Techmeme
August 17, 2023, 7:50 PM

Top News

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Cofense discovers a phishing campaign that uses QR codes to mainly target a notable US energy company, the first known use of QR codes for phishing at scale  —  A phishing campaign was observed predominantly targeting a notable energy company in the US, employing QR codes to slip malicious emails into inboxes and bypass security.
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Internal doc: Spotify weighed removing white noise podcasts and redirecting users to “talk” content, which would boost the company's annual gross profit by €35M  —  An internal document shows that white noise podcasts account for 3 million daily consumption hours on the platform
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft plans to close its Xbox 360 Store and Xbox 360 Marketplace on July 29, 2024, meaning users will no longer be able to buy games, DLC, avatars, and more  —  Microsoft is preparing to close down its Xbox 360 Store and Xbox 360 Marketplace on July 29th, 2024.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Meta starts rolling out HD photo support globally in WhatsApp for Android, iOS, and the web, and says the company plans to add support for HD videos soon  —  WhatsApp is flipping a switch that will let users send higher-quality “HD” images on the messaging platform.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Snap confirms and fixes a My AI glitch that caused the chatbot to post its own one-second Story of a two-toned image and then stop responding to users' messages  —  Snapchat's My AI feature, an in-app AI chatbot launched earlier this year with its fair share of controversy, briefly appeared to have a mind of its own.
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
A deep dive into X's Community Notes, including how the algorithm works, whether the feature actually fights polarization, and its use in high-stakes situations  —  Special thanks to Dennis Pourteaux and Jay Baxter for feedback and review.  —  The last two years of Twitter X have been tumultuous, to say the least.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Solidus: between mid-July and August, developers deployed 500+ scam tokens on Coinbase's Base blockchain, ~300 of which let their creators mint unlimited tokens  —  - More than 500 scam tokens were deployed on blockchain  — Solidus Labs says scammers pocketed about $2 million in profit
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Sei launches its trading-focused blockchain and SEI hits $1.6B in trading volume in the first 24 hours, per CoinMarketCap; many users criticized SEI's airdrop  —  The buzzy blockchain project's SEI token saw a flurry of trading as it debuted on several crypto exchanges …
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: Bing had 1% to 3% search market share globally in July, the same as in January 2023, despite adding Bing Chat; Microsoft calls the new Bing a success  —  The new Bing with AI chatbot is ‘cute, but not a game changer’  —  When Microsoft unveiled an AI-powered version of Bing in February …
Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Counterpoint expects 2023 global smartphone shipments to drop 6% YoY to 1.15B units, the lowest level since 2013, due to a slowing Chinese economy and US demand  —  - Global smartphone shipments are expected to drop 6% from 2022  — Apple is better positioned than others to weather the storm
Vlad Turiceanu / Windows Report:
Leaked images reveal Lenovo's new Legion Go, a Windows 11 gaming handheld that appears to combine features of the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, and Nintendo Switch  —  Here's a first look at Lenovo's new gaming handheld, the Legion Go  —  Lenovo is working on a gaming handheld called Legion Go …
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
Llion Jones, who co-authored Google's transformer paper, and David Ha, the former head of Google's AI research arm in Japan, launch Sakana AI in Tokyo  —  Llion Jones and David Ha take inspiration from nature with start-up Sakana AI  —  A former Google researcher who co-authored a paper …
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Shiba Inu's Ethereum Layer 2 network Shibarium goes live, joining 50+ other networks luring users via low fees to an ecosystem for financial services and gaming  —  The much-awaited Shibarium network saw over 21 million wallets created during its testnet and is expected to position Shiba Inu as a serious DeFi contender.
Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
Court filings: Alameda can make a $175M claim from the estate of similarly bankrupt crypto company Genesis, significantly below the nearly $4B FTX first sought  —  Though a sharp drop from the $4 billion originally claimed, lawyers hope it will let them get on with winding up estates.

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Earlier Picks

Helene Braun / CoinDesk:
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post:
Dan Garisto / Nature:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: