Techmeme
May 12, 2023, 1:50 AM

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.
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.
Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
A US judge rules that nearly $300M in BlockFi's wallets belong to clients, not the bankrupt lender's estate; $375M in interest-bearing accounts is the estate's  —  A further $375 million that users tried to transfer out of interest-bearing accounts after Nov. 10 still belongs to the estate, Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan said
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph:
The US Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief on May 9 in the Coinbase v. SEC case, slamming the regulator for its “haphazard, enforcement-based approach”  —  The largest business organization in the world has thrown its weight behind Coinbase in its fight against the SEC.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
Introducing the UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation  —  UiPath's new platform empowers enterprises to experience the full power of AI to transform industries
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Savoir for Zoho Books  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
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:
Apple's Coming For The Meta Ray-Bans
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Hard Fork:
Bad Apple + The Rise of the AI Empire + Italian Brain Rot
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:
Yotam Segev (CEO, Cyera) on Growing One of the Fastest Security Startups on the Planet
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Great Chat:
Great managers, and what makes them great
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:
Reuters is ready to stand up for the press -- and embrace AI
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Lenny's Podcast:
How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? | Jerry Colonna (CEO of Reboot, executive coach, former VC)
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:50 AM ET, May 12, 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

Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Jon Porter / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Ted Chiang / New Yorker:
Dylan Tokar / Wall Street Journal:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Karissa Bell / Engadget: