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Techmeme
August 2, 2023, 4:00 PM
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Top News

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
X now lets X Blue subscribers hide their checkmarks, but warns that “the checkmark may still appear in some places” and “some features may not be available”  —  Social media company X, formerly Twitter, now lets paid users hide their verification checkmarks.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
X renames TweetDeck to XPro; the tweetdeck.twitter.com URL and much of the copy remain unchanged, including a “tool for people who live on Twitter” description
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Sources: US DOJ officials are considering fraud charges against Binance, but worry that an indictment could cause a run on Binance like the one that befell FTX  —  U.S. Department of Justice officials are considering fraud charges against crypto exchange Binance, but are concerned about the cost …
Wall Street Journal:
Internal Binance data and current and former employees say Chinese users traded ~$90B in crypto assets on the exchange in May 2023, despite China's crypto ban  —  Retaining its Chinese footprint will be crucial for Binance as it faces a global regulatory crackdown
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon plans to roll out its biggest grocery business overhaul since acquiring Whole Foods, in the coming weeks, including merging its various supermarket carts  —  It's revamping stores, unifying online shopping carts and offering fresh-food delivery to customers who aren't Prime subscribers.
Rest of World:
Interviews with people at Worldcoin sign-up booths in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong find many scanned their irises to receive the WLD bonuses, an “easy $50”  —  In Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong, our reporters found lots of people were eager to take the deal.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft lets Xbox Insiders stream gameplay from their console to Discord users, available to all Xbox Series X, Series S, and One owners in the coming months  —  Microsoft is improving its Xbox and Discord integration with a new streaming gameplay feature.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple says Apple Card's high-yield savings account offered by Goldman Sachs has topped over $10B in deposits since launching in April  —  Apple today announced that its high-interest savings account for Apple Card has topped over $10 billion in deposits.  Early indicators suggested …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google updates its generative AI-powered Search experience with supplementary multimedia, faster responses, and more context for links in its summary box  —  Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience is getting a big new feature: images and video.  If you've enabled the AI-based SGE feature …
Emilia David / The Verge:
Meta releases AudioCraft, an open-source AI tool that lets users create music and sounds via text prompts, consisting of MusicGen, AudioGen, and EnCodec models  —  It consists of three AI models, all tackling different areas of sound generation.  MusicGen takes text inputs to generate music.
Jen Christensen / CNN:
An early-stage study of 80K+ women in Sweden who underwent a mammogram between April 2021 and July 2022 finds AI-supported screening detected 20% more cancers  —  Artificial intelligence found more breast cancers than doctors with years of training and experience and cut doctors' mammogram …
Amy Lewin / Sifted:
Hopin, the struggling virtual events startup valued at $7.75B in August 2021, sells its Events and Session units to RingCentral; CEO Johnny Boufarhat steps down  —  UPDATED: The startup, which was once the fastest-growing in Europe, has also sold its flagship product
Bloomberg:
Sources: SoftBank's Arm is targeting an IPO at a valuation of between $60B and $70B as soon as September 2023, looking to raise as much as $10B in its debut  —  - Chip design firm may raise as much as $10 billion in debut  — Nvidia, Intel are in discussions to be anchor investors
Charlotte Hughes-Morgan / Bloomberg:
Uber paid £386M, or $490M, to UK tax authorities as part of a dispute over how its ride hailing app applies VAT to UK trips, but plans to appeal the decision  —  - HMRC is challenging Uber's use of Tour Operators Margin Scheme  — Uber said it will appeal the VAT assessment in UK Court
Bloomberg:
China releases draft rules to limit minors' smartphone use, including two-hour limits for teens aged 16 to 18; platforms would be responsible for enforcement  —  - Aims to prevent kids from spending too much time on phones  — Beijing has pursued campaigns to alleviate burden on minors

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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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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:00 PM ET, August 2, 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.

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

Charlie Fink / Forbes:
Inworld, which uses AI to help developers create game characters, raised $30M led by Lightspeed at a $500M+ valuation, following a $50M Series A in August 2022
Alex Pasternack / Fast Company:
An interview with Google Jigsaw engineer Lucy Vasserman on how OpenAI, Anthropic, and others use Jigsaw's AI-based Perspective API to flag LLMs' toxic speech
Helene Braun / CoinDesk:
GameStop plans to shut down its iOS and Chrome crypto wallet extensions on November 1 due to “regulatory uncertainty”, after rolling out the service in May 2022
Chethan Rao / Android Police:
YouTube asks a small number of viewers to share their feedback on a test that generates AI-based “quick overview” summaries on some English-language videos

Earlier Picks

Clive Cookson / Financial Times:
University of Glasgow spinout Chemify, which uses a computing process to design new molecules with AI before making them in an automated lab, raised $43M
Aidan Ryan / The Information:
Sources: Changpeng Zhao tried to liquidate Binance.US earlier in 2023, before pivoting to attempting to sell the company, holding talks with Gemini and others
Steven Church / Bloomberg:
A Voyager Digital lawyer says the crypto lender's user data may have been stolen when the company started letting customers recover their funds in June 2023
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Halcyon: Cloudzy, a Wyoming-registered web hosting company likely operating out of Tehran, is acting as a command-and-control provider for state-backed hackers
Chavi Mehta / Reuters:
Meta begins the process to end news access on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, in response to a law forcing some companies to negotiate deals to pay publishers
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
In a challenge to TikTok, YouTube releases new Shorts creation tools for remixing, adding effects, going live, as well as an interactive Q&A sticker, and more
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