets multiple users edit the same video in the scene editor. Link

Photo credit: Canva

Apple announced ANOTHER event, titled “Unleashed”, on October 18, where new MacBook Pros with M1X chips are expected.
The event will be virtual, from Apple's campus, on Monday, October 18 at 10:00 am PST. There have been rumors for months about redesigned 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with thinner bezels and larger displays. The new MacBook Pro will use an M1X chip, which is a faster, more powerful version of the M1, plus it could support up to 32GB RAM. Link

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will meet with Facebook's Oversight Board to "share the truth with them".
Haugen tweeted that she has accepted the invitation to brief the Oversight Board, adding "Facebook has lied to the board repeatedly, and I am looking forward to sharing the truth with them." She will also appear before the UK Parliament's Online Safety Bill committee on Oct 25. They are considering options to hold social media companies accountable for protecting the safety of users, specifically kids. Link

Magic Leap raises another $500M and will release its slimmer second-gen AR headset in 2022 with twice the field of view.
The funding gives them a $2B valuation, very similar to their round in October 2014 where they raised $542 million at a $2B valuation. They've raised a total of $3.5B in funding and nearly shut down last year. There aren't many details about their Magic Leap 2 AR glasses, they said they "will be the industry's smallest and lightest device built for enterprise", "designed to increase business adoption of AR". Link

Magic Leap's new headset, Photo credit: Magic Leap

Apple is building a new 550K square foot office in LA to make more TV shows and movies.
The new buildings, located in Culver City, will be used for Apple TV+ production. Apple plans to add 3,000 employees in the Culver City campus by 2026. Apple said the new regional headquarters will be completely powered by renewable energy and "be a mixed use facility", apparently they'll primarily be soundstages. Link

Facebook launched a new audio tab for podcasts, Live Audio rooms, and short-form audio.
It's being rolled out to all Facebook users aged 18 and up in the US through the top navigation within Facebook Watch. It'll feature content from creators users follow, personalized recommendations, and popular audio on Facebook. They're also making their Clubhouse rival, Live Audio Rooms, available to global users, and are beginning to roll out a new product called Soundbites, a kind of audio-TikTok with short audio clips. Link

Photo credit: Facebook

William Shatner is flying to the edge of space on Tuesday on Blue Origin's New Shepard, but employees say they wouldn't fly on it.
90 year old Shatner will be Blue Origin's first celebrity customer and the oldest person to reach the boundary of space. He's set to fly 62 miles above sea level on an 11 minute automated flight, without a pilot on board. However, in a recent open letter, some Blue Origin employees said they wouldn't ride its New Shepard rocket. New Shepard's emergency systems should protect passengers, but the letter raised safety concerns. Link

Tesla has delayed the rollout of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta 10.2 software to 1000 drivers because of last-minute concerns.
The "Full Self-Driving" update was supposed to roll out to ~1,000 Tesla owners with perfect safety scores of 100, as determined by Tesla ("the likelihood that your driving could result in a future collision"). Tesla has been testing the beta version of its FSD software for about a year and many Tesla owners are waiting for the big upgrade. Link

136 countries including the US, the UK, China, India, and every EU country agree to set a 15% minimum corporate tax rate.
The OECD lead the deal and it still needs to be approved by G20 leaders later this month. It will likely take at least two years to implement. The deal aims to ensure that the world's 100 biggest companies, like Facebook and Johnson & Johnson, pay taxes on their operations and sales around the globe, while introducing an international effective minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. The tax would allow countries to pocket an additional $150B in yearly tax revenue. This is a big deal against corporate tax avoidance in places like Ireland. Link

Apple files appeal in Epic Games case, potentially delaying App Store changes for years.
Apple asked the court to suspend the ruling that says developers can add in-app links to non-Apple payment mechanisms, until appeals in the case have finished. If Apple wins the stay, which will be decided in November, Apple won't have to change it policies until the appeals process is over, which could take years. Regardless, Apple isn't letting Epic's Fortnite back on the AppStore, which the judge ruled is within Apple's rights. Link

Firefox is adding ads to its browser. Will appear as suggestions when typing.
Starting with version 92, when you type something into the Firefox address bar you will now get "suggestions from trusted partners" (meaning: companies who paid) at the bottom of the usual search suggestions. Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions which will now include content from paid advertisers. You will be able to disable "contextual suggestions". Link

Twitter is selling its mobile advertising network, MoPub, for $1.05B to AppLovin.
MoPub made Twitter $188M in revenue in 2020. Twitter said it's selling MoPub to accelerate the development and growth of its owned and operated revenue products. The sale is aligned with Twitter's goal of reaching $7.5B in revenue by the end of 2023. Twitter acquired MoPub in September of 2013 for $350M. AppLovin is a game developer and ad-tech company with a market cap of $29B. Link

Elon Musk says Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas.
Last May, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Alameda County over the closing of the company's factory in Fremont, California to stop the spread of COVID and restrict any businesses not deemed essential, and threatened to take his business outside the state. The lawsuit was later dropped and the drama with Alameda County wasn't mentioned at the shareholder event where Musk announced the move to Austin. Rather, Musk attributed the move in part due to a more accessible location for workers. Link

Hackers defaced Twitch for a few hours, replacing a number of background game images with photos of Jeff Bezos.
This hasn't been a good week for Twitch. It isn't clear if the hack is related to the security leak from a couple days ago. It's entirely possible that the leak revealed some code that let people easily alter background images on Twitch. Link

Google and YouTube will prohibit ads and monetization on content that denies climate change, starting next month.
In one of the most aggressive policies any tech giant has set to combat climate change misinformation, they won't let climate-denying creators profit on their platforms, via ads or creator payments. Google said it's making these changes in response to frustration from advertisers and content creators about their messages appearing alongside climate denialism. Google advertisers and publishers, as well as YouTube creators, will be prohibited from making ad revenue off content that contradicts "well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change" the company's ads team said in a statement. Link

A massive Twitch leak has been reported including their entire source code, creator payouts, and a Steam competitor in the works.
The 125GB of information includes the source code with commit history "going back to its early beginnings", an unreleased Steam competitor, named Vapor, from Amazon Game Studios, Twitch's internal security tools, and 3 years worth of details of creator payouts on Twitch. It shows that 81 Twitch streamers have been paid more than $1 million by Twitch since August 2019. Link

Amazon is reportedly working on a smart refrigerator.
Called Project Pulse, the fridge will be able to detect when certain products are about to run out or expire and notify users so they can order more from Amazon or Whole Foods. It will also predict what users want to order and track purchasing habits. Amazon will use the same computer-vision technology it uses at cashierless Amazon Go stores. The fridge could also offer recipe suggestions. Link

Illustration by RN in TECH

Tesla must pay $137 million in damages to a former employee in a discrimination lawsuit.
The man worked as an elevator operator at Tesla's Fremont factory in 2015-2016. He was subjected to racist abuse, like colleagues telling him to "go back to Africa", and said that Tesla employees left drawings of swastikas, racist graffiti and offensive cartoons, while supervisors neglected to halt the abuse. This is reportedly the largest in an individual race discrimination employment case. Link

Instagram ditches the IGTV brand and combines all video but Reels into new "Instagram Video" format.
In a move to organize the mess in the Instagram app, with different products that are very similar (Posts, Stories, Reels, IGTV, Live, Highlights...), both long-form IGTV videos and Instagram Feed videos will be combined. Any video people see (long and short) on Instagram will behave the same: tap anywhere on the video for fullscreen and then keep scrolling to discover more videos or tap the back button to exit. Reels (their short-form video TikTok rival) remains unchanged and separate. Videos can be up to 60 minutes in length. They're also adding trimming and filters to videos. Link

Photo credit: Instagram

Ozy Media CEO says the company is open for business, only days after announcing that it would shut down.
Last week The New York Times revealed that Ozy's COO, Samir Rao, impersonated a YouTube executive on a fundraising call with Goldman Sachs and accused them of inflating their audience numbers. After growing backlash, the company said it was shutting down and fired most of its staff. Now, CEO Carlos Watson says the board's decision was "premature" and has been reversed, saying the company would improve. Ozy Media produces podcasts, television series and events. Link

Photo credit: NBC Today Show

Amazon Prime members can now send gifts with a phone number or email address, no physical address required.
This is rolling out to mobile users in the US. There's currently no way to opt out of the new feature which could be a bad idea that is ripe for abuse and online harassment of others. The gift recipient can reveal what the giver sent, then decide whether to decline, accept it but convert it to an Amazon gift card (the giver won't be notified) or, accept the gift. If the recipient accepts the gift, the giver is charged. Link

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger services came back after 6 hours down.
According to Facebook's statement, the reason the services were down is due to configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between their data centers. The outage also impacted many of Facebook's internal tools and systems. According to Netblocks, one hour of outage of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger costs the global economy $160M, so the outage cost about $1B. Link

Electric truck startup Rivian files to go public. They lost $994M in the first half of 2021.
Rivian, which started deliveries of its R1T pickup truck in September, is one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year. Their losses this year are far more than the $377M million net loss in the same period of 2020. Most are R&D costs which are projected to grow. They expect to spend $8B total thought the end of 2023, investing in building their infrastructure. Link

The whistleblower behind the leak of internal Facebook documents has been revealed, ex-Facebook PM Frances Haugen.
On an interview with 60 Minutes, she said that her intention was to help the company. She became increasingly alarmed by how profits came before public safety and that the company's own research says that Instagram harms teenagers. Haugen gathered internal documents from Facebook before submitting her resignation, and those were the foundation of The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series. Link

Apple earned $8.5B from games in 2019, more than Microsoft, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, and Sony combined.
This is according to a WSJ analysis. Unlike the others, Apple doesn't make any video games, it basically just sells them. Link

Cruise and Waymo get green light from California's DMV to start charging for autonomous robotaxi services offered to the public.
General Motors' Cruise and Alphabet's Waymo will begin to operate autonomous taxis in designated areas. Cruise without safety drivers present, and Waymo with. For now, they are allowed to charge for autonomous delivery services, but still need to get a permit from the Public Utilities Commission to be able to charge for robotaxi services. Link

Andela, that helps companies build remote engineering teams, raises $200M led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.
This round, their series E, gives them a $1.5B post-money valuation. Andela, a fully remote company, vets engineers from 80+ countries and pairs them with their clients, companies like GitHub, Cloudflare and ViacomCBS. They've raised $381M since being founded in Lagos, Nigeria in 2014 and have over 300 employees. Link

Clubhouse announce several new features, including in-app recording finally.
The recording feature (called Replays) seems to come after Callin, a competing app, came out with a strong offering that has recording. They also released Clips (in beta) that allow anyone to share 30 second clips of public room, and spatial audio for Android. Clubhouse claims that over 700,000 rooms are created every day on the app. Link

Intel reveals Loihi 2, a new neuromorphic research processor that is 10 times faster than their previous version.
The second-generation research chip uses pre-production Intel 4 process that relies on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, grows to 1 million neurons, and has up to 15 times greater resource density. Neuromorphic computing, which draws insights from neuroscience to create chips that function more like the human brain, aspires to deliver orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency, speed of computation and efficiency of learning. Link

Google scraps its plan for Plex, its planned mobile banking service that syncs with Google Pay.
The plan was announced two years ago and was billed as a new way to bank, with an emphasis on simplicity and without monthly or overdraft fees. It was supposed to let Google Pay users sign up for enhanced checking accounts and debit cards at Citigroup and several other banks, co-branded with Google. Sources say it was cancelled after the departure of a Google Pay exec who championed the project. Link

TikTok announce "TikTok Top Moments", an NFT collection by top creators.
They're trying to ride the NFT bandwagon, similar to NBA Top Shot, so they're connecting select creators and celebrities like Lil Nas X, Bella Poarch, Grimes, and Gary Vaynerchuk with prominent NFT creators to create one-of-one limited edition NFTs that celebrate their viral videos. They claim that "TikTok NFTs provide a way for creators to be recognized and rewarded for their content, and for fans to own a culturally-significant moment on TikTok". The proceeds from the NFT sales will "largely go directly to the creators and NFT artists involved", however some will go to charity. The drop site will go live on Oct. 6th with Lil Nas X going first. Link

Illustration by RN in TECH