Techmeme
December 13, 2023, 10:45 AM

Top News

Zoë Schiffer / The Verge:
A look at Twitter's culture prior to Elon Musk's acquisition, when the company focused on improving the health of online conversations, not growth at all costs  —  the early '10s, Twitter was at the height of its power.  The company had yet to turn a profit, but it had played a crucial role …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: X generated just over $600M in ad revenue in each of 2023's first three quarters, down from $1B+ per quarter in 2022 and on track for ~$2.5B in 2023  —  - X to miss internal goals for ad revenue, people familiar say  — Musk's personal tweets continue to scare off advertisers
Davey Alba / Bloomberg:
Google announces Gemini Pro for enterprises, letting developers build apps, available for free at launch with limits, and adds Pro to AI Studio and Vertex AI  —  Gemini Pro is aimed at businesses and app developers  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Google announced a slate of upgraded artificial intelligence features …
Keith Laing / Bloomberg:
Tesla plans to update Autopilot in 2M+ vehicles after the NHTSA issued a recall and called its safety measures inadequate and open to misuse, after a long probe  —  - US regulator finds system doesn't do enough to prevent misuse  — Agency will keep defect investigation open, monitor remedies
Bloomberg:
Sources: 3AC co-founder Su Zhu for the first time faced questioning in a Singapore court about the fund's collapse; Teneo estimates 3AC owes creditors ~$3.3B  —  - Failed crypto fund's co-founder Zhu was arrested in September  — Liquidators seek information for creditors owed $3.3 billion
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Apple updates its law enforcement guidelines to now require a judge's order before handing over users' push notification data, instead of only a subpoena  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has said it now requires a judge's order to hand over information about its customers' push notification to law enforcement …
Jillian Deutsch / Bloomberg:
The EU Council and Parliament agree a deal to reclassify millions of ride-hailing and food delivery app workers as staff, possibly costing the industry billions  —  European Union negotiators backed a deal to reclassify millions of people working for ride-hailing and food-delivery apps …
Alexandra Bruell / Wall Street Journal:
Axel Springer signs a multiyear licensing deal with OpenAI, which will pay to use content from Politico, Business Insider, and others to train its AI models  —  Generative-AI company reaches multiyear pact with owner of Politico, Business Insider and major European properties
Tim Hardwick / MacRumors:
Apple expands Self Service Repair to the iPhone 15 lineup and M2 Macs, brings the program to 24 new countries, and releases an Apple Diagnostics tool in the US  —  Apple today announced it has expanded its Self Service Repair program to cover the iPhone 15 lineup and Mac models powered by M2 chips …
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Coinbase Asset Management debuts Project Diamond, combining Coinbase's custody tools, wallet, L2 network Base, and Circle's USDC to create a capital marketplace  —  “Project Diamond” lets institutions create and trade digital native versions of financial instruments such as debt using Base in a regulated manner.
Malak Saleh / Engadget:
Meta is working to extend its fact-checking to Threads early next year; its fact-checking now only rates Threads content matching posts on Facebook or Instagram  —  The program will roll out next year, according to executives.  —  Threads is going to make an effort to moderate more of the user-generated content on the platform.
Wall Street Journal:
Apple releases an iOS beta with Stolen Device Protection; if enabled, the feature limits actions like Apple ID password resets when not in a “familiar location”  —  Stolen Device Protection can prevent criminals from using your passcode to change your Apple account
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Ukraine's defense intelligence directorate claims to have hacked Russia's state tax service and that Russia has been trying to restore the service for four days  —  Ukraine's defense intelligence directorate (GUR) said it infected thousands of servers belonging to Russia's state tax service with malware …
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Google's Epic loss, where a jury found Google guilty on all 11 antitrust claims, may portend its legal fate in two, more significant US antitrust cases in 2024  —  A trio of antitrust cases on the docket threaten to reshape Google's business and sap its profits.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Netflix publishes its first What We Watched report, detailing the most-watched content from January to June 2023; The Night Agent was #1 with 812M+ hours viewed  —  Netflix is going to start publishing a new report twice a year that details the most popular shows and movies on the platform.
Scott Stein / CNET:
Meta adds multimodal AI to its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses as an early access beta in the US, letting Meta AI answer voice queries by taking and analyzing photos  —  I tried these Ray-Ban AI glasses, and they're pretty wild.  Here's how the experimental feature works.  —  “Hey, Meta.
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division announces the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions, and simplifies its product portfolio  —  Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users  —  +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division has announced …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Microsoft releases Phi-2, an AI language model the company says outperforms Mistral and Llama 2 at 7B and 13B parameters and is small enough to run on a phone  —  The rapid pace of generative AI news and announcements isn't slowing down, even as we reach the final stretches of 2023 and the traditional winter holiday quiet period.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Google plans to shorten Maps' default auto-delete history feature from 18 months to three months and let users store Maps Timeline data locally on their devices  —  Google Maps has gotten some fun updates recently, and now it's offering some more privacy-forward tweaks as it adds more ways to control your location data.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
How remote support can make your Christmas stress-free  —  As Christmas approaches, the air fills with the anticipation of joy, family gatherings, and gift-giving.  While the season brings immense happiness …
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
(BNS) Calvin And Hobbes - With Daniel Kibblesmith
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:45 AM ET, December 13, 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Joseph Bernstein / New York Times: