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.

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 2:05 PM ET, March 15, 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

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: