If the market for initial public offerings recovers in the new year, one company that aims to go public early on is Reddit. An IPO will put the spotlight on the prospects for Reddit’s advertising business, which has fallen short of ambitious growth targets outlined by executives two years ago.

Reddit expects to finish this year with ad revenue up more than 20% to slightly over $800 million, two people familiar with the matter said. While that’s a faster growth rate than firms like Snap and Pinterest reported, Reddit had said two years ago it aimed to exceed $1 billion in ad revenue by 2023, up from around $350 million in 2021. Ad executives say one reason Reddit fell short was the weakness in the ad market starting early last year, when rising interest rates caused marketers to pull back.

Do you use Mint Mobile and did you receive a warning about a data breach? You are not alone and sadly, they are real notifications about a data breach that exposed customers’ personal information.

According to Mint Mobile, customer information that was exposed in the breach includes:

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Name
Telephone number
Email address
SIM serial number and IMEI number (a device identifier similar to a serial number)
A brief description of service plan purchased


  

Cuba becomes part of a handful of countries that allow the practice, which some equate with murder.

Google is wrapping its head around the idea of being a generative AI company. The "code red" called in response to ChatGPT has had Googlers scrambling to come up with AI features and ideas. Once all the dust settles on that work, Google might turn inward and try to "optimize" the company with some of its new AI capabilities. With artificial intelligence being the hot new thing, how much of Google's, uh, natural intelligence needs to be there?

A report at The Information says that AI might already be taking people's jobs at Google. The report cites people briefed on the plans and says Google intends to "consolidate staff, including through possible layoffs, by reassigning employees at its large customer sales unit who oversee relationships with major advertisers." According to the report, the jobs are being vacated because Google's new AI tools have automated them. The report says a future restructuring was apparently already announced at a department-wide Google Ads meeting last week.

A Nicaragua-bound plane, carrying over 303 Indian passengers, has been grounded by France over suspected 'human trafficking', said the authorities on Friday (Dec 22). As per the Paris prosecutors, on Thursday (Dec 21) the aircraft was detained after an anonymous tipoff. The local officials, in the eastern Marne region on Friday, said that a judicial investigation has been launched into the trip's conditions and purposes.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is ramping up exchanges with folk religious groups in rural Taiwan in an attempt to manipulate political opinion in Beijing's favour ahead of elections next month, according to Taiwan government documents and security officials.

Religious trips across the Taiwan Strait increased this year after the end of China's years-long zero COVID policy, according to a review of the websites of the Chinese government, CCP-run religious groups and state media. Dozens of the trips were focused on worship of Mazu, a sea goddess whose 10 million Taiwanese worshippers make her the island's most popular deity.

Reuters examined five Taiwanese security documents and interviewed five Taiwanese security officials, as well as five Mazu temple leaders and four analysts. They provided previously unreported details about how CCP officials tried to build ties with religious establishments with inducements such as subsidised trips to China. Some of them spoke on condition of an