Techmeme
May 16, 2023, 1:35 AM

Top News

Adam Satariano / New York Times:
EU regulators approve Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition after Microsoft made concessions to keep rivals' access to Call of Duty and other games  —  The green light follows objections to the blockbuster deal by American and British regulators on the grounds that it would undercut competition.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
WhatsApp debuts Chat Lock, letting users put chats in a password/biometric-protected folder and get notifications that don't show the sender or message content  —  WhatsApp is getting a new “Chat Lock” feature intended to make it easier to keep conversations more private.
Jacob Bogage / Washington Post:
Sources: the IRS quietly built a prototype system to let Americans file tax returns digitally and free of charge, with a pilot slated to launch in January 2024  —  The prototype program developed by the federal government could be available for a small group of taxpayers by January
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon job listings mention an “AI-first initiative to re-architect” search and “reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience”  —  Amazon.com Inc. plans to bring ChatGPT-style product search to its web store, rivaling efforts by Microsoft Corp …
Ciara O'Brien / The Irish Times:
Irish Council for Civil Liberties: 75% of the Irish DPC's GDPR decisions in EU-level cases since 2018 have been overruled by the European Data Protection Board  —  Meta, Google, Airbnb, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple and Tinder account for 87^% of cross-border GDPR complaints to Ireland's DPC
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Google's I/O 2023 suggests that AI is a sustaining innovation for Big Tech; the true fight will be between the major players' centralized models and open source  —  Some things in tech are shocking, but not surprising — think of a CEO of a struggling company losing their job.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
MoffettNathanson: US pay TV users fell 7% YoY to 75.5M in Q1 2023, with household penetration at 58.5%, the lowest level since 1992; only YouTube TV grew in Q1  —  As streaming video continues its ascendancy, cable, satellite and internet TV providers in the U.S. turned in their worst subscriber losses …
Phoebe Liu / Forbes:
Zip, which sells procurement management software, raised a $100M Series C led by Y Combinator at a $1.5B post-money valuation, taking its total funding to $181M  —  Zip, a San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses manage spending, announced a fresh round of capital today …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 6: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(BNS) How To Know When To Kill Your Startup
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:35 AM ET, May 16, 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

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Jared Newman / Fast Company:
Stefania Palma / Financial Times: