Techmeme
October 8, 2023, 4:10 PM

Top News

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Hackers posted a 23andMe data sample on BreachForums, claiming that it has 1M data points exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews; it appears to lack raw genetic data  —  At least a million data points from 23andMe accounts appear to have been exposed on BreachForums.
Anthropic:
A research paper details how decomposing groups of neural network neurons into “interpretable features” may improve safety by enabling the monitoring of LLMs  —  Neural networks are trained on data, not programmed to follow rules.  With each step of training …
Emma Fletcher / Federal Trade Commission:
One in four people in the US who reported losing money to fraud from January 2021 to June 2023 said the contact started on social media, causing $2.7B in losses  —  Scammers are hiding in plain sight on social media platforms and reports to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network point to huge profits.
Andy Patrizio / Ars Technica:
A history of Digital Equipment Corporation, which was founded in 1957 to build small digital modules, pioneered minicomputers, and Compaq acquired in 1998  —  One of the early pioneers in computing, the company disappeared in the late 1990s.  —  Even though very few of the early players …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
IDC says Google shipped 37.9M Pixel phones from 2016 to 2023, suggesting the company shipped a record ~10M phones over the past 12 months, up from 7.2M in 2019  —  Google Pixel is still a minor player in the global smartphone market, but the brand continues to move along.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Even though the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have the same Tensor G3 chip, features like Night Sight Video and enhanced Magic Eraser are exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro  —  I can't believe Google finally did it.  I'm still in disbelief. … It's unheard of.  It's historic.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Alexa has been claiming that the US 2020 presidential election was stolen, citing unvetted Rumble and Substack sources; Amazon says the errors have been fixed  —  The popular voice assistant says the 2020 race was stolen, even as parent company Amazon promotes the tool as a reliable election news source …
Jo Craven McGinty / Wall Street Journal:
Q&A with Stanford University School of Medicine Dean Dr. Lloyd Minor on generative AI in medicine, the privacy risks, responsibly deploying the tech, and more  —  The dean of Stanford University's medical school thinks artificial intelligence will transform the medicines you take, the care you get and the training of doctors
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Y Combinator hires Yelp public policy chief Luther Lowe, best known for publicly criticizing Google, to lead public policy, as the accelerator embraces politics  —  Best known for his relentless public criticism of Google as a monopoly, longtime Yelp public policy chief Luther Lowe has a new gig …
Reuters:
The US adds 42 companies from China and seven from Finland, Germany, India, Turkey, the UAE, and the UK to an export control list over supporting Russia's army  —  The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday added 42 Chinese companies to a government export control list over their support …

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Earlier Picks

Paresh Dave / Wired:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt: