TechCoreVoice

Zoom will return to its business software roots to revive growth, after two years of trying to monetize consumers, many of whom are stuck with free 40-min calls (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

CFTC charges South Africa-based bitcoin pool operator Mirror Trading International with a $1.7B fraud, in its "largest ever fraud scheme case involving bitcoin" (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

Internal memo: Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox expects "slower growth" in H2 2022 and "teams should not expect vast influxes of new engineers and budgets" (Katie Paul/Reuters)

Sources: FTX is close to finalizing a term sheet to buy BlockFi for around $25M; BlockFi was last valued at $4.8B, per PitchBook (Kate Rooney/CNBC)

Meta says it is rolling out NFT support on Facebook, allowing select US creators to display NFTs on their profiles, after adding the feature to Instagram in May (TechCrunch)

Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, lays off 8% of its staff, around 85 to 90 people, and cancels four projects; Niantic was valued at $9B in November 2021 (Jason Schreier/Bloomberg)

Elliptic: North Korea-backed hacking group Lazarus might be behind Harmony's $100M altcoin theft; the hack bore similarities to the $600M Ronin bridge attack (Margi Murphy/Bloomberg)

EU lawmakers agree on anti-money laundering rules for crypto, requiring a verified customer identity for transfers between regulated digital wallet providers (Jack Schickler/CoinDesk)

Research details sophisticated malware targeting a wide range of routers then taking over Windows, Linux, and Mac devices, in N. America and Europe for ~2 years (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Firefox now offers a way to strip URLs of certain tracking parameters, like from HubSpot, Marketo, and Meta, following similar functionality in Brave Browser (Lawrence Abrams/BleepingComputer)

A look at YouTube "media critics", who use humor to dissect the output of more popular YouTubers, discuss the absurdities of influencers, and more (Adlan Jackson/New York Times)

Google announces Google Public Sector, a new division aiming to bring Google Cloud tech to US educational institutions and federal, state, and local governments (Abner Li/9to5Google)

Sony launches InZone, a brand of gaming devices aimed at PC gamers but with tight PS5 integration, starting with 4K and 1080p 27" monitors and three headsets (Shannon Liao/Washington Post)

Meta tests Discord-like changes in Facebook Groups, adding a channels list in a left-aligned sidebar that can include audio rooms, text chats, and feeds (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann is stepping down and transitioning to executive chairman, to be replaced by Google's president of commerce Bill Ready (Sarah E. Needleman/Wall Street Journal)

A deep dive on Truth Social's struggles, as the social network flails in its efforts to build a competitive platform while alienating tech talent and partners (Reuters)

T-Mobile launched App Insights, letting marketers target its wireless customers based on apps they have installed and engagement patterns; users can opt out (Allison Johnson/The Verge)

Sam Bankman-Fried says there are no active talks for FTX to acquire Robinhood; Robinhood says no acquisition can go through without the founders' approval (Jacquelyn Melinek/TechCrunch)

Google says Hangouts will shut down in November as it begins prompting mobile Hangouts users to move to Chat (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Data centers, typically located in suburbs and rural zones, are increasingly being built in urban areas to further reduce internet lag for locals (Michael Waters/MIT Technology Review)

Strapi, known for its open-source headless CMS, raises a $31M Series B led by CRV and says it plans to launch its Strapi Cloud service in 2023 (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Dublin-based &Open, which helps brands send both physical and digital gifts at scale, raised a $26M Series A led by Molten Ventures (Vishal Singh/Silicon Canals)

SSD benchmarks show the 256GB 13" MacBook Pro with M2 has ~50% slower read and ~30% slower write speeds than the previous gen 256GB MacBook Pro with M1 (Joe Rossignol/MacRumors)

Hundreds of documents detail the software bought by China to sift through its vast troves of surveillance data to "predict" who will become troublemakers (New York Times)

In the wake of SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade, tech companies give "no comment" in response to questions about users' data that can be used in prosecutions (Brian Kahn/Protocol)