Techmeme
October 24, 2023, 2:15 PM

Top News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
David Pierce / The Verge:
Automattic plans to acquire Texts, a $15-per-month messaging app that works with WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, LinkedIn, Signal, Telegram, and more, for $50M  —  Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and a number of other popular web properties …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple schedules a “Scary Fast” event for October 30 at 5PM PT; in the event teaser, an Apple logo morphs into the macOS Finder icon, suggesting a Mac focus  —  Apple today announced its second fall event of 2023, with the online event set to be held on Monday, October 30 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
A paper from Geoffrey Hinton and other experts warns of AI systems' worrying capabilities and says 33% of companies' AI R&D budgets should go to managing risks  —  Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, two of the so-called AI godfathers, have joined with 22 other leading AI academics …
Benedict Evans:
A Twitter user since 2007 on why he left: Elon Musk brought chaos to Twitter and boosts conspiracy theories, white supremacists, and antisemitic dog whistles  —  Twitter always used to look a lot like Craigslist.  It stumbled into something that a lot of people found very useful …
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Sources: many people inside Apple do not believe its own AI/ML team can deliver on generative AI, and worry that the company will only use that team's output  —  Speaking of Mark Gurman, he has an interesting bit about Apple's AI efforts in his latest Power On column:
Lauren Feiner / CNBC:
California and 41 other US states sue Meta in federal and state courts alleging that Facebook and Instagram features are addictive and aimed at kids and teens  —  - A bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general is suing Meta, alleging features on Facebook and Instagram are addictive and are aimed at kids and teens.
Kenza Bryan / Financial Times:
EU environmental groups criticize Apple branding its new Apple Watches as “carbon neutral” and using credits to cancel out the 7kg to 12kg of emissions per unit  —  iPhone maker flags credentials of its latest Watch products as EU seeks to clamp down on ‘greenwashing’
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Spotify Q3: revenue up 11% YoY to €3.4B, MAUs up 26% to 574M, subscribers up 16% YoY to 226M, and €32M operating income, vs. a €44.6M loss est.; SPOT jumps 9%+  —  Spotify Technology SA rose the most since January after the music-streaming giant reported third-quarter results …
Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review:
A look at Nightshade and Glaze, tools made by researchers at UChicago that help artists “poison” their work to confuse or break AI models that later train on it  —  A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it's scraped …
David Pierce / The Verge:
A look at POSSE, a decade-old idea that a user should Publish (on your) Own Site and Syndicate Elsewhere, and the challenges of building a system based on that  —  The platform era is ending.  Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.
Marissa Newman / Bloomberg:
Google disables live traffic conditions in Israel and the Gaza Strip for its Maps and Waze apps, a source says at the request of the Israel Defense Forces  —  - Israeli army asked tech giant to limit real-time information  — Google took similar action in Ukraine during war with Russia
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
Q&A with FTC Commissioner and digital privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya on the agency's plan to hire child psychologists to understand social media's impact on kids  —  I saw and I heard stories from parents about the mental health issues that their children were experiencing and how both the parents and …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
After Unciphered developed a crack for an old IronKey USB drive to recover 7,002 BTC, the owner declines their help because he agreed to work with other experts  —  Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins.  One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Xreal, formerly Nreal, announces the $399 Xreal Air 2 and $449 Air 2 Pro, AR glasses with brighter Micro OLED displays, available in five countries in November  —  Xreal is opening preorders for its latest generation of augmented reality glasses, the Xreal Air 2 and Air 2 Pro …
Tyler Cowen / Marginal Revolution:

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