Techmeme
November 15, 2023, 3:50 AM

Top News

Chris Velazco / Washington Post:
Nothing plans to roll out an early version of Nothing Chats, a Sunbird-based app that lets Phone (2) users send iMessages to iPhone contacts, on November 17  —  Nothing, Sunbird and other upstarts are taking iMessage where it's never been before  —  Here's a glimmer of hope for anyone …
Ryan McNeal / Android Authority:
To use iMessage via Nothing Chats, users must log in to their iCloud account, and iMessages will be sent via a virtual Mac mini, which may weaken data security  —  Nothing Chats will be exclusive to the Nothing Phone 2.  —  TL;DR  — Nothing is launching a new messaging app called Nothing Chats on November 17.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Intel patches a bug affecting virtually all modern Intel CPUs that allows code running inside a VM to crash hypervisors, a risk to cloud providers in particular  —  Among other things, bug allows code running inside a VM to crash hypervisors.  —  Intel on Tuesday pushed microcode updates …
Clive Cookson / Financial Times:
Google DeepMind details weather forecasting AI model GraphCast, more accurate than the best conventional systems for three to 10 day predictions, an AI first  —  Google DeepMind's model beat world's leading system in 90% of metrics used and took only a fraction of the time
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
The FBI dismantled the IPStorm botnet proxy network and its infrastructure as part of a September plea deal with Sergei Makinin, the hacker behind the operation  —  The FBI dismantled the IPStorm botnet proxy network and its infrastructure this week following a September plea deal with the hacker behind the operation.
Nicola Davis / The Guardian:
A study found that AI-generated photos of faces, particularly white faces, were perceived as more real by survey participants than photos of actual people  —  Photographs were seen as less realistic than computer images but there was no difference with pictures of people of colour
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Epic v. Google: Sundar Pichai confirms Google paid Apple 36% of the search revenue generated on iPhones, saying the total payment “was well over $10B” in 2022  —  Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, testified on Tuesday for the second time in two weeks to defend his company against monopoly claims.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Three young hackers behind Mirai talk about building the DDoS botnet, losing control of their monster, their work for the FBI as part of a plea deal, and more  —  Netflix, Spotify, Twitter, PayPal, Slack.  All down for millions of people.  How a group of teen friends plunged into an underworld …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
EU lawmakers are on a tricky knife edge hammering out the AI Act's final shape, as France and Germany push for a regulatory carve-out for foundation models  —  Negotiations between European Union lawmakers tasked with reaching a compromise on a risk-based framework for regulating applications …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A US judge rejects efforts by Alphabet, ByteDance, Meta, and Snap to dismiss hundreds of lawsuits accusing them of enticing and addicting children to their apps  —  A federal judge on Tuesday rejected efforts by major social media companies to dismiss nationwide litigation accusing …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Notion unveils Q&A, an AI assistant that answers questions using info from a user's files and apps, as part Notion's AI add-on for $8 to $10 per user per month  —  The first killer app of AI for businesses, it appears, is a simple thing: to be able to find information in the morass of files …
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Civitai, where users share AI models and AI-made images, including nonconsensual porn of real people, debuts a bounties feature and raised a $5.1M a16z-led seed  —  Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in Facebook …
Kristi Hines / Search Engine Journal:
Sam Altman says OpenAI is pausing new ChatGPT Plus signups “for a bit” as “the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity”  —  OpenAI has paused new ChatGPT Plus signups due to overwhelming demand for new features introduced at recent DevDay conference.
Eyal Press / New Yorker:
A look at some wrongful arrests in the US due to bad facial recognition matches, and how “automation bias” could lead police to ignore contradictory evidence  —  Too often, a facial-recognition search represents virtually the entirety of a police investigation.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Unciphered, which helps recover cryptocurrency, finds a BitcoinJS flaw in some wallets made before 2016 and says that up to $1B of crypto is at risk of theft  —  A company that helps recover cryptocurrency discovered a software flaw putting as much as $1 billion at risk from hackers.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
WhatsApp for Android's chat and media backups will count toward the Google Account storage limit for beta users as of December 2023, and for all users in 2024  —  Google and WhatsApp today announced a change wherein WhatsApp chat and media backups on Android will “start counting toward …
CNBC:
Airbnb acquires GamePlanner.AI, its first acquisition as a public company, to accelerate some of its AI projects; sources: deal is valued at just under $200M  —  - Airbnb has made its first acquisition as a public company, in a deal valued at just under $200 million, sources familiar with the deal told CNBC.

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