Techmeme
May 31, 2023, 8:25 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Amazon's Ring agrees to pay $5.8M to settle FTC allegations that until 2017, Ring gave employees and third-party contractors full access to every customer video  —  Amazon.com Inc. agreed to pay $30.8 million to resolve two cases brought by the Federal Trade Commission Wednesday related to privacy lapses by its smart devices.
Natasha Singer / New York Times:
Amazon agrees to pay $25M to settle FTC and DOJ charges over the company keeping Alexa voice recordings and geolocation data collected from children for years  —  Regulators said the tech giant kept children's Alexa voice recordings “forever,” violating a children's privacy law.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Eclypsium: a firmware flaw in 271 Gigabyte motherboards could let hackers install malware when the PC restarts; Gigabyte plans a fix, but problems could persist  —  Hidden code in hundreds of models of Gigabyte motherboards invisibly and insecurely downloads programs—a feature ripe for abuse, researchers say.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple touts an Analysis Group study saying its App Store ecosystem generated $1.1T in 2022, up 29% YoY; $910B came from the sale of physical goods and services  —  Ahead of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference next week, the company is offering an update on its app ecosystem with the release …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Reddit client Apollo's developer says Reddit plans to charge $12K for 50M API requests and that he would need to pay $20M per year to keep operating the app  —  Popular Reddit app Apollo might not be able to operate as is in the future due to planned API pricing that Reddit is implementing.
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick says he was humbled and outraged by toxic workplace culture claims and blames “outside forces” for most of Activision's image issues  —  Bobby Kotick has a secret: He was ready to buy Time Warner a few years ago.The CEO of Activision Blizzard drops …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is testing two new high-end Macs, one with M2 Max, and the other with the unannounced M2 Ultra chip with 60 graphics cores and up to 192GB of RAM  —  Apple Inc. is testing a pair of new high-end Macs and their accompanying processors ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference next week …
Michael McSweeney / The Block:
Crypto bridging protocol Multichain says it suspended service for multiple chains after being unable to contact its CEO to get server access amid tech problems  —  - Multichain, the cross-chain protocol, confirmed Wednesday that the team is unable to contact its chief executive amid ongoing technology problems.
Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak:
Torrent site RARBG, founded in 2008, shuts down and stops all its content releases, citing COVID-related health problems, Russia's war in Ukraine, and inflation  —  Founded in 2008, RARBG evolved to become a key player in the torrent ecosystem.  —  The site didn't only attract millions …
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Forbes:
A profile of AMD CEO Lisa Su, who orchestrated one of the great tech turnarounds after her 2014 takeover, as the company attempts to take Nvidia's AI chip crown  —  AMD's CEO orchestrated one of the great turnarounds in Silicon Valley history, driving the dying semiconductor maker's stock price up nearly 30-fold in less than a decade.
Priya Anand / Bloomberg:
An investigation into Papa, a TaskRabbit-like service for seniors that has raised ~$240M, finds dozens of allegations of harassment, assault, theft, and more  —  If you've been to an annual open enrollment fair in the past few years, you may have noticed a new eldercare benefit with the unusual name of Papa.
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
Meta asks a US federal court to block the FTC's attempt on May 3 to change the 2020's $5B privacy settlement, which the FTC alleges the company has violated  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is asking a federal court to bar the Federal Trade Commission from moving forward with an agency proceeding to revise its 2020 privacy settlement.
Oliver Whang / New York Times:
A look at the BabyLM Challenge, which asks teams to create language models using datasets less than one-ten-thousandth the size of those used by advanced LLMs  —  Teaching fewer words to large language models might help them sound more human.  —  When it comes to artificial intelligence chatbots, bigger is typically better.
Bloomberg:
Filing: Fidelity marks down the value of its Twitter stake, estimating the company is worth ~33% of the $44B that Elon Musk paid, down from 44% in November 2022  —  Twitter is now worth just one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social-media platform, according to Fidelity …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Tue. 11/19 - Microsoft Ignite
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 8:25 PM ET, May 31, 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

Kevin Roose / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

Michael del Castillo / Forbes:
Nikkei Asia:
Nadia Asparouhova / Wired:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: