Techmeme
March 15, 2023, 2:05 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
As SVB collapsed, prominent investors, internet provocateurs, and others helped fuel concerns over the US banking system, creating a “Twitter-fueled bank run”  —  Rapid spread of concerns prompts lawmaker to call it ‘Twitter-fueled bank run’  —  The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank: What You Need to Know
Emily Flitter / New York Times:
A profile of Tim Mayopoulos, named by the FDIC as the CEO of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, who was BofA's general counsel during the 2008 financial crisis  —  The F.D.I.C. named Tim Mayopoulos as chief executive of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.  His job is to keep calm and carry on.
Washington Post:
Interviews with 20 people detail the Biden admin's response to SVB's and Signature's collapse, as tech executives and investors lobbied to protect all deposits  —  It seemed like a simple question: Did the treasury secretary have any concerns about the economic risks posed by Silicon Valley Bank?
Maureen Farrell / New York Times:
Bloomberg:
T-Mobile plans to acquire Ryan Reynolds-backed budget wireless provider Mint Mobile for as much as $1.35B, seeking to expand its pay-as-you-go marketshare  —  T-Mobile US Inc. is buying Mint Mobile, the budget wireless provider part owned by actor Ryan Reynolds, for as much as $1.35 billion …
OpenAI:
OpenAI debuts GPT-4, claiming the model “surpasses ChatGPT in its advanced reasoning capabilities”, available in ChatGPT Plus and as an API that has a waitlist  —  Following the research path from GPT, GPT-2, and GPT-3, our deep learning approach leverages more data and more computation …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
An interview with OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman on GPT-4 being “different” to GPT-3, training on images and text, a “slow and intentional” rollout, and more  —  OpenAI shipped GPT-4 today, the much-anticipated text-generating AI model, and it's a curious piece of work.
Yusuf Mehdi / Bing Blogs:
Max Abelson / Bloomberg:
How Signature Bank's big pivot to crypto led to the downfall of the once successful old-school lender that survived doing business with NYC cab owners and Trump  —  Signature Bank was flying high when co-founder Scott Shay mused about success on a podcast early last year.
Bloomberg:
Sources: US prosecutors were investigating Signature's work with crypto clients before regulators seized the bank, including over detecting money laundering  —  US prosecutors were investigating Signature Bank's work with crypto clients before regulators suddenly seized the lender this past weekend …
New York Times:
How Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google's Assistant fell behind in the AI race despite a decade headstart, hampered by clunky design and miscalculations  —  The virtual assistants had more than a decade to become indispensable.  But they were hampered by clunky design and miscalculations, leaving room for chatbots to rise.
Bloomberg:
Sources: TikTok's leadership is considering divesting itself from ByteDance as a last resort if CFIUS rejects the existing proposal, possibly leading to an IPO  —  TikTok's leadership is discussing the possibility of separating from ByteDance Ltd., its Chinese parent company, to help address concerns about national security risks.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
The US charges exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui with a conspiracy to defraud his online followers out of over $1B and arrests him; the DOJ seizes $634M  —  The U.S. government on Wednesday charged exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui with fraud, accusing him of orchestrating a conspiracy …
Reuters:
Samsung Electronics plans to invest ~$230B through 2042 to build what South Korea calls the world's largest chipmaking base, including five chip factories  —  South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) expects to invest $230 billion over the next 20 years to develop …
The Verge:
Sources: Spotify HiFi as a premium tier was ready to launch over a year ago, but Apple's decision to offer lossless audio at no extra charge spoiled its plans  —  Even though Spotify HiFi still hasn't launched after being announced more than two years ago, some kind of lossless experience …
Paul Murray / New York Magazine:
A journey into the metaverse to find friends and true believers on Meta's Horizon Worlds, raising questions over what promise Mark Zuckerberg saw in VR  —  In September, my family and I move from our home in Dublin to a fancy East Coast college town, where I'll be teaching for the semester.
Fabiano Maisonnave / Associated Press:
An investigation finds that illegal miners in Brazil use SpaceX's Starlink for coordinating logistics, making payments, and warning of law enforcement raids  —  Brazilian federal agents aboard three helicopters descended on an illegal mining site on Tuesday in the Amazon rainforest.
CNBC:
Representative Ken Buck says the GOP won't impose tougher antitrust rules on Google, Amazon, and Apple in 2023; Jim Jordan doesn't want to give Biden more power  —  - The new Republican leadership in the U.S. House doesn't appear to have the appetite to impose tougher antitrust rules on the tech giants.

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Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: