Techmeme
February 15, 2023, 7:55 AM

Top News

Platformer:
Sources: Twitter engineers built a system to boost Elon Musk's tweets over everyone else's after Musk complained Joe Biden's Super Bowl tweet outperformed his  —  After his Super Bowl tweet did worse numbers than President Biden's, Twitter's CEO ordered major changes to the algorithm
Bloomberg:
Speaking at a conference, Elon Musk says he is “guessing toward the end” of 2023 will be time for a new Twitter CEO as the company will be in “stable condition”  —  Elon Musk said he may need the rest of this year to put things right at Twitter Inc. before handing off …
Andrew Griffin / The Independent:
Some users say the “new Bing” is questioning its existence, outright lying, and responding with “unhinged”, aggressive, and nearly incomprehensible answers  —  System appears to be suffering a breakdown as it ponders why it has to exist at all  —  Microsoft is adding Chat GPT tech to Bing
Stephen Wolfram Writings:
An in-depth look at how OpenAI's ChatGPT decodes input queries to produce a “reasonable continuation” of the text, the underlying dataset, neural nets, and more  —  It's Just Adding One Word at a Time  —  That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially …
The Guardian:
An investigation exposes “Team Jorge”, an Israeli hacking and social media disinformation unit for hire claiming covert involvement in 33 presidential elections  —  - Group sells hacking services and access to vast army of fake social media profiles  — Evidence unit behind disinformation campaigns across world
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to evaluate Pay Later borrowers based on spending history, the Apple devices they own, whether they applied for an Apple Card, and more  —  With Apple Inc. pushing into the lending business with a “buy now, pay later” service, the company is laying out rules for how it will approve transactions.
Benjamin Robertson / The Block:
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius proposes a sale to investment firm NovaWulf, founded in 2021 by Wall Street dealmakers; smaller creditors may regain 70% of funds  —  - Proposed sale would see smaller creditors get around 70% of their money back  — Larger creditors would become shareholders …
Bloomberg:
Filing: Berkshire Hathaway cut its holdings of TSMC's American depositary shares by 86% last quarter to 8.29M, valued at $617.7M; TSMC's stock drops 3.5%+  —  Warren Buffett slashed his holding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. just months after disclosing a major stake …
Bloomberg:
ASML reported a breach to authorities after a former employee in China misappropriated proprietary data, resulting in possible export controls violations  —  ASML Holding NV, the Dutch company behind the leading chip-making technology, said that a former employee in China misappropriated data …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Hyundai and Kia are offering free anti-theft software updates for 8M+ vehicles, after hundreds of car thefts inspired by the viral “Kia Challenge” on TikTok  —  Hyundai and Kia are offering free software updates for millions of their cars in response to a rash of car thefts inspired …
Bloomberg:
Lufthansa grounded all flights after damage to a set of Deutsche Telekom broadband cables caused widespread IT disruptions; the timeline for a fix is unclear  —  Deutsche Lufthansa AG grounded all of its flights on Wednesday after damage to a set of Deutsche Telekom broadband cables caused widespread IT problems.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apptopia: consumer interest in Lensa AI and other top AI-powered photo apps fell quickly after hitting peak downloads and in-app purchases in mid-December 2022  —  Is the AI photo app trend already over?  Over the past several months, AI-powered photo apps have been going viral on the App Store …
More: 9to5Mac and PetaPixel
Catherine Wang / Forbes:
How BandLab, a music production app and social network for creators, woos users through its SongStarter AI tool, which generates royalty-free instrumental ideas  —  A scion of Malaysia's richest family, Kuok Meng Ru transformed his love of classic rock and blues into a music empire.
Praveen Seshadri:
An ex-Google engineer and founder of AppSheet, acquired by Google, reflects on his time at Google, issues with its culture, a lack of urgency and mission, more  —  What ails Google.  And how it can turn things around. … I joined Google just before the pandemic when the company I had co-founded …
Jane Lanhee Lee / Reuters:
SandboxAQ, a startup spun out of Alphabet that is developing post-quantum cryptography and simulation software for drug and material development, raised $500M  —  Sandbox AQ, a startup spun off from Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) last year, said on Tuesday it raised $500 million as it helps customers prepare for a quantum computing future.
Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google launches Privacy Sandbox for Android in beta, starting with a “small percentage” of Android 13 devices, similar to Apple's App Tracking Transparency  —  Here's a preview of the Privacy Sandbox, the newfangled way companies will follow you around the web that's supposed to be better for your privacy.
Mihir Dalal / Rest of World:
A profile of Flipkart and CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, as losses mount, competition from Amazon and others intensifies, and Modi's government tightens regulations  —  Flipkart was Walmart's biggest acquisition.  Will it be able to stay India's e-commerce leader?  —  • BENGALURU, INDIA
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker on the company's history, battling Microsoft, working with rivals, generative AI, WebKit, iOS, Chrome, Mastodon, and more  —  Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker on competing — and cooperating — with Google, Apple, and the rest of Big Tech.

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Earlier Picks

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Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Chloe Xiang / VICE: