Techmeme
March 29, 2023, 8:30 PM

Top News

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple schedules WWDC 2023 for June 5 to June 9 as a virtual event with a June 5 keynote, where iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17, watchOS 10, and macOS 14 are expected  —  Apple today announced that its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place from Monday, June 5 to Friday, June 9.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
EA plans to lay off ~6% of its workforce and cut its office space, incurring $170M to $200M in restructuring charges; EA had nearly 13,000 employees in mid-2022  —  Publisher of ‘Madden NFL’ and other videogame series is also making office-space reductions  —  White-Collar Recession: Why Job Cuts Are Hitting Professional Workers
Scott Chipolina / Financial Times:
Forbes:
Sources: Sam Bankman-Fried is paying his mounting legal fees from a $10M+ tax-free gift he gave his father with money borrowed from Alameda in 2021  —  While still CEO of now-collapsed FTX, Bankman-Fried transferred millions of dollars to his father.  Some of those funds have since been used …
Future of Life Institute:
Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and 1,000+ people sign an open letter urging AI labs to pause the training of systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months  —  We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.  —  Signatures
More: The Verge, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, New York Times, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CNBC, BleepingComputer, Thurrott, VICE, AppleInsider, The Hill, IT PRO, VentureBeat, Popular Mechanics, TIME, Silicon Valley Business …, Insider, Wired, BetaKit, OnMSFT.com, Engadget, Ars Technica, Associated Press, MarketWatch, SC Media, Observer, PaymentSecurity.io, Billboard, Tech.co, Dark Reading, BBC, Dallas Innovates, Decrypt, Tech Policy Press, CIO Dive, Laptop Mag, GovTech, ExtremeTech, The Social Analyst, Windows Central, Nextgov, NBC News, Metaverse Post, MacDailyNews, BGR, Cult of Mac, SlashGear, CNN, Vox, Tom's Guide, Techaeris, Newser, HotHardware, PC Gamer, Deadline, Computerworld, MobileSyrup, PCMag, Forbes, Fast Company, Mashable, TechCircle, ZDNet, iPhone in Canada Blog, PetaPixel, Gizchina, The Register, KnowTechie, 9to5Mac, Neowin, TIME, The Road to AI We Can Trust, The Road to AI We Can Trust, and Fox News
Delphine Strauss / Financial Times:
Goldman Sachs research finds generative AI could increase annual global GDP by 7% over a 10-year period and expose 300M full-time jobs to automation globally  —  Technology could boost global GDP by 7% but also risks creating ‘significant disruption’  —  The latest breakthroughs …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google launches an Ads Transparency Center, showing all the ads from verified advertisers on its platforms, in the formats, the regions, and the dates they ran  —  Google is launching a new ad transparency center that will let users search for verified advertisers and their campaigns across …
Justin Ling / Wired:
Docs: investments in 4chan include $800K from owner Hiroyuki Nishimura, $4.8M from his company, and $2.4M from Tokyo-based Good Smile, which makes Disney toys  —  Documents obtained by WIRED confirm that Good Smile, which licenses toy production for Disney, was an investor in the controversial image board.
Financial Times:
As Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and others cut their responsible AI teams, experts worry about potential abuses, disinformation, and hallucination  —  Microsoft, Amazon and Google among those to cut ‘responsible AI’ teams as part of broader reductions
Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal:
WeMeta: the median price per square meter of land in Decentraland has dropped from ~$45 in 2022 to $5 in 2023, as the hype around the metaverse has receded  —  Disney and Microsoft both closed projects tied to the digital realm this month  —  Watch: What's the Future of the Metaverse?
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Lemon8, ByteDance's Instagram rival launched in March 2020, hits the US App Store's top 10; data.ai: Lemon8 never before ranked in the US top 200 overall charts  —  As U.S. lawmakers move forward with their plans for a TikTok ban or forced sale, the app's Chinese parent company ByteDance …
Christopher M. Matthews / Wall Street Journal:
Court records and messages from alleged hackers reveal a massive hacking campaign targeting thousands of environmental activists, dating back to at least 2017  —  Charity of Rockefeller heirs among groups targeted by hackers; oil giant not accused of wrongdoing
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The SEC sues shuttered crypto exchange Beaxy and its execs for allegedly not registering and Beaxy Digital's founder for raising $8M via unregistered token BXY  —  - The SEC brought charges against crypto platform Beaxy on Wednesday for allegedly not registering as an exchange, broker or a clearing agency.
New York Times:
How NetEase and Activision's 14-year partnership fell apart, in part due to China's tech crackdown, as filings show the deal was worth ~$750M in annual revenue  —  Activision Blizzard and NetEase could not agree on a new deal to distribute video games in China, cutting millions of players from the games in January.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google plans to launch extreme heat alerts in Search, including telling users when a heat wave is expected to start and end, keeping safe, and tips to stay cool  —  Google is introducing new extreme heat alerts in Search that are designed to surface information to help people stay safe during heat waves …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko on open-source governance, business models, rejecting VC firms, running instances, ActivityPub, content moderation, and more  —  CEO Eugen Rochko on running — and growing — a decentralized social network. … Eugen Rochko is the CEO of Mastodon …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK government publishes recommendations for AI and tasks regulators with issuing practical guidance to organizations on implementing them in their sectors  —  - The U.K. government has published a white paper for the artificial intelligence industry.  — It calls on regulators to come up with …

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Earlier Picks

Max Goldbart / Deadline:
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Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
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Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reuters: