ByteDance confirms laying off hundreds of TikTok content moderators in Malaysia and plans to invest $2B in 2024 on trust and safety; sources: 700 were laid off (Norman Goh/Nikkei Asia)

Norman Goh / Nikkei Asia:
ByteDance confirms laying off hundreds of TikTok content moderators in Malaysia and plans to invest $2B in 2024 on trust and safety; sources: 700 were laid off  —  KUALA LUMPUR — ByteDance, the parent company of social media platform TikTok, confirmed on Friday that it will be laying off hundreds …

How Google plans to deflect and delay the US breakup threat; legal timelines may let it avoid changes for years, and a ruling on remedies may come in mid-2025 (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
How Google plans to deflect and delay the US breakup threat; legal timelines may let it avoid changes for years, and a ruling on remedies may come in mid-2025  —  Search group claims regulators are overreaching just as foreign and domestic rivals are gaining ground

Automattic demanding an 8% cut of WP Engine's revenue is a wanton violation of general open source ideals, and the damage could extend far beyond WordPress (David Heinemeier Hansson/HEY)

David Heinemeier Hansson / HEY:
Automattic demanding an 8% cut of WP Engine's revenue is a wanton violation of general open source ideals, and the damage could extend far beyond WordPress  —  Automattic demanding 8% of WP Engine's revenues because they're not “giving back enough” to WordPress is a wanton violation …

ByteDance launches its first earbuds, the open-ear wearables called Ola Friend, designed as an audio assistant, shipping on October 17 in China for ~$170 (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
ByteDance launches its first earbuds, the open-ear wearables called Ola Friend, designed as an audio assistant, shipping on October 17 in China for ~$170  —  The Ola Friend earphones are linked to ByteDance's self-developed chatbot, Doubao, currently China's most popular GenAI app

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to David Baker for "computational protein design" and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to David Baker for “computational protein design” and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper  —  - Demis Hassabis, John Jumper share half the $1.1 million award  — Remainder goes to David Baker for building new proteins

CamScanner app maker Intsig is the best-performing China IPO stock in 2024 for $100M+ listings, after a euphoric market response to Beijing's stimulus measures (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
CamScanner app maker Intsig is the best-performing China IPO stock in 2024 for $100M+ listings, after a euphoric market response to Beijing's stimulus measures  —  - Intsig Chairman Zhen Lixin's net worth hits $876 million  — Shanghai-listed firm has surged since Sept. 26 debut

Israel compromising Hezbollah pagers shows the West should take hardware security more seriously, especially as most electronics manufacturing shifted to Asia (Chris Miller/Financial Times)

Chris Miller / Financial Times:
Israel compromising Hezbollah pagers shows the West should take hardware security more seriously, especially as most electronics manufacturing shifted to Asia  —  Unreliable suppliers can modify devices, yet companies devote few resources to verifying the origin of components

Dublin-based Appeals Centre, backed by Meta's Oversight Board, launches to moderate disputes between EU users and Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube under the DSA (Supantha Mukherjee/Reuters)

Supantha Mukherjee / Reuters:
Dublin-based Appeals Centre, backed by Meta's Oversight Board, launches to moderate disputes between EU users and Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube under the DSA  —  Social media users in the European Union will be able to make complaints against Facebook, ByteDance's TikTok and Alphabet's …

SportQuake: crypto companies have spent a record of almost £130M on Premier League sponsorship deals for the 2024/25 season, buoyed by tighter gambling rules (Emily Nicolle/Bloomberg)

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
SportQuake: crypto companies have spent a record of almost £130M on Premier League sponsorship deals for the 2024/25 season, buoyed by tighter gambling rules  —  English football club deals with crypto firms are at a record high. … The flood of crypto money into English football is continuing …

A look at the fall of Byju's, India's most valuable startup in 2022 with an estimated $22B valuation, as it faces insolvency and lawsuits in India and the US (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
A look at the fall of Byju's, India's most valuable startup in 2022 with an estimated $22B valuation, as it faces insolvency and lawsuits in India and the US  —  Edtech company's legal battles from Delaware to Bengaluru have exposed corporate governance issues

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are increasingly eyeing nuclear reactors, which provide steady "baseload" power, as their carbon emissions climb due to AI tools (Justine Calma/The Verge)

Justine Calma / The Verge:
Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are increasingly eyeing nuclear reactors, which provide steady “baseload” power, as their carbon emissions climb due to AI tools  —  Major tech firms, in search of carbon pollution-free electricity for data centers, are helping to revive nuclear energy in the US.

Sources: Apple plans to launch iOS 18.1 and Apple Intelligence on Oct. 28 and announce new Macs and an iPad mini in late Oct., with shipments starting on Nov. 1 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to launch iOS 18.1 and Apple Intelligence on Oct. 28 and announce new Macs and an iPad mini in late Oct., with shipments starting on Nov. 1  —  Apple is inching away from its annual product upgrade cycle, a move that could lead to more frequent releases and fewer jarring delays.

A profile of UK teenage hacker Arion Kurtaj, a Lapsus$ member who leaked GTA VI video in 2022 and was found guilty in 2023 for hacking Nvidia, Uber, and others (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
A profile of UK teenage hacker Arion Kurtaj, a Lapsus$ member who leaked GTA VI video in 2022 and was found guilty in 2023 for hacking Nvidia, Uber, and others  —  The City of London Police had put the teenage boy in the suburban Travelodge to protect him.  They even set up a code …

Foxconn Q3: revenue up 20.2% YoY to ~$57.3B on strong AI server demand; consumer electronics revenue, including iPhones, was flat YoY; stock is up ~86% in 2024 (Ben Blanchard/Reuters)

Ben Blanchard / Reuters:
Foxconn Q3: revenue up 20.2% YoY to ~$57.3B on strong AI server demand; consumer electronics revenue, including iPhones, was flat YoY; stock is up ~86% in 2024  —  Taiwan's Foxconn (2317.TW), the world's largest contract electronics maker, beat expectations to post its highest-ever revenue …

Mullenweg says "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally", as his WP Engine feud blurs the lines between WordPress.org, WordPress Foundation, and Automattic (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Mullenweg says “WordPress.org just belongs to me personally”, as his WP Engine feud blurs the lines between WordPress.org, WordPress Foundation, and Automattic  —  The lines between the WordPress open-source project, the nonprofit backing it, and the commercial arm owned by Automattic are blurring.