Techmeme
August 31, 2023, 8:00 PM

Top News

Walter Isaacson / Wall Street Journal:
An excerpt from Walter Isaacson's new Elon Musk biography details Musk's decision to buy Twitter and how his moods fluctuated wildly before the official closing  —  In an exclusive excerpt from his new biography ‘Elon Musk,’ Walter Isaacson offers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most surprising …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta begins testing keyword search on Threads in Australia and New Zealand, and plans a rollout to more English-speaking countries before adding more languages  —  Threads launched one of the most anticipated features, a web version of the platform, last week.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Charlotte Hughes-Morgan / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says X users will be able to make video and audio calls without sharing a phone number, as X “is the effective global address book”, but gives no date  —  Users of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, will be able to make video and audio calls through …
Aisha Counts / Bloomberg:
X updates its privacy policy to let the company collect “biometric information for safety, security, and identification purposes”, plus jobs and education data  —  - In policy shift, X will use the data for safety, security  — Employment, education history will be used to recommend jobs
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Microsoft plans to unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 in Europe on October 1, discounting the suites by €24/year and selling Teams for €60/year  —  - Company offers to unbundle Teams from other business software  — EU investigating if Microsoft's bundling broke antitrust law
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
New York Times:
A look at Starfield, a game by Microsoft's Bethesda with 1,000 explorable planets, set for September 6 after a 10-month delay, as Microsoft needs an Xbox hit  —  The stakes are high for Bethesda's newest role-playing game.  Microsoft needs an Xbox hit, and players are hungry for an expansive and satisfying space adventure.
Camomile Shumba / CoinDesk:
Swift and Web3 services startup Chainlink send tokenized value across private and public blockchains using Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol  —  The interbank messaging system Swift announced in June it was collaborating with Chainlink and dozens of financial institutions to test connecting blockchains.
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
Binance plans to “gradually” end support for its BUSD stablecoin by February 2024, as “Paxos halted minting of new BUSD” after an NYDFS order in February 2023  —  The move follows Paxos' decision to halt minting of new BUSD.  —  Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it will …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
YouTube Music redesigns its Now Playing screen on Android and iOS with larger cover art and a comments section, after launching real-time lyrics last week  —  After pulling a variant at the start of this year, YouTube Music is rolling out the latest redesign of Now Playing on Android and iOS, adding a comments section.
Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica:
A US District judge grants a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the enforcement of a Texas law that requires age verification to access porn sites  —  Texas was supposed to start enforcing the law tomorrow.  —  The day before a Texas antiporn law that requires age verification …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Meta releases FACET, an AI benchmarking tool for evaluating the “fairness” of AI models that classify and detect things in photos and videos, including people  —  Continuing on its open source tear, Meta today released a new AI benchmark, FACET, designed to evaluate the “fairness” …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Bumble updates its community guidelines to crack down on bots, spam, ghosting, and doxxing, and says the company blocked 8.2M+ accounts in 2023, mostly using AI  —  Dating app company Bumble has released its updated community guidelines with an aim to crack down on bots, spam, ghosting, and doxing.
More: Mashable
Morgan Park / PC Gamer:
Activision partners with Modulate to test ToxMod, an AI-based voice moderation tool, across Modern Warfare 2, Warzone 2, and other games, in North America  —  There's a new AI-powered sheriff in town, and its name is ToxMod.  —  Call of Duty is joining the growing number …
James Hunt / The Block:
A US judge dismisses a lawsuit against Uniswap, founder Hayden Adams, a16z, and others over scam token sales, as software cannot be held liable for user losses  —  - Uniswap founder Hayden Adams hailed the court's comments as “based” after a class action lawsuit alleging liability for scam token sales was thrown out.
Wired:
A monthslong investigation exposes the secrets of Russian ransomware gang Trickbot, which thrives despite global disruption efforts, and a key member's identity  —  A WIRED investigation into a cache of documents posted by an unknown figure lays bare the Trickbot ransomware gang's secrets, including the identity of a central member.
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:
Otto, formerly TeleVet, which makes software for veterinary clinics, raised a $43M Series B led by Mercury Fund, which led its $5M Series A in December 2022  —  Scheduling medical appointments is challenging enough for humans, so Otto, formerly TeleVet, wants to make it easy to, at the very least, care for our pets.
More: Otto and FinSMEs
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
NYC's subway service disables a feature in its OMNY contactless system after a flaw let anyone see a rider's seven-day trip history using their credit card info  —  In the mid-afternoon one Saturday earlier this month, the target got on the New York subway.  I knew what station they entered the subway at and at what specific time.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Dell reports Q2 revenue down 13% YoY to $22.9B, vs. $20.8B est., Client Solutions down 16% to $12.9B, Infrastructure Solutions down 11% to $8.5B; DELL jumps 7%+  —  - Server partnership on AI with chipmaker Nvidia fuels demand  — PC sales to consumers and businesses were better than expected

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Earlier Picks

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