Techmeme
June 27, 2023, 8:10 PM

Top News

Chris Vallance / BBC:
Apple says the UK should amend its Online Safety Bill, which would mandate scanning messages for CSAM, 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 …
Wall Street Journal:
How Silicon Valley executives' routine drug use 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
Tom Warren / The Verge:
FTC v. Microsoft: an internal Microsoft presentation from June 2022 discussed building on Windows 365 “to enable full Windows ... streamed from the cloud”  —  Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365, but the software giant also wants to do the same for consumers.
Monica Chin / The Verge:
The Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, which lacks support for external GPUs and is capped to 192GB of RAM, is a tough sell for pros, given the cheaper M2 Ultra Mac Studio  —  Apple's latest Mac Pro targets professionals with highly demanding computing workloads.  But we talked to those professionals …
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 up, likely from crushed 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.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
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 …
Jonathan Randles / Bloomberg:
Source: 3AC liquidators are seeking to recover $1.3B from co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, taking action against the duo in a British Virgin Islands court  —  Three Arrows Capital liquidators are seeking to recover $1.3 billion from the co-founders of the failed crypto hedge fund …
Mike Corder / Associated Press:
French and Dutch police say the 115M+ communications obtained by cracking the encryption of EncroChat phones, announced in 2020, has led to 6,558 arrests so far  —  Investigations triggered by the cracking of encrypted phones three years ago have so far led to more than 6,500 arrests worldwide …
David Heaney / UploadVR:
Report: Google canceled its “Iris” AR glasses project earlier in 2023 and is now focused on creating AR software platforms to license to headset manufacturers  —  Google reportedly killed its glasses hardware project.  —  Business Insider's Hugh Langley cites …
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.
Meir Orbach / CTech:
Tel Aviv-based enterprise data security startup Cyera raised a $100M Series B led by Accel, a source says at a $500M valuation; Sequoia and others participated  —  The Israeli company's data security platform learns an enterprise's unique data and business purpose using large language models …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
TikTok plans to shut down TikTok Now, its BeReal clone unveiled in September 2022, without giving a reason; user estimates suggest that BeReal has faded in 2023  —  TikTok is killing off its BeReal clone TikTok Now, according to notifications being sent to users.
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Baidu claims that its latest LLM, Ernie 3.5, surpasses GPT-3.5-based ChatGPT in general abilities and outperforms GPT-4 in 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.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
EU countries and lawmakers reach a provisional agreement on the Data Act, establishing rules on how Big Tech and other firms use EU consumer and corporate data  —  EU countries and EU lawmakers on Tuesday agreed on rules that govern how Big Tech and other companies use European consumer and corporate data …
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 …

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Earlier Picks

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Robert D. McFadden / New York Times: