Techmeme
March 29, 2023, 10:20 PM

Top News

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple schedules WWDC 2023 for June 5 to June 9 as a virtual event with a June 5 keynote, where iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14 are expected  —  Apple today announced that its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place from Monday, June 5 to Friday, June 9.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
EA plans to lay off ~6% of its workforce and cut its office space, incurring $170M to $200M in restructuring charges; EA had nearly 13,000 employees in mid-2022  —  Publisher of ‘Madden NFL’ and other videogame series is also making office-space reductions  —  White-Collar Recession: Why Job Cuts Are Hitting Professional Workers
Scott Chipolina / Financial Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Forbes:
Sources: Sam Bankman-Fried is paying his mounting legal fees from a $10M+ tax-free gift he gave his father with money borrowed from Alameda in 2021  —  While still CEO of now-collapsed FTX, Bankman-Fried transferred millions of dollars to his father.  Some of those funds have since been used …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google launches an Ads Transparency Center, showing all the ads from verified advertisers on its platforms, in the formats, the regions, and the dates they ran  —  Google is launching a new ad transparency center that will let users search for verified advertisers and their campaigns across …
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: Google Brain and DeepMind have been forced to work together on a project known as Gemini to compete with OpenAI's GPT-4, after Bard's stumble  —  OpenAI's success in overtaking Google with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot has achieved what seemed impossible in the past …
Delphine Strauss / Financial Times:
Goldman Sachs research finds generative AI could increase annual global GDP by 7% over a 10-year period and expose 300M full-time jobs to automation globally  —  Technology could boost global GDP by 7% but also risks creating ‘significant disruption’  —  The latest breakthroughs …
New York Times:
How NetEase and Activision's 14-year partnership fell apart, in part due to China's tech crackdown, as filings show the deal was worth ~$750M in annual revenue  —  Activision Blizzard and NetEase could not agree on a new deal to distribute video games in China, cutting millions of players from the games in January.
Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal:
WeMeta: the median price per square meter of land in Decentraland has dropped from ~$45 in 2022 to $5 in 2023, as the hype around the metaverse has receded  —  Disney and Microsoft both closed projects tied to the digital realm this month  —  Watch: What's the Future of the Metaverse?
Financial Times:
As Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and others cut their responsible AI teams, experts worry about potential abuses, disinformation, and hallucination  —  Microsoft, Amazon and Google among those to cut ‘responsible AI’ teams as part of broader reductions
Justin Ling / Wired:
Docs: investments in 4chan include $800K from owner Hiroyuki Nishimura, $4.8M from his company, and $2.4M from Tokyo-based Good Smile, which makes Disney toys  —  Documents obtained by WIRED confirm that Good Smile, which licenses toy production for Disney, was an investor in the controversial image board.
Christopher M. Matthews / Wall Street Journal:
Court records and messages from alleged hackers reveal a massive hacking campaign targeting thousands of environmental activists, dating back to at least 2017  —  Charity of Rockefeller heirs among groups targeted by hackers; oil giant not accused of wrongdoing
James Reddick / The Record:
The FDA says approval for medical devices now requires meeting certain cybersecurity standards issued in the omnibus spending bill signed in December 2022  —  The Food and Drug Administration affirmed Wednesday that medical device manufacturers must now prove their products meet certain …
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The SEC sues shuttered crypto exchange Beaxy and its execs for allegedly not registering and Beaxy Digital's founder for raising $8M via unregistered token BXY  —  - The SEC brought charges against crypto platform Beaxy on Wednesday for allegedly not registering as an exchange, broker or a clearing agency.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko on open-source governance, business models, rejecting VC firms, running instances, ActivityPub, content moderation, and more  —  CEO Eugen Rochko on running — and growing — a decentralized social network. … Eugen Rochko is the CEO of Mastodon …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google plans to launch extreme heat alerts in Search, including telling users when a heat wave is expected to start and end, keeping safe, and tips to stay cool  —  Google is introducing new extreme heat alerts in Search that are designed to surface information to help people stay safe during heat waves …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Lemon8, ByteDance's Instagram rival launched in March 2020, hits the US App Store's top 10; data.ai: Lemon8 never before ranked in the US top 200 overall charts  —  As U.S. lawmakers move forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app's Chinese parent company ByteDance …
Emily Olsen / MobiHealthNews:
Paris-based Inato, which offers a marketplace to connect pharmaceutical companies with clinical trial sites, raised a $20M Series A2 led by Cathay Innovation  —  The startup previously raised $14 million in 2020.  —  Clinical trial startup Inato scooped up $20 million in a Series A2 funding round led by Cathay Innovation.

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Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Akash Pasricha / The Information:
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Earlier Picks

Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Bloomberg:
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Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
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Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reuters: