Techmeme: The US adds China's Inspur, the world's third largest server maker that has joint ventures with IBM and Cisco, to its Entity List, limiting its US tech access (Yuan Gao/Bloomberg)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise

March 4, 2023, 4:05 PM

Top News

Erin Woo / The Information:

Sources: after Twitter refused to pay its AWS bills for months, Amazon threatened in February 2023 to withhold payment for the ads the company runs on Twitter — Elon Musk is running into an obstacle in his relentless drive to cut costs at Twitter: some of the same vendors that Twitter …

Mastodon: @sully1503@mastodon.online and @darnell@one.darnell.one

Tweets: @amir, @pt, @film_girl, @carnage4life, @strobist, @pt, @atrupar, @jessicalessin, @joshtpm, @tomcoates, @joshtpm, @tlakomy, @shaig, @fordm, and @quinnypig

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: in an update to investors, Twitter reports a ~40% YoY decline in both revenue and adjusted earnings for December 2022, as advertisers fled the platform — The company recently made a first interest payment to banks that lent $13 billion to help pay for Elon Musk's buyout, people familiar with the matter said

More: Reuters, Insider, and Bloomberg

Mastodon: @frank@ramblings.social. Tweets: @zefede, @emptywheel, @chrisfralic, @goangelo, @eliotetc, @chrchristensen, and @scottlincicome

Yuan Gao / Bloomberg:

The US adds China's Inspur, the world's third largest server maker that has joint ventures with IBM and Cisco, to its Entity List, limiting its US tech access — The Biden administration's blacklisting of China's Inspur Group Co. targets a company that US tech giants like Cisco Systems Inc. …

More: Tom's Hardware, South China Morning Post, TechSpot, Bloomberg, Reuters, and History-Computer

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

BidenCash, a dark web marketplace for stolen credit and debit cards, leaks a free database of 2.1M+ cards sharing emails, card expiry dates, CVV codes, and more — A carding marketplace known as BidenCash has leaked online a free database of 2,165,700 debit and credit cards in celebration of its first anniversary.

More: Security Affairs, Restore Privacy, and The Record

Harry McCracken / Fast Company:

A profile of Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, who was a Sonos VP of software management before joining Salesforce, as she leads Slack through its “biggest product year” — Over a few days in late November and early December of 2022, it became clear that Slack was about to go through …

Tweets: @harrymccracken, @peterschwartz2, @lidianejones, and @slackhq. Thanks:@technologizer

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:

Ring says new Ring Alarm users will have to pay for a Ring Protect subscription starting at $3.99 per month to use existing free features, starting on March 29 — Yet another company will charge its customers more money for using existing features as the subscription-based smart home becomes the norm.

More: Android Central, PCMag, Digital Trends, SlashGear, HotHardware, Engadget, and The Ambient

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:

Bing Chat appears to have a hidden Celebrity mode, in which the chatbot answers questions while impersonating Biden, Trump, Tom Cruise, and other famous people — A secret Bing Chat ‘Celebrity’ mode allows users to instruct the AI to impersonate celebrities, answering questions and talking like the person it imitates.

More: HotHardware and MSPoweruser

Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times:

San Jose-based Vintra, whose clients include the IRS and police departments, says its “co-appearance” AI can mark potential interactions between people on video — A gray-haired man walks through an office lobby holding a coffee cup, staring ahead as he passes the entryway.

Tweets: @daragh_murray, @latimes, @latimes, @latimes, @sarahdwire, @nickbaumann, and @senmarkey

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:

Q&A with OpenAI's Sandhini Agarwal, Liam Fedus, Jan Leike, and co-founder John Schulman on training ChatGPT, dealing with the virality, fixing issues, and more — Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon. — When OpenAI launched ChatGPT …

Tweets: @tiagodf, @trengriffin, @antonioregalado, @techreview, @ndiakopoulos, @niallfirth, @ketanj0, and @jjaron

Kif Leswing / CNBC:

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman quits OpenAI's nonprofit board, seeking to invest in companies using OpenAI's tech, which he says may cause a conflict of interest — - LinkedIn founder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman is leaving the nonprofit board of OpenAI, he announced in a post on Friday.

More: LinkedIn, Bloomberg, San Francisco Business Journal, Reuters, The Economic Times, and Michael Tsai

Tweets: @reidhoffman, @sama, @joshelman, @adamnash, and @gdb

Kate Park / TechCrunch:

Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator Una Brands raised a $30M pre-Series C, following a $30M Series B in September 2022, bringing its total funding to $115M — Una Brands, a Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator, has raised $30 million in pre-Series C financing just five months after announcing …

Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times:

The US imposes new rules requiring that CHIPS Act beneficiaries agree not to expand manufacturing capacity in “countries of concern”, like China, for 10 years — Commerce department imposes new rules on beneficiaries of $39bn programme — Chipmakers must agree not to expand capacity …

More: Engadget, Dallas Morning News, Japan Times, and New York Times

Tweets: @steve_hanke, @dimi, and @srinathraghava3

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:

Are you ready for the era of agentic AI? — Tech leaders are always talking about what's next, and right now, agentic AI is dominating the discourse. Equip yourself with the info you need in this recorded webinar.

Tribe AI:

State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations — Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.

Zoho:

Everything new in the Zoho Sign Android mobile app — With a 4.5 star user rating in the Google Play Store, Zoho Sign's native mobile app for Android is a must-have for secure, swift, and hassle-free paperwork management.

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.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:

Neil Mehta - Finding Future S&P 500 Companies

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Techmeme Ride Home:

Tariff Groundhog Day

The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.

Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.

Sponsor this podcast

Decoder with Nilay Patel:

Are prediction markets gambling? Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is betting not

A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.

Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.

Grit:

Flexport's Third Act: Winning in a Broken Global Trade System

Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.

Subscribe to Grit.

Lenny's Podcast:

Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js)

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

The Logan Bartlett Show:

Derek Thompson (Writer, The Atlantic) and Zach Weinberg (Co-founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) Discuss the Tariff Withdrawal and America's Future

A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.

Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.

Add your postcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:05 PM ET, March 4, 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.

From Mediagazer

Dominick Mastrangelo / The Hill:

The AP says its journalists were barred from an Oval Office event featuring Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in defiance of a court injunction

New York Times:

Sources: the White House plans to ask Congress to rescind $1.1B in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR, PBS, and others

Michael Wolff / New York Magazine:

How David Zaslav became an “accidental mogul” who is navigating WBD out of its cultural, generational, and technological obsolescence during the Trump era

More News

Financial Times:

Some UK officials and SoftBank staff blame onerous FCA rules, process complexity and cost, and the UK's political chaos for Arm shunning a London listing

More: PitchBook, BBC, The Guardian, Barron's Online, Press Association, Coinspeaker, UKTN, and Tech Monitor

Tweets: @robinwigg, @arashmassoudi, @peter_tl, and @ajb_powell

Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:

An NLRB director rules that Google is a “joint employer” with YouTube subcontractor Cognizant and must bargain with Cognizant's YouTube workers if they unionize

More: The Verge. Tweets: @alphabetworkers, @laszlobock, @ekp, @daveyalba, and @josheidelson

Forbes:

Ryan Breslow sues Mark Phillips, a convicted fraudster he hired to build his social impact DAO, for allegedly stealing ~$10.5M of the project's seed funding

Tweets: @carnage4life, @sub8u, @evacide, @yoda, @moo9000, @hkanji, and @sarahnemerson

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:

Apple approves a BlueMail app update that adds a ChatGPT feature, after the email app's developer Blix assured Apple that the update includes content moderation

More: MacSecurity.net, Gizmodo, The Economic Times, CNBC, MarketWatch, MacDailyNews, WinBuzzer, New York Post, Tom's Guide, Neowin, and Barron's Online. Tweets: @evelyndouek

CoinDesk:

Silvergate plans to discontinue its Silvergate Exchange Network, a 24/7 instant settlement service that its clients could use to move money to crypto exchanges

More: Protos, Reuters, The Block, Cointelegraph, Crowdfund Insider, Livemint, Bloomberg, and Bitcoinist.com

Tweets: @silvermanjacob, @mayazi, and @adamscochran

Bloomberg:

Sources: Stable Diffusion creator Stability AI seeks to raise money at a ~$4B valuation, after raising a $101M seed at a ~$1B valuation in October 2022

More: PitchBook. Tweets: @hkanji, @pkedrosky, and @katie_roof

Earlier Picks

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:

Intel moves to a two-year data center GPU release cadence, canceling Rialto Bridge and delaying its Falcon Shores chiplet-based hybrid chips from 2024 to 2025

More: HotHardware, ServeTheHome, Intel, Jon Peddie Research, Wccftech, Phoronix, and VideoCardz.com. Thanks:@paulyalcorn

Cristiano Lima / Washington Post:

Sources: Google hired a law firm for a civil rights and racial equity audit into its services and policies, after years of pressure from advocates and Democrats

More: Reuters. Tweets: @adriennelaw, @deepseadawn, and @viacristiano

Financial Times:

Sources: Character.AI, whose chatbot generates chats in the style of famous people like Shakespeare, raised $200M to $250M led by a16z at a ~$1B valuation

More: Newcomer. Tweets: @georgenhammond

Mitchell Clark / The Verge:

One month after Elon Musk said Twitter started sharing ad revenue from reply threads with users who pay for Twitter Blue, Twitter has yet to provide any details

Mastodon: @Waterloo@mastodon.lol and @jeremyburge@mastodon.world

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Amazon plans to close eight Go convenience stores in Seattle, NYC, and San Francisco, as the company reevaluates its brick-and-mortar strategy and cuts costs

More: GeekWire, Engadget, The Verge, PCMag, Bloomberg, Neowin, Seattle Business Journal, Gizmodo, The Information, and American Banker

Tweets: @silviakillings, @tomgara, @harrymccracken, and @rakeshlobster

Erik Schatzker / Bloomberg:

Coinbase acquires One River, a crypto asset management startup that serves only institutional clients, like pension funds; One River was valued at $186M in 2021