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December 20, 2023, 10:30 AM
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Top News

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
Pharmacy chain Rite Aid must stop using facial recognition for five years as part of a settlement with the US FTC, which says the tech falsely flagged customers  —  - FTC says chain's surveillance system falsely flagged customers  — Bankrupt pharmacy chain will stop using system, delete images
Bloomberg:
Stanford researchers: LAION-5B, a dataset of 5B+ images used by Stability AI and others, contains 1,008+ instances of CSAM, possibly helping AI to generate CSAM  —  The dataset has been used to build popular AI image generators, including Stable Diffusion.  —  A massive public dataset used …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Sony sold 50M PS5 consoles in the three years since its November 2020 launch, almost as fast as the PS4 reached 50M, and outsold Xbox by almost 3:1 in 2023  —  Sony outsells Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Switch as sector recovers from post-pandemic slump  —  Resurgent sales …
Sam Tobin / Reuters:
The UK Supreme Court rules that AI can't be a patent “inventor”, rejecting a bid to register patents by US computer scientist Stephen Thaler, in a landmark case  —  A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created …
Sopan Deb / New York Times:
NASA engineers streamed an HD cat video across 18.6M miles, the farthest ever, using laser communications instead of radio frequencies for a 267 Mbps data rate  —  Using laser communication, NASA streamed a cat video from almost 20 million miles away, or 40 round trip flights to the moon.
Nickolas Diaz / Android Central:
Samsung adds the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 to its Self-Repair program, the first foldable devices, and expands the program to 30 more countries in Europe  —  Its latest smartphone series and laptop join in, too.  —  What you need to know  — Samsung has expanded coverage of its Self-Repair program …
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
Researchers say AI robot CyberRunner outmaneuvers humans in the maze game Labyrinth, in a breakthrough for AI beating humans at direct physical applications  —  - Robot learned in record time to guide a ball through a maze  — The AI robot used two knobs to manipulate playing surface
Jon Porter / The Verge:
The EU designates Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat as Very Large Online Platforms under the DSA, facing stricter rules to verify ages and stop illegal content  —  Porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat face stricter requirements to verify the ages of their users after being officially designated as …
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Sources: AWS plans to overhaul its 60K-person sales team and aims to increase the share of Fortune 1,000 companies spending $10M+/year from less than 20% to 80%  —  Matt Garman, head of sales at Amazon Web Services, plans to reorganize his more than 60,000-person team to address problems …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers detail a MITM attack on SSH that can break the integrity of the protocol, the first “practical attack of its kind”; fixes face compatibility issues  —  Novel Terrapin attack uses prefix truncation to downgrade the security of SSH channels.
Jon Victor / The Information:
Source: Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30K-person ad sales unit, as the company relies more on ML techniques to help customers buy even more ads  —  Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30,000-person ad sales unit, an executive told some staff last week, prompting anxiety that some departments will face job cuts.
Bloomberg:
Bird files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Florida, listing $100M-$500M in liabilities; the NYSE began delisting the e-scooter rental company in September 2023  —  The Miami, Florida based company listed assets and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million in a court filing.
Ellen Huet / Bloomberg:
A look at the tech sector's longevity obsession, with Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Larry Page, and others pledging millions of dollars to firms pursuing longer life  —  Tech titans, venture capitalists, crypto enthusiasts and AI researchers have turned longevity research into something between the hottest science and a tragic comedy.
John Yoon / New York Times:
A look at South Korea's AI industry, one of the world's most competitive and diverse, as startups train on Korean language and culture to compete with US giants  —  While they lag behind their U.S. counterparts, their focus on non-English languages could help loosen the American grip on artificial intelligence.
More: MSPoweruser
David Shepardson / Reuters:
The NIST seeks public input by February 2, 2024 for setting guidelines to evaluate the safety of generative AI systems, as directed by President Biden's AI EO  —  The Biden administration said on Tuesday it was taking the first step toward writing key standards and guidance for the safe deployment …
John Herrman / New York Magazine:
OpenAI's deals with publishers are a hedge against a scenario in which scraping becomes harder, training material more expensive, and real-time data more scarce  —  This past week, Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate that owns Politico and Business Insider, signed a “multiyear licensing deal” …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft Copilot can now compose songs, including lyrics, instruments, and voices, from a sentence, due to a new integration with generative AI music app Suno  —  Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft's AI-powered chatbot, can now compose songs thanks to an integration with gen AI music app Suno.
Bloomberg:
Sources: ByteDance's 2023 sales surged to $110B+, broadly matching 2022's 30% growth rate, despite economic turbulence in China and scrutiny in the US and India  —  - TikTok's Chinese owner expects revenue growth of about 30% … The world's most valuable startup's growth broadly matched …
More: Tech in Asia

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:30 AM ET, December 20, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Court docs detail a smear campaign against actor Blake Lively via media articles and social media posts after she accused director Justin Baldoni of misconduct

Max Tani / @maxwelltani:
Memo: WaPo's Matt Murray lays out plans for WP Ventures, the “third newsroom”; Krissah Thompson will be editor and Samantha Henig will be general manager

Jack Dunn / Variety:
Trump appoints Mark Burnett, the British TV executive who created and produced the reality show The Apprentice, as a special envoy to the UK

More News

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Google adds a range of new features and updates to Google Maps in India, including ML-powered Address Descriptors in 75+ cities and Live View walking navigation
Sarah Zheng / Bloomberg:
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu takes over the e-commerce business from Trudy Dai, one of Alibaba's earliest employees, who will now help oversee non-core assets globally

Earlier Picks

Michael Kan / PCMag:
HughesNet debuts a $110/month 100Mbps satellite internet plan, double its previous top speed; Starlink offers 220Mbps, but US Ookla data shows many get ~70Mbps
Emilia David / The Verge:
Stability AI debuts Stability AI Membership, with free, $20/month, and custom pricing enterprise tiers, limiting commercial use of its models to the paid tiers
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Interpol: a global law enforcement operation led by South Korea seized $300M and led to the arrest of 3,500 cybercrime suspects between July and December 2023
Meir Orbach / CTech:
Okta is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity company Spera, which raised a $10M seed in March 2023; source: the deal is worth ~$100M-$130M, contingent on milestones
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Comcast's Xfinity says hackers breached one of its Citrix servers in October 2023, two weeks after Citrix issued a patch, and stole data on 35,879,455 people
Ben Glickman / Wall Street Journal:
Google agrees to pay $700M and make app store changes, like offering an alternative billing system, to settle a 2021 antitrust lawsuit by 36 US states and DC
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