Techmeme
November 8, 2023, 12:15 PM

Top News

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Rockstar plans to begin promoting Grand Theft Auto VI, expected to be one of the decade's biggest video games, in December, coinciding with its 25th anniversary  —  The company plans to release a trailer for the game in December, according to a blog post by Rockstar's president Sam Houser.
Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal:
Meta plans to require advertisers to disclose running political ads with media altered by AI or other software, starting in early 2024, ahead of the US election  —  Facebook parent said new policy to go into effect beginning next year, ahead of U.S. presidential primaries
Margi Murphy / Bloomberg:
Ahead of the 2024 US election, Microsoft plans to offer a new free tool to help US politicians fight deepfakes by authenticating their videos and photos  —  - Tool offering comes as concerns grow over fake photos, videos  — Microsoft says Russia is ‘huge’ cyber, disinformation threat
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
In a letter, Google and EU telcos called on the European Commission to designate iMessage as a “core” service to make the chat app fully compatible with rivals  —  Companies want chat app designated a ‘core’ service that would require it to be fully compatible with rivals
Gearoid Reidy / Bloomberg:
A look at Nintendo's movie push, as the company partners with Sony to work on a live-action Zelda movie, after the huge success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie  —  It's dangerous to go alone, and in teaming up with Sony and the man who made Marvel successful, Nintendo shows it has learned from past mistakes.
Cho Mu-Hyun / ZDNet:
Samsung unveils Gauss, a generative AI model developed by Samsung Research, currently used for staff productivity with plans to expand to product applications  —  Samsung has for the first time publicly unveiled its own generative AI model dubbed Samsung Gauss on Wednesday.
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Source: Amazon is developing a new LLM, codenamed Olympus, which could be announced by December and may power new features for the online store, Alexa, and AWS  —  Uber is finally on the right road.  That could be Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's motto today, as the ride-hailing …
Caroline O'Donovan / Washington Post:
Amazon cuts the price of an annual One Medical membership from $199 to $99 for Prime users, part of its plans to significantly expand its health care footprint  —  The tech giant will offer cheaper health care to Prime members via One Medical, a long-expected integration that could significantly expand its health care footprint
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
WhatsApp now lets iOS and Android users hide their location during calls by relaying the connection through its servers to obfuscate IP address metadata  —  WhatsApp is rolling out a new privacy feature that helps Android and iOS users hide their location during calls by relaying the connection through WhatsApp servers.
Tom Krisher / Associated Press:
Cruise recalls all 950 of its autonomous cars to update their software after one dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street on October 2  —  General Motors' Cruise autonomous vehicle unit is recalling all 950 of its cars to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian …
Matt Growcoot / PetaPixel:
Adobe's site for stock images lists AI-generated images of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and some small outlets have used them without labeling them as AI  —  As fears rise over fake imagery generated by artificial intelligence flooding the internet, one of the world's leading stock photo websites …
Anna Irrera / Bloomberg:
HSBC partners with Ripple to offer institutional clients a custody service for digital assets, expected to launch in 2024, complementing its HSBC Orion service  —  - Latest blockchain offering is expected to go live in 2024  —  HSBC Holdings Plc plans to offer institutional clients …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
OpenAI fixes an issue that caused a “major outage” across ChatGPT and its API for around 90 minutes, starting at 6AM PT  —  OpenAI's ChatGPT service is back online after being down and inaccessible for its 100 million weekly active users.  ChatGPT went down shortly before 9AM ET / 6AM PT …
Caitlin Huston / Hollywood Reporter:
Spotify now offers US paid subscribers 15 hours of free access to 200K+ audiobooks per month, after launching the service in the UK and Australia on October 3  —  The podcast and music platform will offer U.S. paid subscribers 15 hours of free listening to audiobooks as it continues its rollout of the new offering.
Lauren Smiley / Wired:
How San Francisco's citizen surveillance culture, with incidents often posted to X, helped unravel the story of a bloody street attack, causing viral outrage  —  When a homeless man attacked a former city official, footage of the onslaught became a rallying cry.
Bloomberg:
Sources: USDC stablecoin issuer Circle is considering an IPO early in 2024; Circle was valued at $9B when the company tried to go public via SPAC in 2022  —  - Backers include Goldman Sachs, General Catalyst and BlackRock  — Circle had tried to go public via blank-check deal in 2022
Matt G. Southern / Search Engine Journal:
Google adds generative AI text and image features to its Performance Max ad platform, rolling out in beta to US advertisers in 2023 and more countries in 2024  —  Google launches generative AI in Performance Max to help marketers easily create customized text and image ads at scale.
Jacob Judah / MIT Technology Review:
How .tk, the ccTLD for New Zealand's Tokelau territory, gained 25M users, more than any other ccTLD until recently, by becoming cybercriminals' domain of choice  —  Tokelau, a necklace of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997.
Kate Clark / The Information:
Document: Coatue cut the value of its $120M OpenSea stake to $13M as of Q2 2023, implying a $1.4B valuation or less on paper, down from $13.3B in January 2022  —  One of OpenSea's biggest investors has marked down by 90% its stake in the struggling non-fungible-token marketplace …
ABC:
Australian telecom Optus says its mobile network has been restored and “most services should now be online” after an hours-long outage affected 10M+ customers  —  Loading...  Optus says some services are “gradually being restored” but it may take a few more hours until the whole network is back online.

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