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Techmeme
June 27, 2023, 4:30 PM
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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
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:
In a first for foldables, Google plans to offer Pixel Fold DIY repairs via its iFixit partnership, including for the battery, inner display, and charging port  —  One of the biggest downsides of foldable smartphones right now is durability and, more so, repairability.
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:
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 …
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.
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.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
A 2019 email by Xbox Game Studios' Matt Booty encouraged acquiring games to “spend Sony out of business”; Microsoft says 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 …
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.
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Sources: Sam Altman told developers in May that OpenAI plans to turn ChatGPT into a “supersmart personal assistant for work”, setting up a Microsoft rivalry  —  In the span of half a year, ChatGPT has become one of the world's best-known internet brands.
More: The Decoder and Fast Company
Bluesky: @iamnow.bsky.social.  Twitter: @aaronpholmes, @toughsf, @fromvalue, and @amir.  Forums: Slashdot
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 …
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 …
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.

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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:30 PM ET, June 27, 2023.

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Business Insider is cutting staff by 21% to “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control” and “exiting the majority of our Commerce business”

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Paramount offers $15M to settle with President Trump, whose team wants $25M+, is seeking an apology from CBS News, and threatened another lawsuit

Ben Johansen / Politico:
Sources: all 800 full-time VOA staff are expected to receive reduction-in-force notices this week, after ~600 VOA contractors were dismissed earlier in May

More News

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
A look at review-bombing campaigns on Goodreads that can derail a book's publication long before its release, frustrating both new and established authors
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Thomson Reuters plans to acquire YC-backed Casetext, which builds AI/ML-powered workflows and tools for lawyers, for $650M in cash, expected to close in H2 2023
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