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February 29, 2024, 3:50 PM
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Top News

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Source: Embracer will sell its subsidiary Saber Interactive to private investors in a $500M deal, making Saber a privately owned company with ~3,500 staff  —  Saber will continue developing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic  —  Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB will sell …
Consumer Reports:
Researchers find serious security flaws in cheap video door bells sold by a Chinese company under various brands names on Amazon, Shein, and other sites  —  The devices are also sold by Walmart, Sears, and other retailers—and big platforms have faced few consequences for shipping flawed products
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft launches a Copilot for Finance in public preview; the chatbot can perform some common role-specific actions in Excel and Outlook  —  - Microsoft is launching a Copilot for Finance, which it said will be able to perform a handful of common role-specific actions in Excel and Outlook.
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Change Healthcare confirms that the ransomware group BlackCat is behind the ongoing attack that caused widespread disruptions to pharmacies across the US  —  - Change Healthcare on Thursday confirmed that the ransomware group Blackcat is behind the ongoing cybersecurity attack that's been impacting its systems since last week.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Microsoft outlines the new DirectSR API, which lets game developers integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel  —  Microsoft has outlined a new Windows API designed to offer a seamless way for game developers to integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the SEC is investigating whether OpenAI investors were misled, after the board claimed during Sam Altman's firing that he wasn't “consistently candid”  —  Regulator is examining internal communications of CEO Sam Altman, after board last year temporarily ousted him for alleged lack of candor
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Alibaba researchers detail EMO, or Emote Portrait Alive, an AI system that can create realistic talking and singing videos from portrait photos  —  Researchers at Alibaba's Institute for Intelligent Computing have developed a new artificial intelligence system called “EMO,” …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
JFrog says it found around a hundred malicious ML models on Hugging Face, some of which can backdoor users' machines  —  At least 100 instances of malicious AI ML models were found on the Hugging Face platform, some of which can execute code on the victim's machine, giving attackers a persistent backdoor.
Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post:
The US launches a probe into possible security risks of Chinese-manufactured vehicles, saying modern cars are like smartphones and could be used for espionage  —  The Biden administration says software and digital connections in modern cars could be used to spy on Americans or sabotage the vehicles
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Humanoid robot maker Figure AI confirms it has raised $675M at a $2.6B valuation and shows off a general-purpose robot called Figure 01  —  - Figure AI raised $675 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI.  — The startup says it will use the money …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers detail an ongoing repo confusion attack, which involves cloning existing repos and infecting them with malware loaders, impacting 100K+ GitHub repos  —  GitHub keeps removing malware-laced repositories, but thousands remain.  —  GitHub is struggling to contain …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Stack Overflow launches OverflowAPI to give AI companies access to its knowledge base, starting with Google, which will use the data for Gemini for Google Cloud  —  Developer Q&A site Stack Overflow is launching a new program today that will give AI companies access to its knowledge base through a new API, aptly named OverflowAPI.
New York Times:
Sources detail Apple's $10B+ car project: years of disagreements over building a self-driving car or just an EV, talks with Elon Musk on buying Tesla, and more  —  Internal disagreements over the direction of the Apple car led the effort to sputter for years before it was canceled this week.
Reuters:
Coinbase says all services on its website have been restored after a “display issue” on February 28 caused some users to see a zero balance in their account  —  Coinbase Global (COIN.O) said on Wednesday that all services on its website have been restored after an issue earlier …
Lucy Fisher / Financial Times:
The UK is piloting the use of ChatGPT and open-source AI models to analyze responses to public consultations and write draft answers to parliamentary questions  —  Initiative is part of Rishi Sunak's drive to boost Whitehall productivity through technology  —  UK ministers are piloting …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:50 PM ET, February 29, 2024.

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

David Folkenflik / NPR:
NPR and three Colorado public radio stations sue Trump, saying his executive order to cut federal funding violated the US Constitution and the First Amendment

Bloomberg:
Filing: Tencent is buying a ~10% stake in SM Entertainment for ~$180M from BTS agency Hybe, as China is expected to lift its unofficial ban on K-pop concerts

Ben Mullin / @benmullin:
Leaked memos: WaPo announces voluntary buyouts for employees with 10+ years of service and for members of the video department, copy desk, and opinion section

More News

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Eight EU consumer rights groups lodge GDPR complaints with national data protection authorities, accusing Meta of coercing users with its “pay-or-consent” model

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel proposes subjecting carmakers to the Safe Connections Act to protect domestic abuse survivors from misuse of internet car systems
Hannah Miao / Wall Street Journal:
Webull plans to go public via a SPAC merger with SK Growth Opportunities around September 2024 and expects to raise ~$100M, valuing the online brokerage at $7B+
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Gemini agrees to return the $1B+ owed to customers and pay a $37M fine in a settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services related to Gemini Earn
Alex Koller / CNBC:
EA plans to cut 5% of its workforce, part of a plan that includes reducing office space and sunsetting some games; EA employed 13,400 workers as of March 2023
Yiwen Lu / New York Times:
Raw Story, AlterNet, and, in a separate case, The Intercept sue OpenAI in a NY federal court for copyright infringement; The Intercept is also suing Microsoft
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