Techmeme
May 11, 2023, 10:45 PM

Top News

Elon Musk / @elonmusk:
Elon Musk says he hired a CEO for X/Twitter and “she will be starting in ~6 weeks”; Musk will become “exec chair & CTO” overseeing “product, software, & sysops”  —  Excited to announce that I've hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops. https://twitter.com/...
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: NBCUniversal's head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become the new CEO of Twitter  —  Twitter owner Elon Musk said earlier he had picked a new chief executive, without naming the person  —  NBCUniversal's head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is in talks to become …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic expands Claude's context window from 9K to 100K tokens, or ~75K words it can digest and analyze; OpenAI's GPT-4 has a context window of ~32K tokens  —  Historically and even today, poor memory has been an impediment to the usefulness of text-generating AI.
Reuters:
EU lawmakers agree to ban facial recognition use in public and predictive policing tools, and set transparency rules on generative AI; details must be finalized  —  European lawmakers came a step closer to passing new rules regulating artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta announces AI Sandbox, with generative AI tools to help select advertisers create text variations, background images from text, and cropped images  —  Meta today announced an AI Sandbox for advertisers to help them create alternative copies, background generation through text prompts …
James Cirrone / Blockworks:
Coinbase apologizes for its newsletter calling Pepe the Frog a “hate symbol”, saying its overview “did not provide the whole picture of the history of the meme”  —  Coinbase has come out with an apology for its recent newsletter suggesting Pepe the Frog was a “hate symbol.”
Ryan Dinsdale / IGN:
Riot Games names its global president A. Dylan Jadeja as the company's new CEO starting later in 2023, succeeding Nicolo Laurent, who will stay on as an advisor  —  Succeeding Nicolo Laurent.  —  IGN can reveal that Riot Games global president A. Dylan Jadeja will succeed Nicolo Laurent as the company's CEO later this year.
Matthew Gault / VICE:
Twitter appears to disable autocomplete in its search bar after users pointed out that the feature was recommending gory videos of animal abuse and war footage  —  Searching for dog and cat videos returned horrifying results.  —  Matthew Gault  —  Twitter has disabled autocomplete …
Alvise Armellini / Reuters:
Italy's AGCM opens an investigation into Apple over exempting its own apps from ATT, a day after the EU confirmed sending Apple Pay questionnaires to retailers  —  Italy's antitrust agency AGCM said on Thursday it had opened a probe into U.S. technology giant Apple (AAPL.O) for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the apps market.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Review of the $700 Asus ROG Ally: fast performance and a smooth variable refresh screen, but Windows is hard to use on a handheld and the UI has major glitches  —  A big step forward for Windows handhelds — but is Windows the way forward at all? … Windows handheld gaming PCs existed before the Deck …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
WhatsApp rolls out back-end updates to tackle spam calls, particularly prevalent in India, using its AI and ML systems, hoping to reduce the spam calls by 50%+  —  WhatsApp has announced that it has introduced back-end updates to tackle spam calls, which are particularly prevalent in India right now.
Bloomberg:
SoftBank reports Vision Fund lost ~$2B in Q4, down from ~$16B in Q4 2022, leading to a record ~$32B full fiscal year loss; investments in the year fell to ~$3B  —  SoftBank Group Corp. lost money in its Vision Fund investment unit again despite a rebound in tech stocks …
CNBC:
Sensor Tower: Bluesky had 628K mobile downloads in April 2023, up 606% from March, when its Android app launched, in addition to iOS; Mastodon had 90K downloads  —  - Bluesky has exploded in popularity over the past few months as measured by the number of mobile app downloads on both iOS and Android platforms.
More: Livemint
Ted Chiang / New Yorker:
Similar to McKinsey and other consulting firms, AI advancements may help concentrate wealth, disempower workers, and “sharpen the knife blade of capitalism”  —  As it's currently imagined, the technology promises to concentrate wealth and disempower workers.  Is an alternative possible?
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
A look at Tel Aviv-based Rayzone, whose surveillance system Echo, sold to governments globally, harvests and repurposes ad data to track people via their phones  —  The innovation at the heart of the advertising technology industry is automated auctions to trade real-time data about mobile phone users …

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 iOS mobile app  —  Ranked highly in the iOS App Store (4.9 stars), Zoho Sign's mobile app for iPhone is a user favorite.  We're thrilled to share that the app has been enhanced …
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

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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Why COULDN'T Apple Make An iPhone In The US?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
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.
Hard Fork:
Big Tech's Tariff Chaos + A.I. 2027 + Llama Drama
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.
Great Chat:
The bull case for domestic manufacturing
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Why DOGE is killing the agency that keeps banks from ripping you off
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 10:45 PM ET, May 11, 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

Jon Porter / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Dylan Tokar / Wall Street Journal:
Haaretz:
Vivian Salama / Wall Street Journal:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Karissa Bell / Engadget: