Techmeme
December 5, 2023, 8:50 AM

Top News

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
23andMe says hackers stole the ancestry data of 6.9M of its 14M customers, via a breach first disclosed in October 2023, by leveraging access to ~14K accounts  —  On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals.
Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security:
The conversational nature of AI chatbots makes them more trustworthy, which could result in problems including “hidden exploitation” and outright fraud  —  I trusted a lot today.  I trusted my phone to wake me on time.  I trusted Uber to arrange a taxi for me, and the driver to get me to the airport safely.
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Meta says cross-app chatting between Messenger and Instagram will be discontinued in “mid-December 2023”, after announcing the feature in September 2020  —  Meta is beginning the process of disconnecting the ability to have “cross-app chats” with your Instagram contacts via Facebook Messenger and vice-versa.
Reuters:
Documents: Apple warns India that its EU-style charger rules will hit local production targets and asks to exempt existing iPhone models from the rules  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has told India its local production targets will be hit if New Delhi follows the European Union and requires existing iPhones …
Alexandra Barinka / Bloomberg:
Meta, IBM, and over 50 other companies and organizations form the AI Alliance, a coalition to work on open source AI, including to share tech and reduce risks  —  Meta Platforms Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are joining more than 40 companies and organizations to create …
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
Web3 developer platform thirdweb discloses a major vulnerability in its open-source library affecting many NFT collections; Thirdweb became aware on November 20  —  - Thirdweb, a web3 developer platform, disclosed a security vulnerability in its open-source library.
Jake Kanter / Deadline:
Amazon fails to renew its live English Premier League rights deal, as part of Sky and TNT's new £6.7B TV rights deal for four soccer seasons from 2025/2026  —  - BBC Names Royals Accused In Omid Scobie Book Of Commenting On Skin Color Of Harry & Meghan's Son
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
Rockstar releases the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, set in a fictional Miami, featuring a male and a female protagonist, ahead of a planned 2025 launch  —  Crime-themed franchise is among the most successful in video-game history  —  Rockstar Games released the first trailer …
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Google upgrades Gmail's spam filters with RETVec, a text vectorizer that understands “adversarial text manipulations” like emojis, typos, and special characters  —  Gmail's spam filters can now understand “adversarial text manipulations.”  —  The latest post on the Google …
Wired:
An analysis of 36GB of US school network logs covering January 2022 to August 2023 finds widespread use of filters to censor the internet, including health info  —  A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Ofcom starts a consultation on draft guidelines on how porn sites should lock out underage users, including having a bank or mobile network confirm a user's age  —  UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has laid out how porn sites could verify users' ages under the newly passed Online Safety Act.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says the company didn't see much of an “interruption” from Hollywood's strikes and is still targeting a $17B content budget for 2024  —  Ted Sarandos is happy the twin Hollywood strikes are over — but the Netflix co-CEO claimed the streamer didn't see significant …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
SoftBank acquires a 51% stake in Dublin-based Cubic Telecom, which offers software-based networking for 17M+ vehicles, for €473M, valuing Cubic at €927M  —  Automakers and technology companies are building ever-more sophisticated digital platforms into the future generations of cars and other vehicles.
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Asking ChatGPT to repeat words “forever” now violates OpenAI's terms of service, after Google researchers showed that doing so led to revealing training data  —  Join the newsletter to get the latest updates.  —  Success  —  Great!  Check your inbox and click the link.  —  Error

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Earlier Picks

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
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Financial Times:
Peter Martin / Bloomberg: