Techmeme
August 31, 2023, 12:10 AM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Sony plans to raise PlayStation Plus annual subscription prices on September 6: Essential from $60 to $80, Extra from $100 to $135, Premium from $120 to $160  —  Sony is raising the price of its PlayStation Plus subscription next month.  The service's annual Essential plan will go from $60 to $80 …
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Microsoft retires Visual Studio for Mac, saying the IDE will get “servicing updates for security issues and updated platforms from Apple” until August 31, 2024  —  Microsoft has announced plans to discontinue Visual Studio for Mac.  The latest version of the company's IDE …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is testing 3D printing the stainless steel Apple Watch Series 9's chassis to speed up production, boost sustainability, and lower costs over time  —  - New approach will use less material and be more eco-friendly  — Company is trying out the process with steel Apple Watches
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft plans to address a Windows 11 “unintended behavior” that for months has caused malware-like notification pop-ups promoting Bing search to Chrome users  —  I thought I had malware on my main Windows 11 machine this weekend.  There I was minding my own business in Chrome …
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Meta lets users submit requests to access, alter, or delete some of their third-party information that Meta uses for generative AI training  —  - Meta updated its help resource center with a form that gives users some control over what personal data is used to train generative artificial intelligence models.
Jon Gambrell / Associated Press:
A Saudi court sentences a man to death over his X posts and YouTube activity, part of a growing dissent crackdown; his brother is a well-known government critic  —  A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death over his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and his activity on YouTube …
Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica:
OpenAI files a motion to dismiss two similar lawsuits from book authors alleging copyright infringement, saying the authors “misconceive the scope of copyright”  —  Authors claim generative AI is just a “grift” that repackages original works.  —  This week, OpenAI finally responded …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google announces a hardware event on October 4 at 10am ET in New York City, where the company is expected to unveil the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, and Pixel Watch 2  —  Google this morning announced that it will be hosting its annual Pixel hardware event on Wednesday, October 4.
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Tel Aviv-based AI21 Labs, which develops generative AI tools for text use cases, raised a $155M Series C at a $1.4B valuation, taking its total funding to $283M  —  AI21 Labs, a Tel Aviv-based startup developing a range of text-generating AI tools, has raised $155 million in a Series C funding round led …
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Australia abandons its plans to mandate age verification tech for porn sites, citing privacy and security concerns, and will instead focus on educating parents  —  The eSafety commissioner is to work with industry on a new code to educate parents about how to access filtering software and limit children's access
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Instagram is internally testing letting users create Reels up to 10 minutes long, after TikTok increased its maximum video length to 10 minutes in February 2022  —  Instagram is internally testing the ability to create Reels that are up to 10 minutes in the length, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon announces the Buy with Prime app for Shopify, which will let US-based Shopify merchants natively integrate Amazon's program into their Shopify stores  —  In-depth Amazon coverage from the tech giant's hometown, including e-commerce, AWS, Amazon Prime, Alexa, logistics, devices, and more.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Sources: Apple plans to eliminate social media support adviser roles across X, YouTube, and the Apple Support Community website starting later this year  —  Apple is planning to eliminate social media support advisor roles across Twitter, YouTube, and the Apple Support Community website starting later …
Financial Times:
Document: the UK plans to increase use of AI-based facial recognition tech by the police, potentially deploying new biometric systems over the next 12-18 months  —  Move comes after privacy campaigners and independent academics criticised technology for being inaccurate
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google launches its Search Generative Experience in India and Japan via Search Labs opt-in, following the US launch of the AI search feature in May 2023  —  Following the May launch in the US, Google is giving the Search Generative Experience (SGE) an international launch in India and Japan …
Wallace Witkowski / MarketWatch:

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
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 12:10 AM ET, August 31, 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

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Steve Dent / Engadget:

Earlier Picks

Jon Porter / The Verge:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Reuters:
Caiwei Chen / Rest of World:
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Mark Sullivan / Fast Company: