Techmeme
June 27, 2023, 4:15 AM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
A 2019 email from Xbox Game Studios' Matt Booty encouraged acquiring content to “spend Sony out of business”; Microsoft argues it didn't pursue the strategy  —  Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios chief, Matt Booty, was encouraging Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to spend big money on acquiring game content …
James Vincent / The Verge:
AI is killing the web with spam sites, mass article producing “AI editors”, AI-generated junk on Etsy, Reddit, and Wikipedia that exhausts moderators, and more  —  In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed.  Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links.
NewsGuard:
Brian Fung / CNN:
A look at how the $42.5B US broadband infrastructure plan will be allocated: Texas leads with $3.3B+, California gets $1.8B+, Missouri gets $1.7B+, and more  —  The Biden administration on Monday outlined how states across the country will be receiving billions of dollars in federal funding …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Decentralized social media app Damus says Apple rejected an app update and told the company to remove its tipping feature or use Apple's in-app purchase system  —  Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules.
David Meyer / Fortune:
A last-minute amendment to an Irish bill would let the Data Protection Commission declare some info in privacy complaints as confidential, sparking an uproar  —  European privacy advocates are hopping mad at what they see as an attempt by the Irish government to draw a veil over the activities …
Robert D. McFadden / New York Times:
John B. Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in developing the lithium-ion battery used in mobile devices and EVs, dies at 100  —  An unassuming professor who remained active into his 90s, he is credited with the breakthrough that gave rise to the batteries powering today's electronic devices.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
FTX's bankruptcy team says the exchange owed its customers ~$8.7B after commingling and misusing their deposits, and has recovered ~$7B in liquid assets so far  —  Commingling and misuse of customer and corporate funds occurred from the inception of FTX, says current CEO John J. Ray III.
Will Knight / Wired:
DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis details Gemini, an upcoming ChatGPT rival meant to combine the strengths of AlphaGo-type systems and those of LLMs  —  Demis Hassabis says the company is working on a system called Gemini that will tap techniques that helped AlphaGo defeat a Go champion in 2016.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta announces Quest+, a VR subscription service that gives Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro users access to two games every month for $7.99/month or $59.99/year  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced Quest Plus, the company's new “virtual reality subscription” that gives users access to “the best titles on the platform,” he said.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Google Pixel Fold review: landscape-first is great for videos and the outer display feels natural, but it's heavy, pricey, and has limited multitasking features  —  If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission.  See our ethics statement.  —  The Google Pixel Fold is a lot of phone.
Wall Street Journal:
Databricks plans to acquire generative AI startup MosaicML in a ~$1.3B deal set to close by July 31; MosaicML debuted in 2021, raised $64M, and has 62 employees  —  The deal aims at connecting businesses' data with services to help them build their own, cheaper language models, Databricks CEO says

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