Techmeme
December 5, 2023, 11:50 AM

Top News

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:
Beeper debuts an Android app, Beeper Mini, to let users send iMessages with E2EE, without having to use a new number or log in with an Apple ID, for $2/month  —  Earlier this year, a developer slid into Eric Migicovsky's DMs with a spectacular claim: that he had reverse engineered Apple's iMessage …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft updates Copilot with OpenAI's latest models, including GPT-4 Turbo, and adds a new code interpreter feature and “Deep Search” functionality for Bing  —  Microsoft is detailing a number of new features coming to its Copilot service soon, including OpenAI's latest models.
Alexandra Barinka / Bloomberg:
Meta, IBM, and over 50 other companies and organizations form the AI Alliance, a coalition to work on open-source AI, including to share tech and reduce risks  —  Meta Platforms Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are joining more than 40 companies and organizations to create …
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Leaked docs show concern at OctoML over helping its customer Civitai make AI images; OctoML co-founder Thierry Moreau said some “could be categorized as” CSAM  —  Content warning: This story covers synthetic child sexual abuse images.  —  OctoML, a Seattle-based startup …
Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security:
AI chatbots' conversational nature makes them more trustworthy, which could cause problems, like “hidden exploitation”, outright fraud, and mistaken expertise  —  I trusted a lot today.  I trusted my phone to wake me on time.  I trusted Uber to arrange a taxi for me, and the driver to get me to the airport safely.
Reuters:
Docs: Apple warned India that its EU-style charger rules will lower local production targets and on November 28 asked to exempt or delay existing iPhone models  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has told India its local production targets will be hit if New Delhi follows the European Union and requires existing iPhones …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Ofcom starts a consultation on draft guidelines on how porn sites should lock out underage users, including having a bank or mobile network confirm a user's age  —  UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has laid out how porn sites could verify users' ages under the newly passed Online Safety Act.
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
Web3 developer platform thirdweb discloses a major vulnerability in an open-source library used by several NFT collections; thirdweb became aware on November 20  —  - Thirdweb, a web3 developer platform, disclosed a security vulnerability in its open-source library.
Wired:
An analysis of 36GB of US school network logs for January 2022 to August 2023 finds widespread internet censoring filters, such as for health and sexuality info  —  A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information.
Jake Kanter / Deadline:
Amazon fails to renew its live English Premier League rights deal, as part of Sky and TNT's new £6.7B UK TV rights deal for four soccer seasons from 2025/2026  —  - BBC Names Royals Accused In Omid Scobie Book Of Commenting On Skin Color Of Harry & Meghan's Son
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Google upgrades Gmail's spam filters with RETVec, a text vectorizer that understands “adversarial text manipulations” like emojis, typos, and special characters  —  Gmail's spam filters can now understand “adversarial text manipulations.”  —  The latest post on the Google …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Meta says cross-app chatting between Messenger and Instagram will be discontinued in “mid-December 2023”, after announcing the feature in September 2020  —  Meta is beginning the process of disconnecting the ability to have “cross-app chats” with your Instagram contacts via Facebook Messenger and vice-versa.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
SoftBank acquires a 51% stake in Dublin-based Cubic Telecom, which offers software-based mobile networking for 17M+ vehicles, for €473M, valuing Cubic at €927M  —  Automakers and technology companies are building ever-more sophisticated digital platforms into the future generations of cars and other vehicles.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
23andMe says hackers stole the ancestry data of 6.9M of its 14M customers, via a breach first disclosed in October 2023, by leveraging access to ~14K accounts  —  On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals.

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BBC:
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Earlier Picks

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Financial Times:
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