Techmeme
July 19, 2023, 12:45 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft and Activision Blizzard agree to extend their merger agreement to October 18, pending the outcome of negotiations with UK regulators  —  Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have agreed to extend their merger agreement pending the outcome of negotiations with UK regulators.
Or Goren / Cord Busters:
Netflix removes its $10 Basic tier, its most affordable ad-free tier, in the US and UK for new and rejoining members  —  This post may contain affiliate links*  —  Breaking: In a major shakeup of its pricing model, Netflix, the global streaming giant, has abandoned its low-cost ‘Basic’ tier …
Todd Haselton / CNBC:
Microsoft's stock closed up 4% at $359.49 on July 18, an all-time high, after announcing pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot service; MSFT is up ~50% in 2023  —  - Microsoft shares rallied to an all-time high after the company announced pricing for its new Microsoft 365 artificial intelligence subscription service.
Will Shanklin / Engadget:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Sources: Google is internally piloting an opt-in program where some employees will be restricted to internet-free PCs to reduce the risk of cyberattacks  —  - Google is enlisting employees for a pilot program to work without internet access.  — The search giant, which is undergoing …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Hands-on with Framework Laptop 16, a modular gaming laptop that lets you replace and upgrade the whole GPU, for pre-order starting at $1,399 for the DIY edition  —  Four layers of modular components — including a swappable discrete GPU — right at your fingertips.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Sacramento-based Unstructured, which offers a service to extract and stage enterprise data in a way that LLMs can use, raised $25M across a Series A and seed  —  Large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI's GPT-4 are the building blocks for an increasing number of AI applications.
More: Newcomer
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Review of $350 Beats Studio Pro headphones: nice transparency mode, lossless USB-C audio, native iOS and Android support, but subpar build quality for the price  —  They look like a lazy refresh from the outside, but the noise-canceling Studio Pros include a ton of new features like transparency mode and lossless USB-C audio.
Gene Park / Washington Post:
A look at “non-playable character” TikTok creators, like Pinkydoll, who livestream themselves doing robotic and repetitive actions for digital tips  —  On TikTok, a woman named Pinkydoll with a thousand-yard stare faces you, undulating just enough to let you know she's alive.
Axios:
Sources: Vox Media plans to stop using Chorus, its CMS that the company licensed to external publishers from 2018 to 2022, and move its websites to WordPress  —  Vox Media, the parent company to websites such as New York Magazine, Eater and SB Nation, will no longer use Chorus …
Matthew Humphries / PCMag:
Intel grants Asus a non-exclusive license to its NUC designs; Asus will make and sell 10th to 13th gen NUC systems and can develop new system designs  —  The agreement covers existing NUCs and allows Asus to design new models. … , Asus is granted a non-exclusive license to Intel's NUC designs …
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Unity launches PolySpatial, announced in conjunction with Vision Pro at WWDC to help developers port and create a 3D experience for Apple's visionOS, in beta  —  Unity this morning announced that it has opened the beta version of its development platform for visionOS.
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Over 8,500 authors sign an Authors Guild letter asking AI leaders to get consent and fairly compensate writers when using copyrighted material for generative AI  —  If you ask GPT-4 to do a passage in the style of Carmen Machado or Margaret Atwood or Alexander Chee, it will do a fair job at it …
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Samsung says it has completed the development of its first generation GDDR7 DRAM, slated for 2024, with a 32Gbps data transfer rate, up ~33% from GDDR6's 24Gbps  —  Samsung has announced this evening that they have completed development on their first generation of GDDR7 memory.
Jon Gertner / New York Times:
A look at the Wikipedia community's debates about AI, including threats and potential benefits to the site, knowledge creation, truthfulness, and legal recourse  —  Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Rapid7: threat actors have exploited zero-day RCE flaws in Adobe ColdFusion and Citrix NetScaler; Citrix patched its flaw but Adobe issued an incomplete fix  —  The exploited code-execution flaws are the kind coveted by ransomware and nation-state hackers.  —  Organizations big and small …
Kashmir Hill / New York Times:

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/18 - More Smartglasses On The Horizon
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:45 PM ET, July 19, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Brian Fung / CNN:

Earlier Picks

Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
The Verge:
Andy Maxwell / TorrentFreak:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: