Techmeme
August 31, 2023, 12:50 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 …
Aisha Counts / Bloomberg:
X updates its privacy policy to include new biometric data, which the company plans to collect for safety and security, along with data on jobs and education  —  - In policy shift, X will use the data for safety, security  — Employment, education history will be used to recommend jobs
Charlotte Hughes-Morgan / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says X users will be able to make video and audio calls without a phone number, but offers no timeframe, as X “is the effective global address book”  —  Users of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, will be able to make video and audio calls through …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Microsoft plans to unbundle Teams from Microsoft 365 and Office 365 across Europe from October 1, instead offering Teams to enterprise for €24 per year  —  - Company offers to unbundle Teams from other business software  — EU investigating if Microsoft's bundling broke antitrust law
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta begins testing full-text search on Threads in Australia and New Zealand and plans a wider rollout to other English-speaking countries in the future  —  Threads launched one of the most anticipated features, a web version of the platform, last week.  Now, Meta is testing another highly …
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
Binance plans to “gradually” end support for its BUSD stablecoin by February 2024, citing Paxos ceasing to mint 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 …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
The NYC subway's OMNY contactless payments system has a privacy issue that lets anyone view a rider's seven-day trip history using just credit card details  —  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.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Sources: Apple plans to eliminate social media support adviser roles across X, YouTube, and the Apple Support Community website starting later in 2023  —  Apple is planning to eliminate social media support advisor roles across Twitter, YouTube, and the Apple Support Community website starting later …
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 …
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.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Morgan Park / PC Gamer:
Activision partners with Modulate to begin testing ToxMod, an AI-based voice moderation tool for Modern Warfare 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 of online games combatting toxicity …
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Meta lets users submit requests to access, alter, or delete some of their third-party information that the company 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.
Wired:
A monthslong investigation exposes the secrets of Russian ransomware gang Trickbot, which thrived 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: FinSMEs and Otto
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.
Emilia David / The Verge:
The US Copyright Office seeks public input on AI and copyright issues, including using copyrighted works for AI training; written comments are due on October 18  —  The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject.
Gillian Tan / Bloomberg:
Sources: CoreWeave, which offers Nvidia GPUs in the cloud, seeks a ~10% equity sale at a $5B to $8B valuation; source: CoreWeave projects $1.5B in 2024 revenue  —  - Company counts Nvidia, Magnetar as existing equity investors  — Startup raised $2.3 billion in debt from Blackstone, others
More: Synthedia
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.
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:
Australia abandons its plans to force porn sites to use age verification tech, 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
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” …

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:
CIO challenge 5: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 11/21 - What The DOJ Wants Google To Do
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 12:50 PM 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

Stephen Nellis / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Matt Burgess / Wired:
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Ben Strack / Blockworks:
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Emma Roth / The Verge: