Techmeme
December 19, 2023, 8:10 PM

Top News

Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal:
Google agrees to pay $700M and make app store changes, like offering an alternative billing system, to settle a 2021 antitrust lawsuit by 36 US states and DC  —  Agreement with coalition of states resolves antitrust litigation related to app store  —  Google parent Alphabet agreed …
Eva Dou / Washington Post:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Comcast's Xfinity says hackers breached one of its Citrix servers in October 2023, two weeks after Citrix issued a patch, and stole data on 35,879,455 people  —  Comcast Cable Communications, doing business as Xfinity, disclosed on Monday that attackers who breached one of its Citrix servers …
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid must stop using facial recognition for five years as part of a settlement with the US FTC, which said the tech falsely flagged customers  —  - FTC says chain's surveillance system falsely flagged customers  — Bankrupt pharmacy chain will stop using system, delete images
Meir Orbach / CTech:
Okta is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity company Spera, which raised a $10M seed in March 2023; source: the deal is worth ~$100M-$130M, contingent on milestones  —  The American identity and access management giant is making its first purchase in Israel.  Spera, which raised $10 million …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Copilot can now compose songs, including lyrics, instruments, and voices, from a sentence, due to a new integration with generative AI music app Suno  —  Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft's AI-powered chatbot, can now compose songs thanks to an integration with gen AI music app Suno.
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
The FBI, the UK, Denmark, Germany, Spain, and Australia seize ransomware gang ALPHV's dark web leak website; the US also seized “several websites” run by ALPHV  —  An international group of law enforcement agencies have seized the dark web leak site of the notorious ransomware gang known as ALPHV, or BlackCat.
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Sources: AWS plans to overhaul its sales team as it aims to increase the share of Fortune 1,000 firms spending over $10M/year on AWS, from less than 20% to 80%  —  Matt Garman, head of sales at Amazon Web Services, plans to reorganize his more than 60,000-person team to address problems …
David Hollingworth / Cyber Daily:
Hackers post 1.67TB of Insomniac Games' internal data, including for an upcoming Wolverine game, HR files, Slack screenshots, and a Marvel-Sony X-Men agreement  —  The Rhysida ransomware gang publishes 98 per cent of leaked data minutes after the ransom deadline passes - Wolverine game files included.
Emilia David / The Verge:
Stability AI debuts Stability AI Membership, with free, $20/month, and custom pricing enterprise tiers, limiting commercial use of its models to the paid tiers  —  Stability AI, the maker of the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, is now offering a subscription service that standardizes …
More: 9to5Toys
The Guardian:
Internal messages: TikTok told some moderators to let users under 13-years-old stay on the platform if they claimed their parents were overseeing their accounts  —  Questions for tech giant over claims underage users can remain on platform if they say parents are overseeing their account
David Heaney / UploadVR:
Meta updates its OpenXR extension with tongue tracking, letting developers use the feature in the Quest Pro, but hasn't added support to the Meta Avatars SDK  —  Quest Pro's face tracking now includes your tongue.  —  In our review of Quest Pro last year, we pointed out how sticking …

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign at Kenya's Digital Trust Forum 2025 organized by Evrotrust and Geda  —  Kenyan businesses and government services are adapting to digital alternatives to explore opportunities in the nation's newly launched ten-year Digital Master Plan.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
How Tariffs Might Impact Tech
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Great Chat:
Battle of the startup cities
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) on The Tariff Trap, Self-Inflicted Recession Risk, and Open AI's Fundraise
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Trump vs The Media, Round 2, with Sara Fischer
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.
Spotlight On:
Graphite's Merrill Lutsky on Revolutionizing Code Review for the AI Era
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, December 19, 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

Sandali Handagama / CoinDesk:

Earlier Picks

Hannah Schoenbaum / Associated Press:
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
Kanishka Singh / Reuters: