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March 5, 2024, 10:10 PM
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Top News

Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple says alternative app stores will stop working, and the apps installed from them will stop updating, if a user travels outside of the EU “for too long”  —  Regain clarity with CleanMyPhone by MacPaw — the new AI-powered cleaning app that quickly identifies and removes blurred images …
Niléane / MacStories:
Apple releases iOS 17.4 with new default browser prompts in the EU, support for third-party browser engines, transcripts for Podcasts, 118 new emojis, and more  —  Today, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 17.4, the fourth major updates to the operating systems that launched in September and Federico reviewed on MacStories.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
In response to the EU's ruling, Spotify submits an app update for the EU to provide pricing info within its iOS app and link users to its subscription options  —  Spotify isn't going to launch the in-app purchases it previously planned for the European Union, at least right now.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
iOS 17.4 adds new EU App Store business terms, including some last-minute tweaks like no longer needing a €1M stand-by letter of credit to start a store
Reuters:
A BlackCat ransomware gang website shows a takedown notice; the UK NCA denies involvement and experts suggest an exit scam after an alleged UnitedHealth payment  —  A website used by hackers responsible for a breach at UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) has been replaced by a notice saying it has been seized by international law enforcement.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft will end support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 on March 5, 2025, and consequently, for the Amazon Appstore on Windows as well  —  Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 next year.  The software giant first announced it was bringing Android apps …
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Sources: Microsoft plans a March 21 announcement of a Surface Laptop 6 and OLED Surface Pro 10, both offered with Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite chips  —  Microsoft's first AI PCs will be unveiled on March 21, ahead of next-gen Windows 11 AI features coming this fall.  —  What you need to know
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google rolls out updates to its Search ranking, including downranking content that summarizes others' work, to counter the spread of AI content in results  —  Google is rolling out a few new changes to its ranking systems in search, which are designed to help surface good content in your results …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Meta confirms a technical issue caused an outage affecting Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Meta Quest logins, and more, for over two hours  —  Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all experiencing issues.  The three Meta-owned platforms aren't working for many users, with the widespread outage seeming to start around 10AM ET.
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Amid regulatory pressure around cloud vendor lock-in, AWS follows Google and drops egress fees for moving data out of its ecosystem; Microsoft's fees remain  —  Amazon's cloud computing subsidiary AWS has revealed that it will allow customers to transfer their data out of its ecosystem with no so-called “egress fees” attached.
Bloomberg:
OpenAI hits back at Elon Musk's lawsuit, accusing Musk of suing the company when it “started making meaningful progress towards OpenAI's mission without him”  —  Musk filed the lawsuit last week against OpenAI, Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
The US Treasury sanctions spyware group Intellexa Consortium's founder and one of his business partners, the first US sanctions on people over spyware misuse  —  The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Google outlines updates to comply with the EU's DMA: search changes to prioritize large intermediaries and aggregators, new tools for app developers, and more  —  Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google on Tuesday outlined changes to search results and new tools for apps developers to promote their products …
Financial Times:
As Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft comply with the EU's DMA before March 7, experts are skeptical its rules will have the desired effect
Counterpoint Research:
Chinese smartphone sales declined 7% YoY in the first six weeks of 2024; Huawei rose 64% YoY while Apple fell 24% YoY, Oppo fell 29% YoY, and Vivo fell 15% YoY  —  - Growth: China's smartphone unit sales declined by 7% YoY during the first six weeks of 2024.
Shira Ovide / Washington Post:
Rufus, Amazon's AI shopping assistant currently in testing, is mostly useless, and at best is a slight upgrade on searching manually for product recommendations  —  If AI is so magical, why are so many chatbots dumb as rocks?  —  Amazon is experimenting with an artificial intelligence chatbot to help you figure out what to buy.
More: TechCrunch and Axios
Kara Carlson / Austin American-Statesman:
Waymo begins testing its driverless ride-hailing service without a safety operator in Austin starting March 6, initially offering the service to Waymo employees  —  Autonomous vehicle company Waymo will begin testing driverless cars, with no human behind the wheel, in Austin, starting Wednesday.
Bobby Borisov / Linuxiac:
StatCounter: Linux hit 4.03% desktop OS market share in February 2024, after taking 30 years to hit 3% in June 2023, as distros adopt more user-friendly designs  —  According to StatCounter's data, by the end of February 2024, Linux has achieved a 4.03% desktop market share.

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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:10 PM ET, March 5, 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

Sara Fischer / Axios:
PBS and a public TV affiliate in Minnesota sue the Trump administration, saying his executive order to cut federal funding violated PBS' First Amendment rights

Max Tani / Semafor:
The California State Senate opens an inquiry into whether Paramount's reported $15M proposed settlement with Trump violated bribery and unfair competition laws

Chris Willman / Variety:
Taylor Swift acquires the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capital; sources say the deal was in the mid-$300M range

More News

Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
CrowdStrike reports Q4 revenue up 33% YoY to $845M, vs. $839M est., and agrees to buy cloud security company Flow Security for an undisclosed price; CRWD up 20%
CoinDesk:
Bitcoin hit $69K+ on Coinbase, eclipsing its previous all-time high set on November 10, 2021, with US spot bitcoin ETFs a likely catalyst of the latest bull run

Earlier Picks

Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Nothing debuts the 6.7" Phone (2a), its first budget phone, with a 5,000mAh battery and a MediaTek chip, starting at £319 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Anthropic announces Claude 3 Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku, aiming to reduce AI model hallucinations; Opus and Sonnet are available now, and Haiku in the coming weeks
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces a new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3, offering an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, starting at $1,099 or $1,299 and shipping on March 8
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