Techmeme
October 8, 2023, 1:45 PM

Top News

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Hackers posted an initial data sample from 23andMe on BreachForums earlier in the week, claiming that it had 1M data points exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews  —  At least a million data points from 23andMe accounts appear to have been exposed on BreachForums.
Anthropic:
A research paper details how decomposing groups of neurons in a neural network into interpretable “features” may improve safety by enabling monitoring of LLMs  —  Neural networks are trained on data, not programmed to follow rules.  With each step of training …
Emma Fletcher / Federal Trade Commission:
One in four people in the US who reported losing money to fraud between January 2021-June 2023 said it started on social media, resulting in losses worth $2.7B  —  Scammers are hiding in plain sight on social media platforms and reports to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network point to huge profits.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
IDC says Google shipped 37.9M Pixel phones between 2016 and 2023, suggesting the company shipped a record ~10M phones over the last 12 months  —  Google Pixel is still a minor player in the global smartphone market, but the brand continues to move along.  As the Pixel 8 series launched this week …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Even though the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have the same Tensor G3 chip, features like Night Sight Video and enhanced Magic Eraser are exclusive to the Pixel 8 Pro  —  I can't believe Google finally did it.  I'm still in disbelief. … It's unheard of.  It's historic.
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Amazon's Alexa has been claiming that the 2020 election was stolen citing sources from Rumble and Substack; Amazon says the errors were fixed  —  The popular voice assistant says the 2020 race was stolen, even as parent company Amazon promotes the tool as a reliable election news source — foreshadowing a new information battleground
Andy Patrizio / Ars Technica:
A history of Digital Equipment Corporation, which pioneered minicomputers after being founded in 1957 and was acquired by Compaq in 1998  —  One of the early pioneers in computing, the company disappeared in the late 1990s.  —  Even though very few of the early players in technology still exist, we use their creations to this day.
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
Y Combinator hires Yelp policy chief Luther Lowe, best known for his public criticism of Google, to lead public policy, as the accelerator embraces politics  —  Best known for his relentless public criticism of Google as a monopoly, longtime Yelp public policy chief Luther Lowe has a new gig: heading up policy efforts for Y Combinator.
Reuters:
The US adds 42 tech companies from China and seven companies from India, UK, and other countries to an export control list over their support for Russian army  —  The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday added 42 Chinese companies to a government export control list over their support …

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Earlier Picks

Paresh Dave / Wired:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt: