Techmeme
January 26, 2024, 9:50 PM

Top News

Damien Geradin / The Platform Law Blog:
Apple's changes for iOS app distribution in the EU fail to offer fair and reasonable commissions and show its disdain for both the DMA and app developers  —  Yesterday, Apple made an important announcement regarding changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union in response to the Digital Markets Act ("DMA").
Spotify:
Spotify says Apple is “forcing developers to stay with the status quo” and calls on the EU to “reject this blatant disregard” of the EU's established principles  —  For almost five years - 1,782 days - we have been asking the European Commission to take action against Apple.
Chris Kerr / Game Developer:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Mozilla criticizes Apple's plans to restrict BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps, forcing “Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations”  —  Apple's new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
A look at the browser-related iOS changes in the EU, including letting users set their default out of the 12 most popular browsers in their country's App Store  —  The raft of iOS changes Apple dropped in the European Union yesterday, as it prepares for enforcement of the bloc's Digital Markets Act …
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Fossil Group plans to leave the smartwatch business, and says the company will continue to keep its existing Wear OS watches updated “for the next few years”  —  Fossil Group has decided to call it quits on smartwatches.  —  The company announced this afternoon that it would leave …
Bloomberg:
Source: ElevenLabs banned a creator's account after researchers said the company's tech was used to make an audio deepfake used in a fake Biden robocall  —  Company's technology used to create fake Biden recording, researchers say  —  The creator of an audio deepfake of US President Joe Biden urging people …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
iOS 17.4 code shows that Apple may be testing two versions of its Ajax LLM for Siri and Messages, comparing their responses to results from OpenAI's ChatGPT  —  Apple is widely expected to unveil major new artificial intelligence features with iOS 18 in June.
More: AppleInsider, AppleInsider, The Verge, and Wccftech
Threads: @marcsloveX: @cullendForums: r/apple and Slashdot
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Google is testing an ARM64 version of Chrome for Arm-based Windows devices  —  Google appears to be readying a version of its popular Chrome browser for Windows on Arm.  X (formerly Twitter) user Pedro Justo spotted a native version of the browser for Windows 11 Arm-powered devices …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft details the techniques that the Russian hacking group Midnight Blizzard used to breach the email accounts of its executives and other organizations  —  Microsoft confirmed that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service hacking group, which hacked into its executives' email accounts in November 2023 …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Source: Salesforce plans to lay off ~700 employees, or ~1% of its staff, after cutting 10% of its workforce in January 2023; the company has 1,000 open jobs  —  The layoffs, which will affect around 1% of its workforce, follow a 10% reduction last year  —  Salesforce is laying off around …
Financial Times:
Sources: xAI is in talks to raise up to $6B from family offices in Hong Kong, Middle Eastern funds, and Japanese and South Korean investors at a $20B valuation  —  Tesla chief targets $20bn valuation in bid to take on OpenAI  —  Elon Musk's xAI is in talks to raise up to $6bn …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
A review of Honor's Magic V2 foldable, launching in the UK and Europe for £1,700 and €2,000: thin and durable but a dated OS and processor, and software issues  —  It's thin and light enough to feel like a regular smartphone when folded.  That's impressive.  I just wish Honor's software were as svelte.

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Earlier Picks

Sheila Chiang / CNBC:
Trisha Thadani / Washington Post:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: