Techmeme
February 13, 2024, 8:00 PM

Top News

Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
The EU ends its DMA investigation into iMessage and Microsoft Bing, Edge, and Advertising, deciding not to designate the services as gatekeepers  —  - Services not dominant enough to face Digital Markets Act … A probe concluded that the services don't hold a dominant enough position …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft plans to launch select Xbox games on the PS5 and Switch, starting with Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Sea of Thieves, a seismic strategy shift  —  With rumors of some Xbox games coming to PS5 and Switch, Microsoft gets ready to lay out its vision for the future of Xbox.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft plans an Xbox business update event on February 15 at 12PM PT, delivered via a podcast hosted by Xbox's Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty  —  After weeks of rumors of Xbox exclusives coming to PS5 and Nintendo Switch, Microsoft is now planning to discuss its vision for the future of Xbox at an event later this week.
David Pierce / The Verge:
OpenAI starts testing a “memory” feature that is on by default and lets ChatGPT and custom GPTs remember info about users and their conversations over time  —  Talking to an AI chatbot can feel a bit like Groundhog Day after a while, as you tell it for the umpteenth …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Sources: Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a few products, including its VPN, Relay, and its Online Footprint Scrubber, as it lays off ~60 employees  —  After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia releases an early version of Chat with RTX, an app that lets users run an AI chatbot on a PC powered by an RTX 30- or 40-series GPU with 8GB+ of VRAM  —  Nvidia is releasing an early version of Chat with RTX today, a demo app that lets you run a personal AI chatbot on your PC.
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Copilot for Microsoft 365 testers question the $30/seat price and find Copilot the most useful in Teams and the least in Excel; Dow and others plan big rollouts  —  Artificial-intelligence aide handles email, meetings and other things, but its price and limited use have some skeptical
Lucas Ropek / Gizmodo:
Flipper Zero multi-tool device maker Flipper Devices announces a $49 Video Game Module, powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040, that turns a Flipper into a controller  —  The creators behind the popular Flipper device have teamed up with Raspberry Pi to expand its capabilities.
Kylie Robison / Fortune:
Sierra, an enterprise-focused conversational AI startup co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, launches with $110M in funding led by Sequoia and Benchmark  —  Bret Taylor, right, launches Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses, with former Google executive Clay Bavor, left.
Alison Snyder / Axios:
Cohere's nonprofit research lab releases its open-source multilingual LLM Aya, which it says can follow instructions in more than 100 languages  —  A new open-source generative AI model can follow instructions in more than 100 languages. … - It covers more than twice as many languages …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
For the first time since 2002, Nvidia ended a trading day with a bigger market value than Amazon, as its market cap reached $1.78T, fueled by the AI boom  —  - Nvidia surpassed Amazon in market capitalization on Tuesday.  — It's a sign of how strong demand is for chips that can run cutting-edge AI …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 6% YoY to $803M vs. $804M est., plans to lay off ~250 workers, or ~7% of staff; three top execs are leaving for personal reasons  —  - Instacart on Tuesday announced it would lay off about 250 employees, or roughly 7% of the company, alongside reporting fourth-quarter earnings …
Rebekah Valentine / IGN:
Interviews with 40+ developers detail the reasoning behind layoffs in gaming, including high costs, growing risks, and executives with little regard for staff  —  An estimated 10,000 game workers lost their jobs in 2023 alone.  —  In August of last year, Ascendant Studios developer Aaron …
Zachary Small / New York Times:
GLAAD's first gaming industry survey featuring nearly 1,500 participants: <2% of console video games include LGBTQ characters, 17% of gamers are queer, and more  —  In its first survey of the video game industry, the advocacy group GLAAD determined that few console games include queer characters.
Reuters:
A US federal judge sets the trial date for an FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon for October 2026  —  A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday set an October 2026 trial date for a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com (AMZN.O).  —  The consumer protection agency filed …
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Source: crypto exchange Bullish paid DCG between $70M and $80M cash for CoinDesk in November 2023; Bullish restructured CoinDesk's leadership team last week  —  When CoinDesk published a suspicious balance sheet of Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm in November of 2022, it set off a chain …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Foundry Group, an 18-year-old VC firm with nearly $3.5B in assets under management, has quietly decided to wind down and not raise any more funds  —  Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds.
Antonia Mufarech / Bloomberg:
Lyft reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.2B, net loss of $26.3M, vs. $588.1M YoY, active riders up 10% to 22.4M, and Q1 forecast above est.; LYFT jumps 10%+  —  - Uber rival said it had highest annual ridership ever in 2023  — Bookings in fourth quarter rose 17%, beating analyst estimates

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Earlier Picks

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Mia Sato / The Verge:
More: Los Angeles TimesThreads: @miasato.2 and @knguyenMastodon: @annaecook@mstdn.socialBluesky: @djcentos7.bsky.social
Forums: r/technews and Slashdot
Dan Mangan / CNBC:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: