Techmeme
January 25, 2024, 12:05 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Internal memo: Microsoft plans to lay off ~1,900 staff at Activision Blizzard and Xbox, or ~8% of its Microsoft Gaming workforce, this week  —  Microsoft is laying off around 1,900 employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox this week.  While Microsoft is primarily laying off roles at Activision Blizzard …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Google Research details Lumiere, an AI video tool that uses unique architecture to create videos in one smooth process instead of putting together smaller parts  —  Lumiere generates five-second videos that “portray realistic, diverse and coherent motion.”  —  On Tuesday, Google announced Lumiere …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches Mesh, its 3D meeting platform in Teams, out of preview, with custom environments, games, spatial audio, and only supporting Meta Quest for VR  —  Microsoft is launching its immersive 3D meetings inside Microsoft Teams today.  Microsoft Mesh, the company's mixed reality platform …
IDC:
Chinese smartphone shipments declined 5% YoY to 271.3M units in 2023; Apple gained the top spot, a first, with 17.3% market share, followed by Honor with 17.1%  —  A shift of power that we saw on the worldwide stage also happened in China, the largest smartphone market globally.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta rolls out DM limits on Facebook and Instagram to stop all users from messaging teens who don't follow them, on by default, and expands parental controls  —  Meta announced today that it is rolling out new DM restrictions on both Facebook and Instagram for teens that prevent anyone from messaging teens.
Thomas Buckley / Bloomberg:
How the rising prices of streaming services are driving users to pirate websites with a ~90% profit margin that bring in ~$2B per year in ads and subscriptions  —  Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees.
Forums: Slashdot
Luke Bouma / Cord Cutters News:
Fubo TV launches Instant Headlines Beta, which uses AI to generate headlines from live news programs on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and other networks  —  You may be familiar with AI-powered highlights of sporting events.  Now, though, Fubo has announced for the first time you will be able to get instant headlines from live news programs.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
X is flooded with AI-generated pornographic images of Taylor Swift; one post, live for 17 hours, had 45M+ views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and 24K reposts  —  Sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift have been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) over the last day in the latest example …
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
An investigation details a spy tool called Patternz, which can track billions of phone profiles via ads in hundreds of thousands of apps, including 9gag and Kik  —  Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Anomalo, which uses AI to solve data-quality problems in large datasets, raised a $33M Series B led by SignalFire, bringing its total funding to $72M  —  When Anomalo's co-founders left Instacart in 2018, they thought they could put machine learning to work to solve data quality problems inherent in large data sets.
More: SiliconANGLE
Bloomberg:
Filing: HPE says a threat actor believed to be Russia-linked Midnight Blizzard exfiltrated data from “a small percentage of HPE mailboxes” beginning in May 2023  —  - HPE says it was informed of nation-state breach on Dec. 12  — Same Russia-linked group suspected in recent Microsoft hack
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google Pixel users say all their apps cannot access data in internal storage after installing the January 2024 Google Play system update, causing various issues  —  Following a storage access issue in October with the initial Android 14 release and multiple users, Pixel devices might …
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal:
VCs put $100B+ in US defense tech startups since 2021, but convincing the Pentagon to buy from them has proven difficult; only a few had $25M+ in orders in FY23  —  Tech startups get cool reception from Defense Department despite its rhetoric that it will buy more from Silicon Valley
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Sources: research group China Tech Threat, which has advocated against Lenovo, aligns with the corporate interests of Dell and Micron, both long-term funders  —  China Tech Threat's advocacy aligns with the corporate interests of Dell and Micron, which have supported the group financially, say people familiar with the group.
LinkedIn: Brody Ford

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More News

Sara Merken / Reuters:
Sareen Habeshian / Axios:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Richard Nieva / Forbes:
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: