Techmeme
February 8, 2023, 12:50 PM

Top News

Martin Coulter / Reuters:
Google's Bard announcement tweet had a GIF showing the AI chatbot giving an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope; GOOG drops 8%+  —  Google published an online advertisement in which its much anticipated AI chatbot BARD delivered inaccurate answers.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google launches Immersive View for Maps in London, LA, NYC, San Francisco, and Tokyo and plans to release “glanceable directions” globally in the coming months  —  Google is launching new updates for Maps that are part of its plan to make the navigation app more immersive and intuitive for users …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Google details AI updates: expanding multisearch globally on mobile, new features for EV drivers, Lens translation, and updates to Translate  —  Google announced a bunch of AI-enabled search, Maps, and Translate updates as part of its Google presents: Live from Paris event on Wednesday.
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA finds Microsoft's proposed $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition will harm competition in the UK's gaming market and asks Microsoft for remedies  —  Microsoft Corp.'s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. will harm competition in the UK gaming market …
Financial Times:
Washington Post:
A live blog of the House Oversight Committee hearing with ex-Twitter executives Vijaya Gadde, James Baker, and Yoel Roth on Hunter Biden laptop “censorship”  —  A congressional hearing today represents a moment of political reckoning more than two years in the making …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Google's AI demo event in Paris paled in comparison to Microsoft's “new Bing” announcement, highlighting Google's need to widely release its ChatGPT competitor  —  Google demoed its latest advances in AI search at a live event in Paris on Wednesday — but the features pale …
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
Google and Microsoft's race to add AI chatbots to search results comes loaded with risk; Bing shows results in a sidebar with citations, something Google lacks  —  Here's something you don't see everyday: Microsoft Corp. is serving up a snazzy web search tool.
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott:
Microsoft plans to embed Adobe's Acrobat PDF engine in Edge for Windows 10 and 11 starting in March 2023; Edge's legacy PDF engine will be removed in March 2024  —  Microsoft announced today that it is partnering with Adobe to bring Acrobat PDF capabilities to the Microsoft Edge web browser on Windows.
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
At the State of the Union, Biden called for Congress to strengthen data privacy protections and antitrust enforcement to stop Big Tech from self-preferencing  —  President Joe Biden threw his support behind tougher rules regulating Silicon Valley during his Second State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
Thomas Claburn / The Register:
Mozilla says the company is doing “exploratory work” for a Gecko-based browser on iOS in case Apple drops its WebKit requirement, after a similar move by Google  —  Work on a Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS is underway, again  —  UPDATED Mozilla is planning for the day when Apple …
Kellen Browning / New York Times:
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 49% YoY to $8.6B, gross bookings rose 19% YoY to $30.7B, and a record 2.1B customer trips, up 19% YoY; UBER jumps 7%+ pre-market  —  The company, which was hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic, saw revenue jump 49 percent from the same period a year ago.
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Binance Asia-Pacific Head Leon Foong says a full audit will take “a longer time” as accountants are still learning about crypto, after Mazars pulled its report  —  Binance Holdings Ltd., operator of the world's largest digital-asset exchange, indicated a full audit of its assets …
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Hands-on with the new AI-powered Bing, which, when asked for the 2023 Grammys winners, made a list with citations in a minute; search will never be the same  —  Our columnist got an early look at the software's new ChatGPT-like powers  —  Bing with AI: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Why Search Is Changed Forever
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
James Vincent / The Verge:
Pallabi Munsi / CNN:
How pro-military groups in Myanmar are using Telegram channels, many with ~10K followers, to share abusive sexual videos and images of women and to doxx them  —  Editor's Note: This story is part of ‘Systems Error’, a series by CNN As Equals, investigating how your gender shapes your life online.
Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
The Bank of England issues two papers on a digital pound, seeming to favor a centralized database over a blockchain and limiting personal holdings to £10K-£20K  —  The Bank of England has set out technical features of its central bank digital currency, which officials have said is likely to be needed.
Politico:
UK PM Rishi Sunak creates the standalone Department of Science, Innovation & Technology, led by Michelle Donelan, stripping the DCMS of its digital oversight  —  LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is creating a standalone science, innovation and technology department as part …

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:
(BNS) Brian's Appearance On Daily Detroit
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 12:50 PM ET, February 8, 2023.

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

Ashley Capoot / CNBC: