Interviews with more than 24 people involved in the AT&T/Time Warner merger, including Jeff Bewkes and Randall Stephenson, detail how it went disastrously awry (James B. Stewart/New York Times)

Ellen Thomas / Insider:
Internal memo: Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield plans to leave Salesforce in January, says the move has “nothing to do” with Bret Taylor’s departure  —  Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving Salesforce in January.  —  Butterfield posted his announcement …

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson’s blockchain technology startup Lamina1 releases a whitepaper on building an open metaverse, dubbed Theee Metaverse  —  Neal Stephenson’s Lamina1 blockchain technology startup dropped a white paper today on building the open metaverse.  It’s quite the manifesto.

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Uber Eats signs a 10-year deal with Nuro and plans to launch autonomous delivery vehicles in Mountain View, California, and Houston, Texas in fall 2022  —  Nuro’s delivery pods are big enough to drive in the street  —  Uber Eats customers in California and Texas may soon have their takeout delivered …

Bloomberg:
Texas’ crypto mining boom, built on incentives like cheap power and favorable regulations, looks like a bust after soaring energy costs and crashing coin prices  —  The digital gold rush in Texas is losing its luster as Bitcoin miners grapple with financial woes, leaving behind what some fear …

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Texas AG sues Google for allegedly using features in Photos, Assistant, and Nest devices to collect facial- and voice-recognition data without proper consent  —  State alleges tech giant didn’t obtain user consent for biometric-data use  —  The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG 2.32%▲ …

Reuters:
Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons, which makes Splice and Remini, raised $340M+ from Italian banks Intesa Sanpaolo and Banco BPM, Ryan Reynolds, and more  —  Italian app developer Bending Spoons has raised more than $340 million from investors including Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and Kerry Trainor …