Techmeme
April 4, 2024, 7:40 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Sources: Alphabet is considering an offer for the marketing software company HubSpot, which has a $35B market cap, in what would be its largest acquisition yet  —  Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O) has been talking to its advisers about the possibility of making an offer for HubSpot (HUBS.N) …
Samantha Murphy Kelly / CNN:
Disney CEO Bob Iger says Disney+ will start cracking down on password sharing in June in some countries and more broadly in September  —  New York CNN —  —  Disney is curbing password sharing for its Disney+ streaming service as part of a larger effort to boost signups and revenue.
Bloomberg:
YouTube's CEO says that OpenAI training Sora with YouTube videos would violate YouTube's ToS, and Google adheres to YouTube's creator contracts to train Gemini  —  The use of YouTube videos to train OpenAI's text-to-video generator would be a infraction of the platform's terms of service …
Oliver Knight / CoinDesk:
Binance says it will stop support for Bitcoin NFTs on May 18 as it “streamlines” its offerings; Binance users won't be eligible for future Bitcoin NFT airdrops  —  Users have been prompted to withdraw Bitcoin NFTs from Binance by May 18.  — Trading volume for NFTs is at multi-year lows.
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Google Books is indexing low quality, AI-generated books, which may impact Google Ngram viewer, an important tool used by researchers to track language use  —  Google said it will continue to evaluate its approach “as the world of book publishing evolves.”
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Ripple plans to launch a stablecoin later in 2024 that is “100% backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US government Treasuries, and other cash equivalents”  —  The token will be “100% backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. government Treasuries and other cash equivalents.” according to the company.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Google sues two alleged crypto scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent crypto trading and investment apps to steal users' money  —  Google is suing two alleged crypto scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent cryptocurrency trading apps …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A profile of hacker Alejandro Caceres, aka P4x, who took down North Korea's internet in 2022 and says the US needs to wield its hacking powers more aggressively  —  As “P4x,” Alejandro Caceres single-handedly disrupted the internet of an entire country.  Then he tried to show the US military how it can—and should—adopt his methods.
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Developers say open-source software culture, where users demand constant updates from volunteer coders, is a security issue, as shown by the XZ Utils backdoor  —  A previously unknown contributor to the popular open-source Android app store F-Droid repeatedly pressured its developers to push …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI expands its Custom Model training program with “assisted fine-tuning”, letting organizations set up training data pipelines, evaluation systems, and more  —  OpenAI is expanding a program, Custom Model, to help customers develop tailored AI models using its technology for specific use cases, domains and applications.
Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says “Tesla is increasing comp ... of our AI engineering team” because OpenAI has been “aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers” with “massive” offers  —  - CEO says carmaker is going extra mile to retain specialists  — Exodus may exacerbate concerns about conflicts, governance
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Cohere releases Command R+, an AI model for business customers the startup says performs competitively against OpenAI and others on “business-critical” tasks  —  Cohere says its new technology is cheaper than OpenAI's offerings.  —  Artificial intelligence startup Cohere Inc …
Amrita Khalid / The Verge:
X adds blue checks to some large accounts as part of its plan to give free Premium memberships to users 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.
Scott Stein / CNET:
An interview with Andrew Bosworth on the 10th anniversary of Reality Labs, the past and future of VR, AR, and AI, Meta's next AR glasses prototype, and more  —  Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth talks with CNET about the past and future of VR, AR and AI.  —  2014 doesn't seem that long ago to me.
Tim Stelloh / NBC News:
A Washington state judge bars using AI-enhanced video as evidence in a murder trial, a ruling experts say may be the first of its kind in a US criminal court  —  Lawyers for a man charged with murder in a triple homicide had sought to introduce cellphone video enhanced by machine-learning software.
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
Filing: Meta rejects the FTC's bid to amend its 2020 privacy settlement, saying it voluntarily disclosed two Messenger Kids bugs and had no parent complaints  —  - Messenger Kids let some chat, video-call with unapproved users  — FTC opened internal proceeding seeking to change 2020 order
More: Reuters and FTC
Niamh Rowe / Fortune:
Ellipsis Labs, which operates Phoenix, a decentralized crypto exchange launched in February 2023, raised a $20M Series A led by Paradigm  —  Ellipsis Labs today announced $20 million in Series A funding, led by Paradigm with participation from Electric Capital.
Lindsay Ellis / Wall Street Journal:
How some MBA programs in the US are reorienting courses around AI by adding AI-related classwork, encouraging students to present on AI innovations, and more  —  American University, other top M.B.A. programs reorient courses around artificial intelligence; ‘It has eaten our world’

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