Techmeme
December 20, 2023, 8:05 AM

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
Sopan Deb / New York Times:
NASA engineers streamed an HD cat video from 18.6M miles away, the farthest ever, using lasers instead of radio frequencies to achieve speeds of 267 Mbps  —  Using laser communication, NASA streamed a cat video from almost 20 million miles away, or 40 round trip flights to the moon.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
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
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.
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  —  An international law enforcement operation codenamed ‘Operation HAECHI IV’ has led to the arrest of 3,500 suspects …
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 …
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 …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
The EU designates Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat as Very Large Online Platforms under the DSA, meaning stricter rules on age verification and illegal content  —  Porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat face stricter requirements to verify the ages of their users after being officially designated as …
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.
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  —  HughesNet's speed boost comes courtesy of the recently launched Jupiter 3 satellite, which is designed to serve customers in the Americas.
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
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  —  - Two-decade veteran Trudy Dai will help set up a holding firm  — Alibaba's growth has fizzled out in recent years as PDD arose
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” …
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
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  —  Stability AI, the maker of the text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, is now offering a subscription service that standardizes …

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