Techmeme
July 15, 2023, 2:25 PM

Top News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Microsoft's disclosures about Chinese hackers accessing US government email accounts try to obscure the role of Microsoft's own vulnerabilities in the breach  —  Critics also decry Microsoft's “pay-to-play” monitoring that detected intrusions.  —  On Friday, Microsoft attempted to explain …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
The US Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit denies the FTC's appeal for an injunctive relief to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard from closing  —  In a victory for Microsoft, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit late on Friday denied the Federal Trade Commission's appeal …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
The UK CMA pushes back a deadline to block Microsoft's Activision deal from July 18 to August 29, which could let Microsoft complete the merger within weeks  —  New timetable from Competition and Markets Authority means $75bn transaction could be closed within weeks
Rhiannon Williams / MIT Technology Review:
Study: ChatGPT helped writers complete tasks, such as writing press releases or reports, 40% faster and produce work that assessors scored 18% higher in quality  —  People who use ChatGPT to help with writing tasks are more productive and produce higher-quality work than those who don't, a study found.
Matt Binder / Mashable:
Some Reddit users report disappearance of their private messages from before 2023; Reddit says the move was announced on June 22 and is effective since June 30  —  Many Redditors were caught off guard by the removal of their chat and message history.  —  The Reddit blackout protests …
Jahnavi Nidumolu / Reuters:
Elon Musk says Twitter's cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load  —  Elon Musk said Twitter's cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load.  —  “Need to reach positive cash flow …
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Twitter could descend into irrelevance if the trends driving Threads' early success, including network effects and Elon Musk's self-inflicted wounds, persist  —  Threads, from Instagram, has many distinct qualities that make it the first credible threat to Elon Musk's vision of what a social network should be
Sohee Kim / Bloomberg:
A look at Sony-owned Crunchyroll, which has 100M+ registered members, including 11M paid subscribers, as the anime streaming service looks to India for growth  —  - President says new anime markets like India will drive growth  — Global expansion helps owner Sony boost entertainment content
Brendan Pierson / Reuters:
A US appeals court temporarily blocks a lower court order that sharply limited US government officials' and agencies' contacts with social media companies  —  A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court order that had sharply limited certain Biden administration officials …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
In a Twitter Spaces chat, Elon Musk says xAI plans to collaborate with Tesla on silicon and AI software, use public tweets for AI training, and more  —  - During a live audio session on Twitter, owner and chairman Elon Musk said his new AI startup, xAI, will use Twitter data for training the …
Semafor:
Sky News:
Some Etsy sellers say it started imposing a 45 day reserve on 75% of their income with no warning, as part of its Purchase Protection program to cover refunds  —  Sellers say the online marketplace is imposing a temporary reserve on their sales under its new ‘purchase protection programme’ …
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Creator monetization platform Passes, founded in 2022, plans to acquire rival Fanhouse, founded in 2020; some creators are worried and one Fanhouse founder quit  —  The creator monetization platform Fanhouse announced yesterday that it was acquired by Passes, a similar startup that only launched in beta in December.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Updraft patches its AIOS WordPress plugin, used by 1M+ sites, after it logged plaintext passwords; Updraft didn't warn its users during the exposure period  —  The All-In-One Security (AIOS) WordPress security plugin, used by over a million WordPress sites, was found to be logging plaintext passwords …
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Tom Hals / Reuters:

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