Techmeme
January 31, 2024, 7:40 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
A recap of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on kids' online safety, with testimony from the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X, Snap, and Discord  —  The chief executives of five major tech companies are testifying Wednesday about allegations they failed to protect children from abuse on their platforms …
More: U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, The Verge, The Verge, CNN, Engadget, Tech Policy Press, TechCrunch, Center for Democracy …, The Verge, New York Times, The Record, Axios, Politico, TIME, NBC News, Reuters, Tubefilter, C-SPAN on YouTube, The Hill, Reuters, The Hill, The Hill, Livemint, Business Post, Bloomberg, Axios, PetaPixel, Newser, New York Times, Fight for the Future, 9to5Mac, The Messenger, and Associated Press on YouTube
New York Times:
US lawmakers release 90 pages of Meta emails from 2021, showing Mark Zuckerberg rejected calls to bulk up resources for children's well-being and safety  —  Lawmakers released internal emails detailing the company's failed efforts to add staff to focus on the online safety of minors, hours before a hearing on the topic.
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Microsoft and X say they support the Kids Online Safety Act; Meta, Discord, and TikTok demur, citing criticism from groups or supporting only some parts of KOSA  —  On the eve of Wednesday's big tech hearing (both big tech and a big hearing — five CEOs are testifying as we speak) …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Angela Yang / NBC News:
Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:
The FBI and US DOJ disrupt Volt Typhoon, a uniquely dangerous Chinese hacking operation to hijack hundreds of Cisco and Netgear routers at end-of-life status  —  Chinese hackers prepare to ‘wreak havoc’ against Americans, FBI Director Chris Wray tells Congress
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen confirms “unauthorized access” to “a few of my personal XRP accounts”, after ZachXBT noted outflows of 213M XRP, worth $112.5M  —  - Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen said Wednesday that there had been “unauthorized access” to “a few of my personal XRP accounts.”
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
OpenAI says GPT-4 poses “at most” a slight risk of helping create biological threats, according to early tests to evaluate “catastrophic” risks from LLMs  —  Artificial intelligence startup carried out tests as part of efforts to understand and prevent any “catastrophic” risks from its technology.
Jeffrey Gottfried / Pew Research Center:
US adults survey: 83% use YouTube; 68% use Facebook; 47% use Instagram; 27% to 35% use Snapchat, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest; 22% use X and Reddit  —  YouTube and Facebook are by far the most used online platforms among U.S. adults; TikTok's user base has grown since 2021
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says that Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Loop, and Copilot features will be available on Apple Vision Pro on February 2  —  Microsoft is launching a suite of its Microsoft 365 apps on Apple's Vision Pro headset later this week.
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
A look at four major categories of promising applications that could emerge at the intersections of crypto and AI, and the prospects and challenges of each  —  Special thanks to the Worldcoin and Modulus Labs teams, Xinyuan Sun, Martin Koeppelmann and Illia Polosukhin for feedback and discussion.
Aoyon Ashraf / CoinDesk:
An FTX lawyer says the defunct crypto exchange expects to fully repay its customers and has abandoned efforts to restart the platform, due to a lack of buyers  —  Its FTT token surged about 11% after the news.  —  10 Years of Decentralizing the Future  —  May 29-31, 2024 - Austin …
Eri Sugiura / Financial Times:
UK prosecutors say the Met Police seized 61K bitcoin, worth £1.4B+, in 2018, as part of a trial over an alleged ~£5B investment fraud in China from 2014 to 2017  —  One of the world's largest seizures revealed during trial of woman accused of laundering cryptocurrency for her former employer
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Qualcomm reports Q1 adjusted revenue up 5% YoY to $9.92B, vs. $9.51B est., handset chip sales up 16% YoY to $6.69B, and net income up 24% YoY to $2.77B  —  - Qualcomm beat on revenue and earnings in the quarter.  — The company said it shipped $6.69 billion in handset chips during the December quarter …
Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal:
The US DOJ says eBay agreed to pay $59M to settle allegations of violating the Controlled Substances Act by allowing the sale of pill presses and other items  —  Justice Department says eBay has also agreed to enhance its compliance program  —  EBay will pay $59 million to settle …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Metronome, which offers APIs to help SaaS companies charge customers on a usage basis, raised a $43M Series B led by NEA, bringing its total funding to $78M+  —  Metronome, a startup that helps software companies offer usage-based billing, has raised $43 million in a Series B funding round led by NEA.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review: a $200 price cut to $999, 16GB of VRAM, and impressive 4K performance, but a bulky adapter and outperforms the RTX 4070 a little  —  Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super is the third and potentially final of Nvidia's refreshed 40-series GPUs.
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology.  It's past time we call it what it is.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
Legislators and privacy experts detail how the tech industry has sought to water down state privacy regulation in the US; 13 US states now have privacy laws  —  New Jersey's governor signed a hard-fought data privacy law earlier this month, making the state one of eight nationwide …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
More: BloombergThreads: @aaronrosspowellX: @senbrianschatz and @ksandler1Forums: r/politics

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