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Techmeme
April 14, 2023, 11:54 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Filing: Elon Musk creates X.AI Corp., a privately held AI company incorporated in Nevada, and authorizes the sale of 100M shares  —  Name of new Nevada-incorporated organization suggests link to billionaire's interest in everything app  —  Elon Musk has created a new artificial intelligence …
Financial Times:
Sources: Musk plans a new startup to rival OpenAI, is talking to Tesla and SpaceX investors, may use Twitter for training data and Tesla for computing resources  —  Billionaire seeks to hire engineers, attract investors and acquire chips needed to build large language model
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Developer logs: Apple is testing a laptop with a CPU similar to current models and with the same resolution as the 14" MacBook Pro, suggesting a 15" MacBook Air  —  Apple Inc. is ramping up testing of fresh Macs with processors on par with the current M2 chip, making headway on key new machines that could help reverse a sales decline.
Wall Street Journal:
Montana lawmakers approve a first-of-its-kind bill that bans TikTok and bars app stores from offering the app within the state, starting on January 1, 2024  —  Supporters of the first-of-its-kind-bill expect legal challenges if the governor signs the legislation
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Sega is nearing a deal to acquire Rovio for ~$1B; Rovio was in talks to sell to rival Playtika for $800M+, but the negotiations ended in March 2023  —  Japan-based entertainment conglomerate expected to pay about $1 billion for Rovio Entertainment  —  Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. SGAMY …
Associated Press:
Court docs: the FBI used Discord billing records to help identify Jack Teixeira, the Air National guardsman who allegedly leaked classified Pentagon documents  —  A Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused in the leak of highly classified military documents appeared in court Friday …
James Vincent / The Verge:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Instagram updates Reels with a section for trending audio and hashtags, expands gifts to more countries, enhances its editing tools, adds new metrics, and more  —  As governments around the world express growing concerns about TikTok, its rival Instagram Reels is getting a series of new updates aimed at creators.
David Voreacos / Bloomberg:
A New York federal judge sentences James Zhong, who stole 50K+ bitcoin from Silk Road in 2012, to one year and one day in prison; Zhong faced 27 to 33 months  —  A Georgia man who stole more than 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road drug-trafficking site before his cache hit $3.35 billion in value must serve a year in prison.
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Parlement Technologies sells Parler to digital media company Starboard, which plans to temporarily shut down the right-wing social network ahead of a relaunch  —  Social network popular with conservatives will be overhauled for a relaunch  —  Parler, a social network that was popularized …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify plans to shut down Heardle on May 5, after acquiring the Wordle-inspired music guessing game in July 2022, to focus on other music discovery objectives  —  Spotify is closing down Heardle, the Wordle-inspired music guessing game it acquired last July for an undisclosed sum.
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Filing: Amazon paid Andy Jassy $1.3M in 2022 after he got a $200M+ stock grant in 2021; in his first annual letter, Jassy talks efficiency, ads, LLMs, and more  —  Jassy had earned $212 million in 2021.  —  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy saw his 2022 compensation crater in 2022 …
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:

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More News

Callie Holtermann / New York Times:
Sheila Dang / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Richard Waters / Financial Times: