Techmeme
October 18, 2023, 10:25 PM

Top News

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon announces the launch of drone deliveries of medicines purchased through Amazon Pharmacy for customers in College Station, Texas  —  Amazon's Prime Air drone service has been slow to take off for the company, with limited operations in just two locales a whole decade after Amazon first started development of the program.
Kris Holt / Engadget:
Amazon plans to expand its Prime Air drone delivery system to the UK, Italy, and a third US city beginning in late 2024  —  The company will also bring the Prime Air program to a third US city by the end of 2024.  —  Amazon has some big plans for its drone delivery program …
Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
Sarah Whitten / CNBC:
Netflix reports Q3 revenue up 7.8% YoY to $8.54B, vs. $8.54B est., and global paid memberships up 10.8% YoY to 247.15M, vs. 243.88M est.; NFLX jumps 12%+  —  - Netflix shares popped more than 12% after the closing bell Wednesday.  — The company reported a boost in subscriber growth driven …
Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
Netflix raises US prices for its basic plan to $11.99 from $9.99 and its premium plan to $22.99 from $19.99; it is also raising some prices in the UK and France  —  Hollywood strikes will lead to lower content spending, more free cash flow this year, company says
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Stanford unveils the Foundation Model Transparency Index, featuring 100 indicators; Llama 2 led at 54%, GPT-4 placed third at 48%, and PaLM 2 took fifth at 40%  —  Stanford researchers have ranked 10 major A.I. models on how openly they operate.  —  How much do we know about A.I.?
Francesco Canepa / Reuters:
The European Central Bank plans to start a two-year “preparation phase” for the digital euro on November 1, to finalize rules, select partners, and do testing  —  The European Central Bank took a further step on Wednesday towards launching a digital version of the euro …
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Google says that government-backed hackers linked to Russia and China are exploiting a since-patched zero-day in WinRAR, discovered by Group-IB in August 2023  —  Google security researchers say they have found evidence that government-backed hackers linked to Russia and China are exploiting …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google updates Chrome's address bar with better autocomplete, suggestions for misspelled URL names, search within bookmark folders, and a revamped desktop look  —  Google is rolling out a series of updates to the address bar (or Omnibox) in Chrome that improves the accuracy of autocomplete across the desktop and mobile browser.
Reuters:
The US' new 400-page chip export rules show officials are open to chip sector input on ways to keep sending AI chips to China for small and medium-sized systems  —  While stripping China's access to key U.S. artificial intelligence chips, the Biden administration's sweeping new rules …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Experts say misinformation from “verified” pseudo-OSINT accounts on X, driven by profit and engagement, is destroying the Israel-Hamas war information ecosystem  —  Join the newsletter to get the latest updates.  —  Success  —  Great!  Check your inbox and click the link.  —  Error
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Clearview AI wins an appeal against the UK Information Commissioner's Office, which imposed a ~£7.5M fine in May 2022 for alleged breaches of local privacy laws  —  Controversial US facial recognition company, Clearview AI, has won an appeal against a privacy sanction issued by the U.K. last year.
Financial Times:
The US House China committee asks Sequoia about its investments since 2010 in AI, quantum, and chip companies based in or having significant operations in China  —  Scrutiny of California VC firm comes amid mounting tension between Washington and Beijing  —  The China committee of the US House …
Zeba Siddiqui / Reuters:
In a rare joint statement, Five Eyes chiefs from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand warn about China's IP “theft” and using AI to hack and spy  —  The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
YouTube adds a news page to its mobile apps that suggests content from “authoritative sources”, and plans to spend $1.6M to promote creating Shorts news content  —  YouTube is embracing news from “authoritative sources” at a time when Meta is reluctant to promote hard news …
Wall Street Journal:
At a conference, Sam Altman and other tech leaders say AI will likely bring seismic workforce changes, eliminating professions, a hard sell to the most affected  —  At WSJ Tech Live, Sam Altman said coming workforce changes will play out unevenly  —  LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. …
Stephen Warwick / iMore:
Apple unveils an “affordable” $79 Apple Pencil that charges via a USB-C cable, shipping in “early November” and compatible with all iPads that have a USB-C port  —  A nice surprise...  Apple has today unveiled a new “affordable” Apple Pencil with USB-C that costs $79.
Matt Mullenweg:
While X charging users $1/year to stop bots and spam is appealing, the value of manipulating X is so high that millions are likely already being spent to do so  —  Twitter/X is testing charging users $1/year with the idea that will keep out bots and spam.  It's an appealing idea …
Kylie Robison / Fortune:
More: Insider, X, The Verge, Ars Technica, 9to5Mac, BleepingComputer, CNBC, PCMag, Hackread, TechStartups, Windows Central, X, Techdirt, The Apple Post, PC Gamer, Android Headlines, PetaPixel, Observer, Cryptopolitan, Gizchina, Bitcoin Insider, Forbes, New York Post, Thurrott, The Guardian, NPR, Global News, Android Central, Newser, SiliconANGLE, MacRumors, and Axios

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Earlier Picks

CNBC:
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