Note: Techmeme is hiring part-time editors. Go here to apply, or tell a friend!
Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise
Techmeme
November 29, 2023, 6:20 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Get our daily newsletter and never miss a story!   ⓧ Newsletter

Top News

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
The US sanctions Sinbad, a crypto mixer allegedly used by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, and the US, the Netherlands, and Poland seize the service  —  The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned the Sinbad cryptocurrency mixing service for its use as a money-laundering tool by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group.
Ann-Marie Alcántara / Wall Street Journal:
Spotify launches Spotify Wrapped 2023, adding a Me in 2023 feature that assigns users one of 12 themes to describe their listening habits, on mobile and desktop  —  The listening recap, available Wednesday, takes over social media every year  —  It's the time of year many people have been anxiously awaiting: Spotify Wrapped season.
Steven J. Horowitz / Variety:
Spotify reveals 2023's most-streamed artists, albums, songs, and podcasts: Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny, Miley Cyrus' Flowers, The Joe Rogan Experience, and more
Alex Ivanovs / Stack Diary:
Researchers develop a “divergence attack” that makes ChatGPT emit sequences copied from its training data, by prompting the LLM to repeat a word numerous times  —  Large language models, like ChatGPT, are trained on vast amounts of text data from books, websites, and other sources.
Mike Seymour / fxguide:
Unity plans to cut 265 jobs, or 3.8% of its workforce, and end its services deal with VFX company Wētā FX to focus on its core business in a “company reset”  —  UPDATE: Scroll down for a statement from WētāFX:  —  Reuters is reporting that Unity Software …
CBC News:
Google and Canada reach an agreement in their dispute over the country's Online News Act; Google plans to pay news companies around CA$100M per year, or ~$74M  —  Agreement comes 3 weeks before Online News Act rules come into force  —  Google and the federal government have reached …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix plans to add Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy to its mobile app, the App Store, and Google Play on December 14, available to its users at no extra charge  —  The three classic titles in “Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition" will be available Dec. 14 for Netflix customers …
Michael Peel / Financial Times:
Google DeepMind uses GNoME to find 2.2M crystal structures, over 45x more than all such substances ever found, and plans to make 381K available to scientists  —  Work shows power of AI to improve real-world technology in fields from renewable energy to advanced computation
Wayne Ma / The Information:
Sources: Apple licenses Arm's IP at less than 30 cents per device, the lowest rate among Arm's smartphone chip clients; Apple makes up under 5% of Arm's sales  —  In 2017, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son gathered a group of executives from Arm Holdings, the British chip designer SoftBank had just bought …
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
Wormhole, a Jump Crypto messaging protocol that lets developers communicate across blockchains, raised $225M at a $2.5B valuation, 2023's largest crypto raise  —  In a parched fundraising landscape, the team behind Wormhole, the messaging protocol that lets developers communicate across different blockchains …
Variety:
Robert De Niro criticizes Apple and the Gotham Awards, after sources say Apple cut part of his speech slamming Donald Trump, which he read anyway from his phone  —  The “Killers of the Flower Moon” actor was gearing up to slam Donald Trump at Monday's Gotham Awards, but when he took the stage …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Plex users express alarm after getting a “Week in Review” email that showed what they and their friends watched, part of Plex's opt-out Discover Together tool  —  “I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff,” a user said of Plex's Week …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Amazon debuts Titan Image Generator, an AI model that creates images from text and adds an invisible watermark by default, in preview for AWS clients on Bedrock  —  Amazon is releasing an image generator — joining the ranks of the many, many other tech giants and startups that have already done so.
Graham Starr / Bloomberg:
Okta tells customers that hackers who breached its network stole information on all users of its customer support system, greater than the 1% claimed previously  —  - Okta had earlier said breach affected about 1% of customers  — Company said some Okta employee information was also stolen
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Intuit Mailchimp plans to shut down TinyLetter on February 29, 2024, to focus on its core Mailchimp marketing product; Mailchimp acquired TinyLetter in 2011  —  Mailchimp is shutting TinyLetter, a service that I loved that let individuals easily write and publish simple but nice-looking email newsletters.
See also Mediagazer
Bloomberg:
Sources: London-based AI startup Stability AI held early-stage talks with several companies about a sale, as executives face investor pressure over its finances  —  - Move follows letter from investor Coatue calling for changes  — Coatue concerned about Stability AI's financial position
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
Together AI, which helps pre-train and fine-tune open-source foundation models more efficiently, raised a $102.5M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins  —  I spoke with Together AI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash  —  Together AI, a startup that's helping companies pre-train and fine-tune open source foundation models …
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Elon Musk dismisses fear of advertisers leaving X after his controversial posts: “If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising ... go fuck yourself”  —  - In recent weeks, Musk has promoted and sometimes verbally endorsed what the White House called “antisemitic and racist hate” …
Bloomberg:
How deepfake porn victims in NYC suburb Levittown helped convict the perpetrator, a former classmate, an ordeal further complicated by the lack of clear US laws  —  A group of young women in a New York City suburb, horrified to learn their photographs had been manipulated and posted online, took matters into their own hands.
David Pierce / The Verge:
A look at Ayaneo's $199+ Retro Mini PC AM01, designed to look like a 1980s-era Macintosh, with Ryzen chip options, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage  —  Ayaneo, which is mostly known for making handheld gaming consoles, just fully revealed the new Retro Mini PC AM01 after teasing it a few weeks ago.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google Registry launches a .meme top level domain, adding to .dad, .boo, .ing, and its other unconventional domain names  —  If you ever wanted to make your website sound a little more silly, now's your chance.  Google Registry just released a new top-level domain that lets you slap a big ol' .meme at the end of your website.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
New in Zoho Payroll USA: Multi-state payroll and more  —  Running payroll shouldn't get harder as your business grows.  Whether you've expanded into new states or built a team with unique needs …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Uncapped with Jack Altman:
 Jordan Bramble from Antares
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Techmeme Ride Home:
 Apple Playing Games Again
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Sponsor this podcast
Channels with Peter Kafka:
 How to Reinvent a Magazine, with Wired's Katie Drummond
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Azeem Azhar's Exponential View:
 GitHub CEO on what AI means for developer salaries, SaaS, and more
Azeem Azhar explores how AI and exponential technologies are shaping our future.
Subscribe to Azeem Azhar's Exponential View.
Spotlight On:
 *Live from Accel's 2025 People Summit* Behind the Netflix Culture Deck with Patty McCord and Jessica Neal
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
 Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Add your postcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:20 PM ET, November 29, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Paramount offers $15M to settle with President Trump, whose team wants $25M+, is seeking an apology from CBS News, and threatened another lawsuit

Ben Johansen / Politico:
Sources: all 800 full-time VOA staff are expected to receive reduction-in-force notices this week, after ~600 VOA contractors were dismissed earlier in May

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Memo: David Leavy, who became CNN's COO in 2023, is leaving; sources say the longtime key lieutenant of David Zaslav is returning to Warner Bros. Discovery

More News

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
AWS CEO Adam Selipsky takes a thinly veiled swipe at Microsoft's OpenAI deal: “You don't want a cloud provider that's beholden primarily to one model provider”
Bloomberg:
Meta tells US officials that the company plans to block new political ads on Facebook and Instagram one week before the 2024 election, matching past elections
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter