Techmeme
January 10, 2023, 6:58 AM

Top News

Semafor:
Sources: Microsoft is in talks to invest $10B in OpenAI at a $29B valuation, taking 75% of OpenAI's profits until the investment is recouped and then owning 49%  —  Microsoft has been in talks to invest $10 billion into the owner of ChatGPT, the wildly popular app that has thrilled casual users …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Microsoft unveils VALL-E, a text-to-speech AI model trained on 60K hours of English speech that can simulate a person's voice from three seconds of sample audio  —  Text-to-speech model can preserve speaker's emotional tone and acoustic environment.  —  On Thursday, Microsoft researchers announced …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on a combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip to replace Broadcom components by 2025; plans to swap the Qualcomm modem in 2023 have hit snags  —  Apple Inc.'s push to replace the chips inside its devices with homegrown components will include dropping a key Broadcom Inc. part in 2025 …
Bloomberg:
Sources: former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, met with US federal prosecutors last week to seek a cooperation deal  —  Former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh met with federal prosecutors in a bid to become the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle …
Eric Wallerstein / Wall Street Journal:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft acquires Fungible, which makes data processing units for data centers and has raised over $300M; reports from December say the deal is worth ~$190M  —  In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known …
Javier Paz / Forbes:
A breakdown of Binance's known assets, using data from Nansen and others, estimates the exchange has around $50B, including ~$10B in BNB, down 24% from November  —  The outflow of cash from Binance is worse than the CEO Changpeng Zhao indicated last month, and it's become considerably more severe since then, a Forbes analysis shows.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
In February, Instagram plans to replace the Shop tab with a Reels button in the app's bottom navigation bar and return the Compose button to the center  —  Instagram announced today it will simplify its in-app navigation after years of confusing changes designed to push various products like Instagram Shop and Reels.
Adam Conway / XDA Developers:
Sami Fathi / MacRumors:
Sketchy iOS app “ChatGPT Chat GPT AI With GPT-3”, which is not affiliated with OpenAI, is selling subscriptions and has been a top paid App Store app for days  —  A sketchy app claiming to be the bot ChatGPT has soared up App Store charts, charging users a $7.99 weekly subscription …
Washington Post:
A New York University study finds Russian troll Twitter accounts had a minimal impact on 2016 US election voters; 1% of users accounted for 70% of the exposure  —  Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202!  I caught up on some time hanging out with friends this past weekend.  Friends are cool.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Up until late December 2022, hackers were using a flaw in Experian's site to get anyone's entire credit report using only their name, address, birthday, and SSN  —  Identity thieves have been exploiting a glaring security weakness in the website of Experian, one of the big three consumer credit reporting bureaus.
Jon Fingas / Engadget:
Meta rolls out a Variance Reduction System, its AI ad-targeting tech meant to comply with its DOJ settlement and reduce discrimination in housing ads, in the US  —  Meta is acting on its vow to reduce ad discrimination through technology.  The company is rolling out a Variance Reduction System …

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More News

Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Rachel Syme / New Yorker:
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Nate Raymond / Reuters:
Jesse Pound / CNBC:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
P J Huffstutter / Reuters: