Techmeme
July 13, 2023, 3:25 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
The US arrests and charges former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky with six counts, including wire fraud; the SEC, CFTC, and FTC sue Mashinsky and the crypto company  —  Alex Mashinsky, the former chief executive officer of Celsius Network Ltd., was accused by prosecutors of orchestrating …
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Document: the FTC sends OpenAI a 20-page demand for records on the risks of its AI models and a March 2023 security incident over payment-related information  —  The agency's demand for OpenAI's documents marks the company's greatest U.S. regulatory threat to date
Sam Schechner / Wall Street Journal:
Google updates Bard with support for 43 more languages, including Arabic, and releases the chatbot in Europe and Brazil after adding new privacy features  —  Latest version to also include a privacy hub for all users  —  Google is betting a new version of its artificial-intelligence chatbot will say hallo …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
The AP and OpenAI sign a two-year deal; the AP gets access to OpenAI's tech in return for licensing some of its text archive dating back to 1985 for AI training  —  The Associated Press on Thursday said it reached a two-year deal with OpenAI, the parent company to ChatGPT, to share access to select news content and technology.
Tom Hals / Reuters:
A US judge says Ripple's XRP sales to sophisticated investors violated securities law but that sales on exchanges were not offers of securities; XRP jumps 50%+  —  U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres said Ripple Labs Inc's institutional sales of its XRP digital token violated federal law …
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple launches Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UK, starting with Revolut and Tyl by NatWest as the first platforms, following the US, Australia, and Taiwan  —  Apple has announced the launch of Tap to Pay on iPhone in the United Kingdom, allowing independent sellers, small merchants …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Apple adds bilingual support for five Indic languages to Siri in beta; Google Assistant got multilingual support in 2018 and Alexa got the feature in 2019  —  Apple released its first set of public beta versions of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma on Wednesday.
The Verge:
The FTC files to appeal a US court ruling that cleared the way for Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard; the existing TRO expires at 11:59pm PT on July 14  —  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says it is appealing a recent US federal court order that cleared the way for Microsoft to purchase Activision Blizzard.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple updates the macOS Sonoma beta to bring iCloud Keychain passwords to Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium-based browsers via an iCloud Passwords extension  —  The macOS Sonoma update that is in testing allows Mac owners who opt to use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or another browser …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
GitHub launches passkey support in public beta, allowing users who opt in to upgrade from security keys and use passkeys in place of a password and a 2FA method  —  GitHub announced today the introduction of passwordless authentication support in public beta, allowing users to upgrade from security keys to passkeys.
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
At a congressional hearing, FTC Chair Lina Khan defended herself against GOP attacks over her alleged ethics violation and aggressive antitrust enforcement  —  Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan fended off Republican attacks over her adherence to ethics laws and aggressive antitrust enforcement …
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
A Stability AI co-founder sues the startup over being duped into selling his 15% stake for $100 to CEO Emad Mostaque months before Stability hit a $1B valuation  —  A Stability AI Ltd. co-founder has sued the company, claiming he was tricked into selling his stake for $100 months …
More: Forbes and Semafor
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Financial Times:
Sources: Meta plans to widely release a commercial version of LLaMA imminently that companies can customize, after a version for researchers in February 2023  —  Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google are surging ahead in Silicon Valley development race  —  Meta is poised to release …
Washington Post:
In June, the US State Department told Microsoft that its emails in Azure were hacked; attackers stole a Microsoft key and hacked ~25 organizations' emails  —  The State Department discovered the Microsoft vulnerability, which affected unclassified government systems, last month
New York Times:
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Nothing Phone (2) review: neat light strips, a useful always-on display, and four years of software support, but only splash resistant and not Verizon certified  —  Form, function, and a good midrange phone. … The Nothing Phone 2 is better than the Phone 1 in a lot of small ways.
Kyle Chayka / New Yorker:
A writer details using AI startup Writer's LLM to generate text in his writing style and says that most of the tool's “insights” felt hollow or approximated  —  A new wave of artificial-intelligence startups is trying to “scale language” by automating the work of writing.

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More News

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: