Techmeme
May 11, 2023, 3:30 PM

Top News

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 …
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Twitter rolls out encrypted DMs, but both sender and recipient must be Blue subscribers, group messages are not supported, and message metadata is not encrypted  —  There are still some major limitations to the feature.  —  Twitter is beginning to roll out its long-promised encrypted direct messaging feature.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Industrial cybersecurity company Dragos says a known cybercrime group accessed its SharePoint cloud service on May 8 but failed to breach its internal network  —  Industrial cybersecurity company Dragos today disclosed what it describes as a “cybersecurity event” after a known cybercrime gang attempted …
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 …
Brady Snyder / XDA Developers:
Google launches a Labs webpage where users can join waitlists to test the company's early feature and product ideas, including Search and Workspace AI tools  —  Google is using artificial intelligence to improve its existing products, and you can sign up to try them in Labs now.  Here's how to get started.
James Cirrone / Blockworks:
Coinbase apologizes for its newsletter suggesting Pepe the Frog was a “hate symbol”, saying it “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.”
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 …
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?
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.
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:
A US judge sentences Nickolas Sharp, who worked for Ubiquiti, to six years in prison, rejecting the claim that his data theft made the IoT manufacturer safer  —  An engineer who worked for billionaire Robert Pera's Ubiquiti Inc. got six years in prison after a judge rejected his claim …
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 …
Vansh Agarwal / Reuters:
Sonos reports Q2 revenue down 24% YoY to $304.2M and forecasts its annual revenue between $1.63B and $1.68B, down from its prior $1.7B to $1.8B; SONO drops 20%+  —  Sonos Inc (SONO.O) was set to shed more than a fifth of its market valuation on Thursday after a revenue forecast cut fueled worries …
More: Thurrott and Sonos
CNBC:
Sensor Tower: Bluesky had 628K mobile downloads in April, up 606% from March, when it became available on Android 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
Jennifer Maas / Variety:
Disney reports Q2 Disney+ subscribers down 2% QoQ to 157.8M, vs. ~163M est, its second straight quarterly drop, ESPN+ up 2% QoQ to 25.3M, and Hulu flat at 48.2M  —  On the bright side, the Mouse House also managed to narrow its streaming business losses by $400 million, down 26% year over year.
Lillian Rizzo / CNBC:

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Earlier Picks

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New York Times:
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Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Ron Miller / TechCrunch: