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’

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
5 common accounting mistakes  —  This is a guest post by Yaali Bizappln Solutions.  A lot of businesses manage their customers and finances on separate platforms.  This disconnect often leads to missed invoices …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/22 - An LLM Siri But... Only The Year AFTER Next?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:40 PM 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.

More News

Andrea Grimes / Home With The Armadillo:

Earlier Picks

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Business Insider:
TechCrunch:
Alex Koller / CNBC:
The Guardian:
More: CNN, Al Jazeera, +972 Magazine, The Verge, BGR, Gizmodo, Fortune, Business Today, Telegraph, The i Paper, FRANCE 24 English on YouTube, The Sun, The Times of Israel, Firstpost, Daily Kos, and The Guardian
LinkedIn: Ana Brandusescu and Sahar Aziz