Techmeme
December 13, 2023, 3:00 AM

Top News

Zoë Schiffer / The Verge:
A look at Twitter's culture prior to Elon Musk's acquisition, when it focused on improving the health of online conversations, rather than 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 …
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
Gene Park / Washington Post:
The ESA shuts down the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, after new competitors, partner withdrawals, changing audience habits, and more; E3 began in 1995  —  The collapse ends years of attempts to revive the event that once dominated the industry  —  The Electronic Entertainment Expo …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discusses beating Google, but not Apple, thanks to a jury trial, Google erasing chats, and because “Apple didn't write anything down”  —  - The verdict is a significant win for Epic Games and its CEO Tim Sweeney, which have been fighting against mobile app stores …
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
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division announces the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions, plus a simplification of its product portfolio  —  Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users  —  +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division …
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.
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.
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
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.
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 …
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.
Joseph Bernstein / New York Times:
A look at Praxis, which raised $19.2M from Paradigm, Alameda Research, and others to build a city on the Mediterranean for tech bros and downtown NY tastemakers  —  Dryden Brown wants Praxis to be a crypto-city for tech bros and tastemakers.  Just don't ask for details.
Bloomberg:
True Anomaly, a startup designing hardware and software for military and intelligence space reconnaissance systems, raised a $100M Series B led by Riot Ventures  —  - Contractor's spacecraft to track national threats in orbit  — Threats can range from enemy satellites to space debris
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Foxconn plans to invest at least $1B more, on top of $1.6B it allocated earlier, in its 300-acre Bengaluru plant to make Apple devices  —  - World's largest iPhone maker setting aside more money for site  — Apple's partners are shifting capacity away from China
More: Reuters
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Paris-based Pivot, which sells spend management and procurement software, raised a $21.6M Series A, after raising a $5.3M pre-seed round in April 2023  —  French startup Pivot is an interesting startup story as it is scaling at a rapid pace even though startup investments are down in Europe.

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