Techmeme
February 4, 2024, 1:15 PM

Top News

Charlie Sorrel / iFixit News:
Apple Vision Pro teardown: not great repairability-wise, an unforgivable proprietary battery plug, and a lenticular lens layer that makes EyeSight look blurry  —  The strangest thing about the Vision Pro is also the thing that makes it most uniquely Apple: it's got a big shiny bubble glass front …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: some Tesla and SpaceX directors have consumed drugs with Elon Musk feeling there is an expectation to do so, raising concerns about their independence  —  Board members have reaped hundreds of millions from stock awards and separate investments, even as some have done drugs with Musk …
Washington Post:
Amid mass tech layoffs, some workers with years of experience or deep technical expertise are having trouble getting hired again while some seek non-tech jobs  —  Google, Amazon, Microsoft and a raft of others fired thousands of workers in January, continuing a layoff wave that began in 2022.
Rebecca Jennings / Vox:
How social media is forcing writers and artists to build personal brands and become influencers, making many artists uncomfortable and feel like sellouts  —  So you want to be an artist.  Do you have to start a TikTok?  —  When Rachael Kay Albers was shopping around her book proposal …
CNN:
A Hong Kong-based firm's employee was tricked into paying $25M to fraudsters who used deepfake tech to pose as the company's CFO and staff during a video call  —  A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose …
Nitish Pahwa / Slate:
A look at the decline of Quora, which used to stand out as an accuracy-focused, knowledge-centric platform but is now filled with bizarre, AI-generated entries  —  This raised the issue of consent and ownership, as Quorans had to decide whether to consent to the new terms or take their work and flee.
Danny Crichton / Securities:
TechCrunch+'s founding editor about its launch to complement TechCrunch's ads and events revenue and its failure due to issues with finding business reporters  —  January was a brutal month for journalists, globally from death and locally from layoffs.  The latter hit home this week …
Gabriel J.X. Dance / New York Times:
A look at the dispute between Bitcoin miners in Arkansas and residents, who say the noise is ruining lives, lowering property values, and driving away wildlife  —  Pushed by an advocacy group, Arkansas became the first state to shield noisy cryptocurrency operators from unhappy neighbors.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Remote desktop software maker AnyDesk says it has suffered a cyberattack recently; source: hackers stole source code and private code signing keys  —  AnyDesk confirmed today that it suffered a recent cyberattack that allowed hackers to gain access to the company's production systems.
Michael Grothaus / Fast Company:
Interview with Phil Schiller about Apple's efforts to minimize potential risks that third-party app stores, mandated by EU's DMA, may expose iPhone users to  —  Third-party app stores will soon appear on the iPhone in the EU.  That's good for small companies, but it could be terrible for consumers.
Pkl Blog:
Apple open sources Pkl, a configuration-as-code language with rich validation and tooling, with Swift, Go, Java, and Kotlin integration  —  We are delighted to announce the open source first release of Pkl (pronounced Pickle), a programming language for producing configuration.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
A changelog for Bard shows Google plans to rename Bard as Gemini, with an Advanced tier and an Android app  —  Google Bard is in for a big shakeup in the next few days, as an early changelog reveals that the “Gemini” rebrand is coming next week with a new Android app and more.

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