Techmeme: After vocal commitments following George Floyd's murder in 2020, DEI programs at Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, were in broad retreat in 2023 (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)

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December 26, 2023, 7:30 AM

Top News

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:

GTA V source code appears to have been leaked on Discord, Telegram, a dark web site, and others, a little over a year after hackers breached Rockstar — The source code for Grand Theft Auto 5 was reportedly leaked on Christmas Eve, a little over a year after the Lapsus$ threat actors hacked Rockstar games and stole corporate data.

More: TechSpot, GTA Focal, Dexerto, Gadgets 360, SiliconANGLE, Insider Gaming, Game Rant, Destructoid, Dexerto, Blue's News, and DSOGaming

Mastodon: @nagrommit@mastodon.social and @dascandy42@mastodon.social

X: @gtafocal, @gtafocal, @vxunderground, @vxunderground, @gtafocal, and @gtafocal

Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, and Slashdot

Omar Sohail / Wccftech:

Kuo: Apple Vision Pro shipments in 2024 are estimated to be approximately 500,000 units; the headset will most likely ship in late January or early February — An earlier Apple Vision Pro launch timeline stated that the mixed-reality headset's shipments would start in February next year …

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:

China approves 105 local games, including titles from Tencent and NetEase, after the announcement of a new set of restrictions led to an $80B rout last week — - Beijing approves games, seeks feedback on new restrictions — Tencent and NetEase shares plunged on Friday on crackdown fear

More: Associated Press, TweakTown, Investor's Business Daily, Game World Observer, Business Insider, South China Morning Post, TechNode, and Reuters

X: @sino_market, @jenspresthus, @sino_market, @noahpinion, and @briantycangco. LinkedIn: Rafael Brown

Jay Peters / The Verge:

Google Chrome's Safety Check feature, which checks if users' saved passwords have been compromised, will now run automatically in the background on desktop — Google's Safety Check feature for Chrome, which, among other things, checks the internet to see if any of your saved passwords have been compromised …

More: The Keyword, BleepingComputer, Tabletmonkeys, Ghacks, Maccablo, Sammy Fans, SamMobile, Fox News, and XDA Developers

Blake Brittain / Reuters:

President Biden's administration declines to veto the US ITC's decision to ban Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 imports over a Masimo patent dispute — U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Tuesday declined to veto a government tribunal's decision to ban imports of Apple (AAPL.O) …

More: 9to5Mac, Supercharged, Sammy Fans, The Economic Times, and AppleInsider

Bloomberg:

Samsung delays chip production in its $17B Texas fab, saying the company could not confirm its production schedule, a blow to the US' local chip ambitions — - TSMC has also postponed production at Arizona fab to 2025 — US chip ambition is plagued by permit and subsidy issues

More: Sammy Fans

John Sakellariadis / Politico:

The US is focusing on blocking North Korea's ability to launder its crypto stolen via cyberattacks, which the US thinks funds North Korea's weapons programs — The Biden administration is doing more to counter North Korean hackers amid concerns their cryptocurrency heists are powering the country's weapons programs.

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @hackingbutlegal. Forums: Slashdot

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:

After vocal commitments following George Floyd's murder in 2020, DEI programs at Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, were in broad retreat in 2023 — - After vocal commitments following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, DEI programs in the tech industry are in broad retreat.

More: NBC 7 San Diego, Black Enterprise, and The Messenger

Threads: @scott_fenstermaker and @carnage4life

X: @__aarum and @abefroman

LinkedIn: Tara Turk-Haynes, Veronica Belmont, Jennifer Elias, and Pariss Chandler

Nicole Kobie / Wired:

A look at AI apps like Bluey-GPT, Oscar, Once Upon a Bot, and Bedtimestory.ai, which create stories for kids, and concerns over copyright, trademark, and safety — Artificial intelligence can now tell tales featuring your kids' favorite characters. It's copyright chaos—and a major headache for parents and guardians.

More: The Economic Times and Hindustan Times

Steven Scheer / Reuters:

Israel's government agrees to give Intel a $3.2B grant for a $25B chip plant the company plans to build in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, set to open in 2027 — Israel's government agreed to give Intel Corp (INTC.O) a $3.2 billion grant for new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel, both sides said on Tuesday.

More: Metaverse Post, Bloomberg, and Globes Online

Jeremy White / New York Times:

Researchers extract business and personal email addresses for 30+ NYT staff by fine tuning GPT-3.5 Turbo, bypassing the safeguards for privacy-related queries — This is a visualization of a large email database from the Enron Corporation, which is often used to train artificial intelligence systems, like ChatGPT.

More: Business Today. Threads: @carnage4life and @vishvanands. Mastodon: @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social. X: @cbarrett. Forums: Slashdot

Amanda Hoover / Wired:

Experts detail how Facebook Marketplace users are getting scammed; Meta plans to add a notification system to let users identify “scams around payment apps” — I tried to sell a futon on Facebook Marketplace and nearly all I got were scammers. — This year, I decided to get rid …

More: Hindustan Times, CNET, and MUO

Threads: @nicetriangles. Mastodon: @veedems@mastodon.social and @briansullivan@mastodon …. X: @itstommygabriel

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:30 AM ET, December 26, 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

Andrew Marchand / New York Times:

Sources: YouTube is favored to stream the NFL's opening week Friday night game, its first exclusive NFL broadcast, which may be available globally for free

Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide:

WMG launches the WMG Pulse app in beta to let artists and their teams access real-time information about streaming performance and more across various platforms

Alex Sherman / CNBC:

Sources: ESPN will call its forthcoming flagship streaming app ESPN; the cheaper option will still be ESPN+, which doesn't include the most-watched live games

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More News

Suzanne Bearne / BBC:

How flood monitoring companies, like 7Analytics and Neara, are using AI to make real-time flooding predictions and help businesses minimize damage

Trevor Laurence Jockims / CNBC:

A look at Microsoft's Xbox partnership with Inworld AI, focused on using AI to let NPCs in games evolve beyond predefined roles and adapt to player behavior

More: Cryptopolitan

Bloomberg:

A look at TikTok Shop, as big companies shun the e-commerce app, which has a clunky interface and is full of dubious merchandise, like a $50 plastic fork

More: Sydney Morning Herald and Newsweek

Threads: @felipegini. X: @quinnypig

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:

Researchers: an updated Chameleon trojan uses an HTML page trick to disrupt biometrics on Android like Face Unlock to steal PINs and unlock the device at will

More: ThreatFabric B.V., Ghacks, SiliconANGLE, The Hacker News, SecurityWeek, Dark Reading, Tom's Guide, Mashable, SentinelOne, and TechRadar. X: @threatfabric

Wall Street Journal:

A profile of Yi He, a former talk-show host who co-founded Binance with Changpeng Zhao and has sweeping control over its marketing and investment divisions

More: Bloomberg, Coinmonks, The Block, and Cryptopolitan

X: @johnreedstark, @jchengwsj, and @silvermanjacob

Wall Street Journal:

A look at Sam Altman's history at Loopt and Y Combinator, where his side activities and personal projects riled colleagues and forced his departure from YC

More: Business Insider and Washington Post

Threads: @karaswisher, @ezra, @casey.langwith, @martinsfp, @dseetharaman, @dseetharaman, and @drewharwell

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to, @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social, and @Mer__edith@mastodon.world. X: @dseetharaman

Forums: Hacker News and Beehaw

Earlier Picks

Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat:

Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October

More: AppleInsider, GitHub, iLounge, iPhone in Canada Blog, Analytics India Magazine, New.blicio.us, and arXiv.org

Threads: @carnage4life, @oracleclyde, @luokai, @ma.bali, @luokai, @jamiebykovbrett, @luokai, @cspenn, and @luokai

X: @loganthorneloe, @rohanpaul_ai, @8teapi, @zhegan4, @openmedfuture, @drtbehrens, @openmedfuture, @aaronp613, @erogol, @dazzagreenwood, and @_akhaliq

LinkedIn: Ben Dickson, Bart De Witte, Jia Li, Eric Gonzalez, and Sharon Goldman. Forums: Hacker News

Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:

A look at Take-Two's $12B Zynga deal in 2022, just as casual games peaked post pandemic, Apple introduced ATT, and the mobile game market headed into a downturn

Bluesky: @janety.bsky.social. X: @aqua_xenossia, @kasselvania, @cecianasta, @cecianasta, @technology, and @jacobidle

Ethan Zuckerman:

A study estimates that there are 13.3B+ videos on YouTube, of which 4B+ were posted to the platform in 2023, and the median YouTube video has 39 views

Threads: @ethanzuckerman, @polymathematicnet, @elipariser, @lightedframe, @ethanzuckerman, @polymathematicnet, @ethanzuckerman, @lightedframe, and @pauladamsmith. Bluesky: @becca.gomezfarrell.com

X: @pranesh, @johnwilson, @e_salvaggio, @dloss, @wholemarsblog, and @ethanz