OpenSea, the largest NFT platform by trading volume, said Thursday that it will cut about 20% of its workforce amid the ongoing crypto winter. OpenSea said it has 230 employees after the staff reductions, suggesting that 57 workers were let go. More: - CEO Devin Finzer attributed the cuts to economic instability in crypto and the broader economy. He said they will enable OpenSea to maintain years of runway even under "various crypto winter scenarios."
- The laid-off employees will receive benefits such as health coverage into 2023 and accelerated vesting, he noted.
- In January, OpenSea announced a $300M funding round at a valuation of $13.3B, representing a growth of nearly 800% in six months. It's the latest crypto firm to announce staff cuts during the crypto crash.
- In June, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it plans to lay off 1,100 employees, or 18% of its workforce. BlockFi, Gemini, and Crypto.com have also announced staff cuts.
- The cryptocurrency market value has now dropped below $1T, after reaching a high of nearly $3T in late 2021.
COINTELEGRAPH 
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Amazon's Ring provided customer video footage to U.S. law enforcement without a warrant or permission 11 times in the first six months of the year, according to a company letter sent to Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Markey had requested more information about Ring's relationships with police and asked the company to reform some policies, such as agreeing not to add voice recognition to its products. More: - In its response to Markey, Amazon VP Brian Huseman said Ring made a “good-faith determination” in its decision to provide 11 Ring doorbell videos to police without the owner's consent or a warrant.
- The videos were a response to emergency disclosure requests filed by police agencies, according ro Ring.
- While Ring has said it won't share customer footage without a warrant or consent, it still reserves a right to respond to "urgent law enforcement requests" immediately, Huseman said.
- According to Markey, Ring has refused to commit to not integrating voice and face recognition technology in its products. The senator is urging Congress to pass the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which would ban federal agencies from using biometric technologies.
Zoom-out: - In recent reports, Ring said it received a total of 3,147 legal demands in 2021, a jump from 1,900 in 2020.
- More than 85% of last year's demands were processed by way of court-issued search warrants. Ring was permitted to turn over both the video footage and data about the user.
- Its Neighbors Public Safety Service, which enables police to request Ring videos, currently has partnerships with 2,161 law enforcement agencies, a more than five-fold increase since November 2019.
ARS TECHNICA
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Intel plans to increase prices on some processors and other chips later this year due to rising production costs. In addition to inflationary pressures, Intel is facing higher labor, transportation, materials, and electricity costs, executives told Nikkei Asia. More: - The price hikes will be as high as 20% and affect nearly all of Intel's products, from personal computer chips to Wi-Fi chips, controllers, and data center servers, the sources said.
- The increases are expected to raise production costs on Dell, HP, Lenovo, and other computers with Intel processors.
- Another chipmaker, TSMC, has said it plans to increase its prices by a "single-digit" percentage in 2023.
- The hike will take effect just as PC shipments decline after the pandemic. According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totaled 72 million in Q2 2022, a 12.6% drop from Q2 2021.
- U.S. inflation reached 9.1% year-over-year in June, the highest such rate since December 1981, according to the Labor Department.
NIKKEI ASIA
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Facebook will allow select users to create up to four additional profiles as part of a test to drive more engagement on the platform. The profiles will all link back to the same core account and won't require the person to use their real name or identity. More: - For example, a user could have one profile for co-workers and another for friends, with separate feeds for each. Users can switch between profiles using two taps.
- The test is a change from Facebook's longstanding policy requiring “real names" and only a single account and identity, with some exceptions.
- Facebook says the aim is to "help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships." It declined to say where it's testing or how many users are involved, but noted that it won't change how it reports daily active user totals or other metrics.
- The experiment comes as Facebook faces increasing competition and lost users for the first time in late 2021. It released its short-form video platform Reels in February to compete with TikTok.
TECHCRUNCH
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 GOOD NEWS: Scientists used artificial intelligence to identify the Mars crater that ejected a 2.1-billion-year-old meteorite that crashed in the Sahara Desert. The famous meteorite, nicknamed Black Beauty, was found in Africa in 2011. More: - To determine the origin site, researchers led by Australia's Curtin University developed an algorithm to analyze the millions of craters on the Martian surface.
- Using a supercomputer and AI software, they found and listed around 90 million craters on Mars. Further research enabled them to narrow down the list of candidates to one crater with the same properties as Black Beauty.
- That crater, named Karratha, is 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) wide. It's unique in that it ejected the only found meteorite from Mars made of breccia, a type of sedimentary rock comprised of angular, broken rock fragments cemented together.
- Tracing Black Beauty to Karratha could generate new information about Mars' history. The researchers hope to apply the same technique to find other craters linked to the more than 300 Martian meteorites discovered on Earth.
- The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Some of this information first appeared in Inside AI. SPACE.COM
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 Ahead of World Emoji Day on Sunday, Emojipedia released 31 sample emoji designs that will likely be added to smartphones this year and next. The Emoji 15.0 draft list includes shaking face, "pushing hands," light blue, pink, and grey hearts, a moose, jellyfish, peas, ginger, a wooden flute, and a Khanda. More: - At 31 designs, Emoji 15.0 is the smallest update so far. Last year's Emoji Version 14.0 had 112 distinct emoji, including skin tone variations.
- This year's list will require approval from the Unicode Consortium, which oversees text rendering standards and can approve or decline the designs on an individual basis.
- The non-profit Consortium is expected to finalize the emoji in September, after which they'll begin rolling out to devices via software updates in late 2022 and into 2023.
- Emojipedia is now surveying people about which designs they are most excited about. The search engine also released data showing that the "Loudly Crying Face" and "Face with Tears of Joy" have been battling for the title of most used emoji.
PHONE ARENA
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QUICK HITS - Elon Musk gave a shout out to Boxabl calling it a “cool product.”Invest in Boxabl today with over 15,000+ investors!*
- Microsoft is reverting back to a three-year release cycle for major Windows versions, placing a Windows 12 release sometime in 2024.
- TikTok's chief security officer, Roland Cloutier, is stepping down but will remain at the company in a strategic advisory role.
- As part of its new agreement to provide 4,500 vehicles to Walmart, EV startup Canoo is prohibited from selling its delivery vans to Amazon.
- A former CIA engineer, Joshua Schulte, was convicted of leaking secret documents that WikiLeaks later published.
- Lego is releasing a new set based on "The Office." Available for preorder as of today, the 1,164-piece set includes 15 minifigures and replicas of iconic show pieces. It was created after receiving 10,000 votes via the Lego Ideas crowdsourcing program.
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 |  | Beth is a writer and analyst at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily tech news. Since starting work at Inside, she has covered various topics including virtual reality, drones, and e-commerce. Prior to that she was a public policy and investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, where she won a Pulitzer Prize nomination and First Amendment Award for reporting on the rising costs of pensions. Reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. |   | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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