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Techmeme
April 4, 2024, 5:30 AM
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Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is exploring home robotic devices, including a mobile robot that can follow users and a table-top device that uses robotics to move a display  —  - The company has teams working on automated home devices  — The search is on for new growth sources after EV gets nixed
Financial Times:
Sources: Google considers adding certain AI-powered search features to its premium subscription services, which already offer access to Gemini in Gmail and Docs  —  Proposals would mark first time any of the software group's core product falls behind a paywall
The Guardian:
Sources: Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza used Lavender, an AI system that identified 37,000 potential human targets based on their apparent links to Hamas  —  Israeli intelligence sources reveal use of ‘Lavender’ system in Gaza war and claim permission given to kill civilians in pursuit of low-ranking militants
Amrita Khalid / The Verge:
X adds blue checks to some large accounts as part of its plan to give free Premium memberships to those with at least 2,500 “verified subscriber followers”  —  Just as Elon Musk said, X is doling out free Premium and Premium memberships to accounts with a high number of verified followers.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Memo: AWS plans to cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization, and a few hundred in its Physical Stores Technology team  —  Amazon Web Services will cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization …
Joyce Lee / Reuters:
SK Hynix plans to invest ~$3.87B in an advanced packaging plant and R&D facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, to produce high bandwidth memory chips from H2 2028  —  SK Hynix (000660.KS), the world's second-largest memory chip maker, said on Wednesday it will invest around $3.87 billion …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
An interview with Andres Freund, a Microsoft database engineer working on PostgreSQL, on discovering the XZ Utils backdoor, doubting his own findings, and more  —  The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine.
Threads: @jenvalentino_nyt.  X: @kevinroose.  LinkedIn: Affan Dar.  Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, and r/neoliberal
Wired:
A look at XZ Utils attacker “Jia Tan”, a persona experts say nation-state hackers used that left little trace after working on the project since November 2021
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Windows 10 security updates will cost $61/device for year one, doubling for year two and doubling again for year three, after ending support on October 14, 2025  —  Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 on October 14th, 2025, and you'll need to pay yearly if you want to continue using the operating system securely.
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Apple resolves an outage impacting some of its online services, including the App Store, Apple TV, Podcasts, and Music, that lasted for over an hour on April 3  —  Apple's online services were hit with an outage that cut many of us off from the App Store, Apple TV, and Apple Music on Wednesday night.
Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
Paris-based Pigment, a subscription-based business planning and forecasting service, raised $145M, sources say at a $1B+ valuation, for $393M in total funding  —  - French software startup said to be valued above $1 billion  — Funding round comes as VC financing remains sluggish globally
More: TechCrunch
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Self-driving software startup Ghost Autonomy, formerly Ghost Locomotion, shuts down, after raising ~$220M, and just five months after partnering with OpenAI  —  Ghost Autonomy, a startup working on autonomous driving software for automaker partners, has shut down, TechCrunch has learned.
Alex Koller / CNBC:
Uber Eats rolls out delivery services with Waymo's self-driving cars in the Phoenix area, Uber's seventh site with autonomous deliveries and first with Waymo  —  Two Waymo autonomous vehicles drive themselves down Central Avenue in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., March 18, 2024.
TechCrunch:
A look at some exciting startups from day one of YC's Winter 2024 Demo Day, including those using AI for creating music and helping lawyers review documents  —  Springtime means rain, the return of flowers and, of course, Y Combinator's first demo day of the year.
Business Insider:
Meta is testing giving cash bonuses to creators who post engaging content on Threads, as part of an invite-only program  —  - Meta is testing cash bonuses for creators who post engaging content on Threads.  — Threads is currently the top app in Apple's App Store, and had 130 million active users in February.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:30 AM ET, April 4, 2024.

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

David Folkenflik / NPR:
Source: more than 75,000 Washington Post digital subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions following Jeff Bezos' overhaul of the paper's opinion section

New York Times:
Sources: VOA's parent opened probes into VOA journalists for reporting on criticism of Trump or for comments seen as critical; Steve Herman was placed on leave

Jonathan Lemire / The Atlantic:
After AP was banned, some WH correspondents floated the idea of boycotting covering Trump events in protest, but members of TV networks pushed back on the idea

More News

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Singapore-based SingleInterface, which lets offline businesses manage and grow an online presence, raised $30M, its first external raise since its 2015 founding
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
WhatsApp experienced a global outage on April 3, preventing users from exchanging messages; Facebook Messenger and Instagram also experienced issues
Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI says that paid users can now edit DALL-E images in ChatGPT across web, iOS, and Android, using a selection tool and additional text prompts
Amrita Khalid / The Verge:
Facebook updates its mobile video player with a TikTok-like vertical look and new controls for Reels, Live, and longform videos, starting with the US and Canada

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Sources: Spotify plans to raise prices by $1 to $2 per month in the UK, Australia, Pakistan, and two other markets by the end of April, and the US later in 2024
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft and Quantinuum detail a breakthrough in quantum error correction, helping run 14,000+ experiments with no errors, an issue that has vexed the industry
Emilia David / The Verge:
Stability AI releases Stable Audio 2.0, which lets users create three-minute sound clips from copyright-free audio samples, available for free via its website
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Newzoo: PC and console game revenue grew 2.6% YoY to $93.5B in 2023, but average quarterly playtime hours fell 26% from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023
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