Note: Techmeme is hiring part-time editors. Go here to apply, or tell a friend!
Techmeme
February 26, 2023, 7:40 PM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reports: 50+ Twitter staff were laid off over the weekend, including Twitter's product lead Esther Crawford, and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper  —  Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company's Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter's forthcoming payments platform.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Some AI companies are hiring “prompt engineers”, who create and refine text prompts for chatbots to understand the AI systems' flaws and coax optimal results  —  When Riley Goodside starts talking with the artificial-intelligence system GPT-3, he likes to first establish his dominance.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Inside Apple's Exploratory Design Group, which is working on advanced tech like a glucose monitor and built some of the iPhone's and Mac's chip and battery tech  —  Apple has a secret team working to bring noninvasive glucose monitoring to its smartwatch, but that's not all it's pursuing.
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
Sources: the cyberattack on Dish Network was “by an outside bad actor, a known threat agent” and the company is working with an external vendor to fix the issue  —  American TV giant and satellite broadcast provider, Dish Network has mysteriously gone offline with its websites …
Molly White:
Jump and Oasis recovering ~120K stolen ether demonstrates how multisig-controlled upgradeable smart contracts undermine trustlessness and censorship-resistance  —  Wormhole, Jump Crypto, and Oasis demonstrate the centralization threat introduced by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts.
Jon Rice / Blockworks:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Q&A with sci-fi author Neal Stephenson about inventing the metaverse concept, his blockchain startup Lamina1, not using ChatGPT to help write novels, and more  —  Neal Stephenson's science-fiction writing has predicted (and inspired) innovations from cryptocurrency to Alexa.
Kate Lindsay / The Verge:
As AI tools and CGI creations get better at pretending to be human, some creators online are sometimes being asked to prove that they're human  —  Last April, 27-year-old Nicole posted a TikTok video about feeling burned out in her career.  When she checked the comments the next day, however, a different conversation was going down.
Ranjan Roy / Margins:
How the potential of voice as a platform was wasted: closed ecosystems, overly ambitious proclamations, distorted monopolistic incentives, and too much capital  —  Sometimes innovation just ain't enough … I have four Echo devices in my household.  For years, we used them to control …
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times:
Sources: Sequoia resigned from Citizen's board after the startup offered a “pay to play” deal obliging existing investors to participate in a new funding round  —  Investor abandons start-up over fundraising that has massively diluted its shareholding, as Silicon Valley VCs re-evaluate deals
Jon Porter / The Verge:
HMD Global announces the £150 Nokia G22 and claims users will be able to replace its battery in around five minutes and screen in ~20 minutes with an iFixit kit  —  HMD has worked to make what it says are the most common smartphone repairs — replacing a broken screen, charging port …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
6 Tips to Unlock Revenue with Transactional Emails  —  This is a guest post by Tabular.You might think of transactional emails as boring necessities, but the truth is, they're far more powerful than you realize.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
Big Meta/Anduril Deal Is A Big Deal
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Social Radars:
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel Part 4 (Bonus)
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Hard Fork:
The A.I. Jobpocalypse + Building at Anthropic with Mike Krieger + Hard Fork Crimes Division
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Rick Smith (CEO, Axon): The Wild Ride From Near-Bankruptcy to $50B+
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Sewing Machine Repair Shop', With Patrick McGee
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
How private equity kills companies and communities
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:40 PM ET, February 26, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

Earlier Picks

Scott Chipolina / Financial Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Politico: