Techmeme
December 18, 2023, 6:00 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple plans to halt Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week, to “preemptively” comply with an ITC patent ruling under US review until December 25  —  In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple has announced that it will soon halt sales of its flagship Apple Watch models in the United States.
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Reuters:
Adobe and Figma end their $20B merger, announced in September 2022, over “no clear path” to EU and UK antitrust approval; Adobe owes Figma a $1B termination fee  —  Adobe (ADBE.O) on Monday shelved its $20 billion cash-and-stock deal for cloud-based designer platform Figma …
More: Figma, Adobe Press Releases, The Verge, TechCrunch, Computerworld, The Adobe Blog, European Commission, Euractiv, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, PYMNTS.com, CB Insights Research, Politico, Engadget, Bloomberg, New York Times, Crunchbase News, PCMag, Silicon Republic, MobileSyrup, Bloomberg, TechStartups, Financial Times, Newser, Metaverse Post, Associated Press, ITPro, Business Insider, diginomica, Fortune, Coinspeaker, The Information, Tech Monitor, The Guardian, SiliconANGLE, iClarified, PetaPixel, Gizmodo, Neowin, and San Francisco Business Times
Om Malik / On my Om:
UK and EU regulators blocking Adobe's Figma acquisition changes the liquidity environment for startup founders and VCs, focusing dollars on likely IPO winners  —  The writing has been on the wall for sometime — the regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been hemming and hawing …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Flipboard plans to replace its entire social back end with ActivityPub and by April 2024 let any Flipboard user follow any fediverse account from within its app  —  Flipboard is taking its biggest step yet into the fediverse.  The company announced on Monday that it is beginning to switch …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
The European Commission opens a DSA investigation into X, focusing on “illegal content and disinformation”, ad transparency, “deceptive design”, and data access  —  X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, may have broken the European Union's tough new Digital Service Act rules …
Andrew Solender / Axios:
Coinbase, a16z, the Winklevoss twins, and others poured $78M into crypto super PACs in Q4 2023, an immense raise in three months, ahead of the 2024 US elections  —  Cryptocurrency industry leaders have poured $78 million into super PACs aimed at bolstering and growing the ranks …
Brandon Vigliarolo / The Register:
The US DOT fines Southwest Airlines $140M, in addition to customer refunds, for the December 2022 meltdown caused by its antiquated flight scheduling software  —  Wrist, meet slap: Only a quarter will be paid to Treasury, the rest is vouchers and credits  —  The US Department of Transportation has …
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
OpenAI says its board can hold back the release of an AI model even if OpenAI's leadership says it's safe, and announces a new internal safety advisory group  —  The arrangement was mentioned in a set of guidelines released Monday explaining how the ChatGPT-maker plans to deal with AI risks.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Game preservationists are digging into a 1.2TB cache of TestFlight data, from roughly 2012 to 2015, found on the Internet Archive, containing a ton of old apps  —  A huge number of old mobile games and apps from TestFlight, which lets developers share in-development versions of their apps …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Mortgage and loan giant Mr. Cooper says hackers stole the personal data of 14.6M+ customers, like dates of birth, phone numbers, SSNs, and bank account numbers  —  Hackers stole the sensitive personal information of more than 14.6 million Mr. Cooper customers, the mortgage and loan giant has confirmed.
Agence France-Presse:
Former Pakistan PM Imran Khan, in jail since August 2023 for allegedly leaking classified documents, uses ElevenLabs' AI voice clone tool for a campaign speech  —  PTI party uses ‘voice clone’ of imprisoned opposition leader to give impassioned speech in ‘virtual rally’

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