Techmeme
June 27, 2023, 12:30 PM

Top News

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
A Pixel Fold reviewer says the device's flexible OLED screen died after four days of light use, starting at the bottom and moving upwards, likely due to debris  —  The closed display halves almost touch, and that can smash debris into the screen.  —  A flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
Wall Street Journal:
How routine drug use by Silicon Valley executives moved from an after-hours activity squarely into corporate culture, causing issues for boards and tech leaders  —  Entrepreneurs including Elon Musk and Sergey Brin are part of a drug movement that proponents hope will expand minds, enhance lives and produce business breakthroughs
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:
Monica Chin / The Verge:
A survey of 20+ professionals finds all but one do not plan to buy the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, citing Apple's cheaper and similarly powerful laptops and desktops  —  Apple's latest Mac Pro targets professionals with highly demanding computing workloads.  But we talked to those professionals …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta launches new parental controls and other safety features for Messenger and Instagram in the US, the UK, and Canada, including letting parents view contacts  —  Meta announced new parental control tools across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger today.  This includes a new parental supervision hub …
Chris Vallance / BBC:
Apple says the UK's Online Safety Bill, which would mandate scanning messages for CSAM, should be amended to protect encryption, joining WhatsApp and Signal  —  Apple has criticised powers in the Online Safety Bill that could be used to force encrypted messaging tools like iMessage …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
A 2019 email by Xbox Game Studios' Matt Booty encouraged buying content to “spend Sony out of business”; Microsoft argues the company didn't pursue the strategy  —  Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios chief, Matt Booty, was encouraging Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to spend big money …
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Baidu claims Ernie 3.5, the latest version of its LLM, has surpassed ChatGPT in general abilities and outperformed GPT-4 on many Chinese-language capabilities  —  Baidu Inc.'s ChatGPT-style service has outperformed OpenAI's seminal product on several measures, China's search leader said on Tuesday.
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Some doctors say that their current best use for generative AI is to ease the heavy burden of documentation, which takes hours a day and contributes to burnout  —  The best use for generative A.I. in health care, doctors say, is to ease the heavy burden of documentation that takes them hours a day and contributes to burnout.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta says WhatsApp Business crossed 200M MAUs, up from 50M in 2020, adds a tool to let users create “click-to-WhatsApp” ads without a Facebook account, and more  —  Meta announced today that WhatsApp Business, its app designed specifically for small businesses …
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.
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.
Jane Lee / Reuters:
Snowflake partners with Nvidia to let customers build generative AI models using their own data; Nvidia plans to embed NeMo Framework into Snowflake Data Cloud  —  Snowflake (SNOW.N) a cloud data analytics company, is partnering with computing company Nvidia (NVDA.O) to allow customers ranging …
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Apple Vision Pro documentation: the device has a “system boundary”, defined as a 1.5-meter radius from the headset, when in a “fully immersive VR experience”  —  Apple has limited a Vision Pro safe area to 10 feet by 10 feet, when using fully immersive VR experiences.
Aaron Holmes / The Information:

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New York Times:
David Meyer / Fortune:
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: