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:
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More News

Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide:
Bloomberg:
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Earlier Picks

CNBC:
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
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Tom Warren / The Verge:
Rob Pegoraro / PCMag: