Techmeme
August 17, 2022, 10:35 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Nick Clegg shares Meta's plans to help secure the US midterms, building on Meta's 2020 policies, like restricting new political ads one week prior to the vote  —  After years of revising and updating its election strategy, Meta Platforms Inc. is pulling out a familiar playbook for the US midterms …
Politico:
Sisi Jiang / Kotaku:
Former Nintendo female contract testers in the US describe years of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and a lack of advancement opportunities for women  —  Female game testers at Nintendo had ‘frat house’ experiences within a gaming company known for its wholesome image
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple is in talks with its suppliers to mass produce Apple Watch and MacBooks in Vietnam for the first time  —  Country benefits as tech giant looks to build more products outside of China  —  TAIPEI — Apple is in talks to make Apple Watches and MacBooks in Vietnam for the first time …
Will Knight / Wired:
Google says it is using its most powerful large language model PaLM to help robots from Alphabet X spinout Everyday Robots understand complex human commands  —  The machine learning technique that taught notorious text generator GPT-3 to write can also help robots make sense of spoken commands.
Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph:
Report: Alphabet invested ~$1.5B in blockchain companies between September 2021 and June 2022, the most by any public company, followed by BlackRock with $1.17B  —  Other notable corporate investors include BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Samsung, and Goldman Sachs, according to a report from Blockdata.
Alex Barker / Financial Times:
Ofcom: in the UK, those aged 15-24 spent 57 minutes/day on TikTok in 2021, compared to 53 minutes/day watching TV; those 65 or over spent six hours watching TV  —  Ofcom survey points to challenges for traditional broadcasters in keeping pace with digital and streaming trends
Emma Roth / The Verge:
WhatsApp launches a native app for Windows out of beta, usable without linking a phone; WhatsApp is currently working on a native macOS app  —  You no longer need to connect your phone  —  WhatsApp's new app on Windows no longer requires you to link your phone to send, receive, and sync messages.
Sam Kim / Bloomberg:
TrendForce: DRAM bit growth, a key barometer for chip market demand that measures memory produced, will rise 8.3% in 2023, the weakest on record  —  Mounting concern over semiconductor demand is sending shudders through North Asia's high-tech exporters, which historically serve as a bellwether for the international economy.
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Jessica Bursztynsky / Fast Company:
Airbnb introduces “anti-party technology” in the US and Canada to automatically block reservations at a high risk of leading to unauthorized parties  —  Airbnb is piloting new anti-party technology in the U.S. and Canada in its ongoing efforts to fend off users who are looking …
David Pan / Bloomberg:
Publicly-traded US bitcoin miners Core Scientific, Marathon Digital, and Riot Blockchain lost $862M, $192M, and $366M, respectively, in Q2 after impairments  —  The three-largest US publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies lost over $1 billion in the second quarter after taking a series …
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sue Triller, alleging the short-form video app owes them $28M+ after acquiring live-streaming music series Verzuz and missing payments  —  Triller bought music series Verzuz for an undisclosed sum in January 2021.  Now its creators say they're still owed money.

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.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 10:35 AM ET, August 17, 2022.

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

Earlier Picks

Eric Jardine / Chainalysis:
Kate O'Keeffe / Wall Street Journal:
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Dave Lee / Financial Times:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: