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October 15, 2023, 5:10 PM
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Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
A look at Apple's recent executive promotions; sources: a cheaper Vision Pro may not have EyeSight and M3-based MacBook Pros could come in early or spring 2024  —  Still, it's losing a top hardware executive.  Also: There are fresh details on efforts to lower the price of the Vision Pro …
Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post:
How social media is inducing an Israel-Hamas fog of war surpassing previous Gaza clashes, shaping how panicked citizens and a global public view the conflict  —  The barrage of false images, memes, videos and posts — mostly generated from within the region itself — is making it difficult to assess what is real.
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Some AI image detecting tools are labeling real photographs from the Israel-Hamas war as fake, creating what an expert calls a “second level of disinformation”  —  Content warning: This story contains graphic images of violence.  —  A free AI image detector that's been covered …
Financial Times:
How Brad Smith, who became Microsoft's top legal officer in 2002, used a legal, policy, and influence machine costing $1B+ per year to close the Activision deal  —  Company's top legal officer has honed diplomatic skills to recast the US tech giant's reputation
Diane Bartz / Reuters:
The US FTC says the agency remains focused on its appeal opposing Microsoft's $68.7B Activision acquisition and will “assess” the cloud gaming deal with Ubisoft
Tom Warren / The Verge:
A look at Microsoft's deal with Ubisoft, which now gets the cloud gaming rights for Call of Duty and current Activision games outside of the EU for 15 years
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
GPT-4V, which lets users upload images as part of conversations with GPT-4, enables new vectors for prompt injection attacks by following instructions in images  —  GPT4-V is the new mode of GPT-4 that allows you to upload images as part of your conversations.  It's absolutely brilliant.
Thomas Claburn / The Register:
Researchers find that a modest amount of fine-tuning can bypass safety efforts aiming to prevent LLMs such as OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo from spewing toxic content  —  OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo chatbot defenses dissolve with ‘20 cents’ of API tickling  —  The “guardrails” created to prevent large language models …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Disney+ Hotstar reclaims the global on-demand video streaming record with 35M concurrent viewers of the India-Pakistan ICC Cricket World Cup match on October 14  —  In India, few events garner as much attention as a cricket game.  A high-profile match between neighbors India and Pakistan delivered …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Eradicating the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset flaw, which hackers exploited to launch record-setting DDoS attacks, requires patching virtually every web server globally  —  Dubbed “HTTP/2 Rapid Reset,” the flaw requires making patches available for virtually every web server around the world before the problem can be eradicated.
Kate Irwin / Decrypt:
DappRadar: blockchain gaming projects have raised ~$600M in Q3 2023, down 38% QoQ, and $2.3B so far in 2023, which is only 30% of what was raised in all of 2022  —  While the gaming industry continues to be plagued by mass layoffs, crypto gaming is still seeing many millions invested each quarter.
Jared Newman / Fast Company:
A look at Obsidian, an indie, Electron-based note-taking app that has developed a cult following on Discord and Reddit; Obsidian estimates its app has ~1M users  —  The indie darling rejects everything you know about modern software.  And its strategy is working.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, October 15, 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.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Sources: David Ellison, the CEO of Skydance, has recently held early discussions about acquiring Bari Weiss' The Free Press

Lindsey Holden / Politico:
A judge grants a temporary restraining order against LAPD, ruling that they can't force journalists out of protest areas or use nonlethal weapons against them

Bloomberg:
Sources: Legendary Entertainment is considering acquiring Lionsgate Studios after Lionsgate finalized its split from Starz; Lionsgate has a market cap of $1.8B

More News

Brendan Bordelon / Politico:
How Dustin Moskovitz's Open Philanthropy pushes policymakers to focus on AI's long-term risks by funding the salaries of congressional and federal agency staff
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
How influencers helped boost the popularity of Riot Game's Valorant on YouTube and Twitch among Generation Z gamers; Riot says 70% of Valorant players are Gen Z

Earlier Picks

Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
Filing: the US NLRB alleges that X illegally fired an employee in November 2022 in retaliation for her posts challenging the company's RTO policy
New York Times:
As China-linked Bitcoin mines open across the US, officials raise national security concerns, like about a Wyoming mine that is close to a nuclear missile base
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Nvidia plans to raise the price of its GeForce Now cloud gaming service in Canada and some European countries in November, citing “increased operational costs”
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