Axios

Square Enix, Sega and Konami, three stalwarts of the Japanese gaming scene, are making risky bets that will change how they do business.

Driving the news: In reports to investors over the past two weeks, the keepers of Final Fantasy, Sonic and Castlevania have made it clear that the status quo is not working well enough.

Threats to 2022 election security will extend beyond today's vote as officials prepare for an onslaught of disinformation targeting the credibility of ballot counts and potential recounts throughout the week.

Why it matters: Election deniers are likely to spread lies about the security of ballot counts, voting machines and absentee voting in the days it will take officials to certify the results of several close races.

Salesforce laid off several hundred workers from its sales team on Monday, Axios has confirmed.

The big picture: Nearly all tech companies are reassessing their workforces in a slowing economy, with most imposing hiring freezes. Twitter laid off about half its workforce last week and Meta is expected to lay off thousands of employees as soon as tomorrow.

Binance has signed a letter of intent to acquire FTX.com, the exchange associated with Sam Bankman-Fried, according to tweets from CEOs of both companies.

Why it matters: Binance is the largest exchange by volume in the world. FTX is the fourth largest. It's acquiring a fast-growing rival amidst a wider downturn in the crypto market.

All corporate acquisitions are at least a little messy. But what's happening at Twitter is in a class by itself.

Why it matters: Elon Musk risks setting fire to $44 billion, plus to a social media platform that's become central to global discourse.

As Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry face a season of layoffs, workers are unprepared for the ordeal and management has little experience with the wrenching process.

Driving the news: Meta is expected to announce large-scale job cuts as soon as Wednesday, the first ever in its history. That comes on the heels of major layoffs at Twitter and many other flagship tech firms.

Downloads of Twitter's app have grown steadily in the first week since Elon Musk became the company's owner, but other apps — particularly Mastodon, a distributed open-source service — are starting to gain traction, too, as users begin to experiment with alternatives.

Why it matters: That competitive pressure is clearly irking Musk, who tweeted, and then deleted, a series of lewd tweets about Mastodon on Monday.

A merger between two suppliers of lidar — a key autonomous vehicle technology — is the latest tremor in the quickly shifting world of self-driving cars.

• The tie-up between former rivals Ouster and Velodyne, announced Monday, comes less than two weeks after Argo.ai, a leading self-driving car startup, said it was shutting down.

Hydroponic lettuce grown indoors, long regarded as niche, is edging into the mainstream as climate change hits outdoor growers and the salad-lovers who depend on them.

• Greenhouses enable "proximity growing" — a hot industry term — where lettuces are shipped shorter distances to markets, saving on freight costs and emissions.

U.S. efforts to crack down on ransomware and mandate companies report cyber incidents could end up being a "credit positive" next year, according to Moody's 2023 cyber outlook shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: A rise in cyberattacks in recent years has caused headaches for businesses as they face high price tags to recover from attacks — and potentially see their creditworthiness hurt following an incident.

Federal authorities seized more than $3.36 billion worth of Bitcoin as part of an investigation into fraud involving the Silk Road dark web marketplace, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Why it matters: The announcement signals the feds' growing capability for — and interest in — recovering cryptocurrency payments tied to cybercrime.

OpenSea is embracing creator royalty payments, rolling out code to embed fee requirements right into smart contracts.

Why it matters: The leading NFT marketplace operator will enable recurring payments on-chain, even as the rest of the industry appears poised to break from them.

The first thing you notice about CleanSpark's new 20 megawatt immersion mining facility in Norcross, Georgia: It is not loud.

Why it matters: Noise is just one of the many complaints communities have had about bitcoin miners. CleanSpark, a Las Vegas-based energy company turned bitcoin miner, invited press to its new facility last week in order to show it's operating in the open.

Twitter owner Elon Musk wrote Monday in a tweet that he recommends "voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic."

Driving the news: "Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic," he wrote Monday.

Biofire, a Colorado-based maker of biometric handguns, tells Axios that it's raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Founders Fund.

Why it matters: Firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in 2020, per the CDC, most of which were either accidents or suicides. Biometric locks tied to the adult gun owner and authorized users could have helped keep thousands of kids alive.

Republican control of the House, Senate or both would trigger a big shift for Big Tech on the Hill away from Democrats' privacy and antitrust crusades and towards the GOP's chief tech complaint — perceived platform bias against conservative-leaning content.

Why it matters: The outcome of Tuesday's elections will shape the next two years of tech legislation and hearings in D.C. But prospects for enacting new laws are likely even dimmer if Republicans control Congress' agenda while a Democrat remains in the White House.

Tech enables people to do their jobs however and wherever they like. But the number of applications needed now to do any one job can make it feel like we're working multiple jobs at the same time.

Why it matters: The freedom that remote work provides can also come at a mental and sometimes emotional cost. Over time and across large workforces, those effects can lead to burnout and a drop in productivity.

Drivers typically know whether their car takes "regular" or "premium" gasoline. But when their fuel is electricity, filling up can be downright confounding.

Driving the news: A new startup aims to fix that via a color- and number-coded system that helps electric vehicle (EV) drivers find the best chargers and plugs for their particular car.

Rights groups have raised concerns about the potential surveillance of COP27 delegates, the arrest of protesters and imprisonment of political prisoners in Egypt ahead of the climate summit starting in Sharm el-Sheikh Monday.

The big picture: As U.K. officials pledged to raise at COP27 the imprisonment of a British-Egyptian writer, Human Rights Watch noted in a report Sunday Egypt's authorities had "arrested dozens of people" over anti-government protests planned to coincide with the summit and that restrictions were placed on demonstrations.

Elon Musk announced Sunday "Twitter accounts engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying 'parody' will be permanently suspended without warning," going forward.

Why it matters: Musk said before he took over Twitter he'd "reverse the permanent ban" on former President Trump, arguing that permanent suspensions on the microblogging site "should be extremely rare."