Techmeme
September 29, 2023, 7:15 PM

Top News

Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch:
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Letterboxd's founders sell a majority stake to Canadian company Tiny; a source says the deal values the film-focused social network with ~10M users at $50M+  —  Two designers from New Zealand built a wildly popular social network for movie buffs.  Now, they're cashing in (and sticking around for the sequel).
William Gallagher / AppleInsider:
Report: Apple uses two microscopic QR codes on iPhone displays to track defects, which has helped cut its suppliers' faulty screen report rates from 30% to 10%  —  Apple spent millions to add a barcode to iPhone displays in order to save being charged hundreds of millions by manufacturers claiming faulty screens that may not have been.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple executives met Chinese officials in recent months to discuss new rules forcing Apple to ban apps whose operators are not registered with China  —  Country's push to register foreign apps threatens to remove Facebook, Instagram and X from iPhone App Store in China
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Meta quietly unveils Llama 2 Long, which has been trained with longer sequences, outperforming GPT-3.5 Turbo and Claude 2 when responding to long user prompts  —  Meta Platforms showed off a bevy of new AI features for its consumer-facing services Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp …
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information:
Sources: Jasper, which offers an AI writing tool for marketers, cut its $140M ARR projections for 2023 by 30%+ and its internal valuation by 20% from $1.5B  —  Jasper AI, an early darling of the generative artificial intelligence boom, has cut the internal value of its common shares 20% …
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Progress Software, the company behind the widely exploited MOVEit file transfer tool, patches critical vulnerabilities in its WS_FTP Server data transfer tool  —  The company behind a popular file transfer service that was exploited by ransomware hackers has announced a new set of vulnerabilities affecting another file transfer tool.
Elizabeth Pineau / Reuters:
French authorities say they approved Apple's iPhone 12 software update that addresses radiation level concerns; Apple submitted the update on September 26  —  French authorities said on Friday they had approved Apple's AAPL.O software update of its iPhone 12 after a row over radiation levels of the device …
Washington Post:
The Supreme Court agrees to hear two cases concerning whether Florida and Texas can restrict social media companies from removing political posts or accounts  —  The Supreme Court on Friday said it would wade into the future of free speech online and decide whether laws passed in Texas …
Reuters:
Intel begins chip production using extreme ultraviolet lithography machines at its $18.5B Ireland plant, its first high-volume location for its 7nm process  —  Chipmaker Intel (INTC.O) said on Friday it had begun high-volume production using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
BeReal says its app has 25M+ DAUs, up from 20M in October 2022, disputing a Similarweb report estimating that BeReal's MAUs declined to 16.06M in August 2023  —  Just under a year ago, the buzzy new social app BeReal looked to be on the rise, with reportedly 20 million users launching the app every day to snap their candid photos.
More: Gizmodo

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Back your gut feeling with behavioral assessments  —  Imagine someone gives you a mystery box.  What's the first thing you'd do?  You'd likely assess the box and try to predict what is inside.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
xAI Acquires X
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
CEO Matt Bromberg on ending Unity's 'war' against its customers
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Diggnation:
GTA 6, Helicopter Joysticks, AI Psychics, and Live Show Regret
Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht give you their unique, sometimes awkward, and always hilarious take on the edges of the internet.
Subscribe to Diggnation.
Grit:
From India to Silicon Valley: The Jay Chaudhry & Zscaler Story
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
A better way to plan, build, and ship products | Ryan Singer (creator of "Shape Up," early employee at 37signals)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Hard Fork:
The Tech Behind Signalgate + Dwarkesh Patel's "Scaling Era" + Is A.I. Making Our Listeners Dumb?
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:15 PM ET, September 29, 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

David Heaney / UploadVR:
Financial Times:
Lex Fridman / Lex Fridman Podcast:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Umar Shakir / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Victoria Song / The Verge:
RT Watson / The Block:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Camomile Shumba / CoinDesk:
Emma Roth / The Verge: