Techmeme
October 1, 2023, 4:05 AM
 

October 1, 2023

2:00 AM  •
New York Times:  Fact-checking sites have been declining worldwide as social media platforms cut back on disinformation efforts, and bogus AI-generated content thrives online
1:05 AM  •
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:  Q&A with Microsoft's consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi on AI trends, competition, taking over some of Panos Panay's responsibilities, and more
12:40 AM  •
Katie Paul / Reuters:  Nick Clegg says Meta used public Facebook and Instagram posts to train its new AI assistant and took steps to filter private details from training datasets
12:00 AM  •
Jeff Baumgartner / Light Reading:  Filing: LG suspends the inclusion of ATSC 3.0, an IP-based broadcast system, in its 2024 lineup of US TVs due to a “challenging and uncertain patent landscape”

September 30, 2023

6:15 PM  •
Casey Newton / Platformer:  Between ChatGPT's surprisingly human voice and Meta's AI characters, we may be witnessing the rise of social networks populated by synthetic companions
2:55 PM  •
Reuters:  Filing: Robinhood says it expects a $100M charge in Q3 to resolve some legal and regulatory matters that were previously disclosed
1:40 PM  •
Sean Fine / Globe and Mail:  A Canadian appeals court rules that Google's search engine is covered by federal privacy law, which could give Canadians the “right to be forgotten” on Google
12:33 PM  •
Patrick Holland / CNET:  Apple says iPhone 15 models could be running “warmer than expected” due to a few factors, like an iOS 17 bug and updates to Instagram and other third-party apps
11:55 AM  •
Associated Press:  NSA's outgoing director Paul Nakasone announces an AI security center, after an NSA study identified protecting American AI models as a national security issue
10:25 AM  •
Katrina Manson / Bloomberg:  US DoD Chief Digital and AI Officer Craig Martell says the agency wants to use AI safely and urges companies to be more transparent about their AI software
8:40 AM  •
John Thornhill / Financial Times:  An interview with Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström about his upbringing, his VC firm Atomico, the vitality of Europe's startup space, a Skype “mafia”, and more
5:35 AM  •
Dade Hayes / Deadline:  Q&A with YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe on NFL Sunday Ticket “exceeding expectations”, Multiview interest, the Charter-Disney dispute, and more
2:30 AM  •
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:  A history of Vine's failure to build relationships with its top creators, who Vine leadership resented for gaming the app's ranking algorithm and their humor
1:35 AM  •
New York Times:  Leaked internal messages from 2020 and 2021 detail Huawei's efforts to lobby Greek officials; filings: Huawei's 2022 sales in Greece rose 56% YoY to €258M
1:10 AM  •
Juro Osawa / The Information:  Data and sources: TikTok Shop was on pace to handle $6B+ worth of transactions in Indonesia in 2023, before its ban in the country, and $17B+ in Southeast Asia
12:15 AM  •
Olivia Solon / Bloomberg:  Research: ahead of Slovakia's parliamentary elections, AI-generated deepfake videos of politicians are spreading on Facebook, Telegram, and other platforms

September 29, 2023

10:45 PM  •
Joel Khalili / Wired:  A look at FTX 2.0 Coalition, a group of creditors led by FTX CEO John Ray III that has almost 3,000 members and is looking to relaunch the exchange without SBF
8:25 PM  •
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:  Researchers report critical vulnerabilities in the Exim mail transfer agent allowing remote code execution; Exim is used by as many as 253K servers
5:45 PM  •
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:  Meta quietly unveils Llama 2 Long, which has been trained with longer sequences, outperforming GPT-3.5 Turbo and Claude 2 when responding to long user prompts
4:25 PM  •
Forbes:  Letter: the US SEC told Bolt the startup likely won't face enforcement action after a 15-month probe into whether Bolt violated securities laws when fundraising
3:30 PM  •
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information:  Sources: Jasper, which offers an AI writing tool for marketers, cut its $140M ARR projections for 2023 by 30%+ and its internal valuation by 20% from $1.5B
2:20 PM  •
Bloomberg:  MakerDAO passed a proposal letting the DeFi lender invest up to $6B in short-term US Treasuries, double the current limit; the MKR token is up almost 3x in 2023
1:25 PM  •
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:  BeReal says its app has 25M+ DAUs, up from 20M in October 2022, disputing a Similarweb report estimating that BeReal's MAUs declined to 16.06M in August 2023
12:55 PM  •
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:  Letterboxd's founders sell a majority stake to Canadian company Tiny; a source says the deal values the film-focused social network with ~10M users at $50M+
12:00 PM  •
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:  X CEO Linda Yaccarino says that the company has paid out nearly $20M to creators; Elon Musk said in July 2023 that the first payments totaled $5M
11:45 AM  •
William Gallagher / AppleInsider:  Report: Apple uses two microscopic QR codes on iPhone displays to track defects, which has helped cut its suppliers' faulty screen report rates from 30% to 10%
11:05 AM  •
Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch:  Liquidators say Singapore arrested 3AC co-founder Su Zhu when he tried to leave the country and sentenced him to four months for not complying with court orders
10:05 AM  •
Washington Post:  The Supreme Court agrees to hear two cases concerning whether Florida and Texas can restrict social media companies from removing political posts or accounts
9:18 AM  •
Reuters:  Intel begins chip production using extreme ultraviolet lithography machines at its $18.5B Ireland plant, its first high-volume location for its 7nm process
6:15 AM  •
Reuters:  The UK CMA is examining whether Qualcomm's acquisition of Israeli auto-chip maker Autotalks would lessen competition in the UK market
6:10 AM  •
Elizabeth Pineau / Reuters:  French authorities say they approved Apple's iPhone 12 software update that addresses radiation level concerns; Apple submitted the update on September 26
5:50 AM  •
Nikkei Asia:  Sources: Japan allocates up to $1.29B in subsidies for US chipmaker Micron's plant in Hiroshima prefecture, set to mass produce DRAM memory chips by around 2026
5:26 AM  •
Wall Street Journal:  Sources: Apple executives met Chinese officials in recent months to discuss new rules forcing Apple to ban apps whose operators are not registered with China
1:55 AM  •
Jonathan Greig / The Record:  Progress Software, the company behind the widely exploited MOVEit file transfer tool, patches critical vulnerabilities in its WS_FTP Server data transfer tool
12:40 AM  •
Financial Times:  Sources: the UK is pushing Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic for unprecedented access to examine the internal workings of their LLMs, ahead of its global AI summit

September 28, 2023

11:10 PM  •
David Heaney / UploadVR:  Meta's Quest 3 is scheduled to get upper body tracking via its side cameras and AI estimated legs, called Generative Legs, in a software update in December 2023
9:55 PM  •
Financial Times:  Sources: Linda Yaccarino plans an October 5 meeting with the seven banks that helped fund Elon Musk's takeover of X to lay out her plans to revive the company
9:20 PM  •
Ryan McMorrow / Financial Times:  The Cyberspace Administration of China unveils rules to relax some cross-border data controls, in a bid to reassure businesses worried about US-China relations
7:30 PM  •
Lex Fridman / Lex Fridman Podcast:  In a Q&A using Meta's photorealistic Pixel Codec Avatars, Mark Zuckerberg discusses the metaverse, Quest 3, the nature of reality, AI, and humanity's future
6:10 PM  •
Bloomberg:  Sources: Microsoft executives met Eddy Cue regarding Apple acquiring Bing around 2020, which would have replaced Google Search as the default on Apple's devices
5:15 PM  •
DealStreetAsia:  Shanghai-based AI chipmaker Enflame raised a ~$273.7M Series D from state capital operator Shanghai International Group's funds, Tencent, Meitu, and others
4:00 PM  •
Emma Roth / The Verge:  Google lets publishers use a robots.txt flag to opt out of the company using their data to train its AI models, while remaining accessible through Google Search
3:05 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  France's competition authority raided a “graphics cards sector” company this week as part of a cloud-computing inquiry; sources say the target was Nvidia
2:45 PM  •
Umar Shakir / The Verge:  Google plans to stop supporting its $5K, 55" Jamboard meeting room display on September 30, 2024 and phase out its collaborative Jamboard app on October 1, 2024
2:15 PM  •
Daniel Wiessner / Reuters:  A New York state judge rejects a bid by Uber, DoorDash, and Grubhub to block NYC's law setting a minimum wage of $17.96/hour for app-based delivery workers
1:55 PM  •
Abner Li / 9to5Google:  Google rolls out ChromeOS 117 with a Material You redesign, adaptive charging, a new camera and microphone privacy indicator, an improved clipboard, and more
1:25 PM  •
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:  Google opens its Search Generative Experience to US teens ages 13-17, adds more context on how a response was generated, and improves offensive query detection
12:55 PM  •
Yogita Khatri / The Block:  NYC-based IYK, which lets brands, musicians, and creators build “digi-physical experiences”, including through NFTs, raised a $16.8M seed led by A16z Crypto
12:40 PM  •
Songtradr:  Music licensing marketplace Songtradr acquires Bandcamp and plans to keep operating Bandcamp as a marketplace and community with an artist-first revenue share
12:35 PM  •
Tony Stubblebine / The Medium Blog:  Medium plans to block AI companies from training on posts published on Medium until the company can get concessions regarding credit, compensation, and consent
12:16 PM  •
Ash Parrish / The Verge:  Epic Games lays off 16% of its workforce, or ~830 employees, divests from music storefront Bandcamp, and intends to spin off “kid-tech” company SuperAwesome
12:15 PM  •
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:  Email: Serve Robotics, used by Uber Eats in Los Angeles, shared video filmed by one of its food delivery robots to the LAPD as part of a criminal investigation
11:40 AM  •
Carly Page / TechCrunch:  Google patches a Chrome zero-day that was exploited by a commercial spyware vendor, just two days after Google's Threat Analysis Group informed the Chrome team
11:20 AM  •
Victoria Song / The Verge:  Google unveils the Fitbit Charge 6, with a haptic side button, integration with Google services like YouTube Music, and more, available on October 12 for $160
11:15 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  Amazon announces the general availability of Bedrock, unveiled in April 2023 to offer generative AI models from Amazon and third-party partners through an API
11:06 AM  •
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:  ‘Fortnite’ Maker Epic Games Is Cutting About 16% of Staff
11:00 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  NYC-based Transfr, which sells VR tools for training and career development, raised a $40M Series C led by ABS Capital, bringing its total funding to $90M
10:15 AM  •
Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg:  Apple asks SCOTUS to revisit the 2021 Epic Games ruling regarding alternative IAP payment options, a day after Epic separately asked SCOTUS to take up the case
9:55 AM  •
Bloomberg:  An analysis of 115 warrants in five US states shows that investigators are increasingly using Google's location and search data to try to solve nonviolent cases
9:20 AM  •
RT Watson / The Block:  Coinbase says the crypto exchange has gained approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority to offer non-US retail users perpetual futures trading
8:50 AM  •
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:  NYC-based market intelligence startup AlphaSense raised a $150M Series E at a $2.5B valuation led by Bond after raising $100M at a $1.8B valuation in April 2023
8:15 AM  •
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:  Apple launches an iOS Wallet feature in the UK using the country's Open Banking API, showing users their current account balances, deposits, and payment history
7:25 AM  •
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:  Reddit removes the ability to opt out of ad personalization based on Reddit activity but says that users will still have opt-out controls in “select countries”
7:15 AM  •
Camomile Shumba / CoinDesk:  Report: the Bank for International Settlements and French, Swiss, and Singaporean central banks successfully tested cross-border trading of wholesale CBDCs
6:55 AM  •
CNBC:  GameStop names Ryan Cohen as its CEO, effective immediately, and says Cohen won't be compensated for his work, after firing CEO Matthew Furlong in June 2023
6:30 AM  •
Bloomberg:  How TikTok Shop's growth in Indonesia, meant to be a template for a global expansion, ended in a ban amid backlash from rivals and an activist-turned-minister
5:40 AM  •
Wanqing Zhang / Rest of World:  A look at the rise of online feminism in China, driven by content on apps like Weibo, Douyin, WeChat, and Douban, despite increased scrutiny from the platforms
4:17 AM  •
Financial Times:  Sources: Sam Altman, Jony Ive, and Masayoshi Son are in advanced talks to build the “iPhone of artificial intelligence”, with a likely $1B+ SoftBank investment
2:50 AM  •
Emma Roth / The Verge:  Raspberry Pi 5 launches with a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A76 chip, up to 8GB of RAM, two 4K HDMI ports with HDR, available in October for $60 for a 4GB model
2:30 AM  •
Min Jeong Lee / Bloomberg:  Counterpoint: Pixel had a record 12% market share in Japan in Q2 2023, up from 2% YoY, while the iPhone's share fell from 58% to 46% during the same period
2:15 AM  •
Alex Pasternack / Fast Company:  At the center of Google's antitrust trial is a “remarkable” number of deleted employee chats, as chat backups reveal employees discussing going “off the record”
1:45 AM  •
Wired:  SoundThinking, which makes the sensor-based gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, acquires parts of Geolitica, which built the predictive policing tool PredPol
1:20 AM  •
Benjamin Parkin / Financial Times:  Court filings: Indian fantasy sports and online gaming startups like Dream11 and Gameskraft received notices for hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes
1:00 AM  •
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:  X CEO Linda Yaccarino claims 90% of the top 100 advertisers “returned to the platform in the past 12 weeks alone” and that X will be profitable by early 2024
12:45 AM  •
Ivan Levingston / Financial Times:  Vilnius-based Nord Security, which makes the VPN tool NordVPN, raised $100M led by Warburg Pincus at a $3B valuation, up from a $1.6B valuation in April 2022
12:30 AM  •
Reuters:  A US Senate staffer says officials told lawmakers that Chinese hackers who breached Microsoft's email system stole 60K emails from 10 State Department accounts
12:15 AM  •
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:  Canalys: Q2 smartphone sales in North America fell 22% YoY, with Apple down 20% and Samsung down 27%; Google's sales rose 59% YoY and market share doubled to 4%

September 27, 2023

11:55 PM  •
Kevin Roose / New York Times:  Hands-on with ChatGPT's image recognition and voice features: image recognition isn't perfect and refuses to discuss faces, voice is fluid and natural, and more
11:35 PM  •
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:  Meta's celebrity AIs are generated AI animations built from filming the 28 people they represent; Meta would not comment on how the celebrities were compensated
11:00 PM  •
Erin Woo / The Information:  Sources: X is cutting ~50% of its election integrity team, including its Dublin-based head, less than a month after saying the company would expand the team
9:50 PM  •
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:  Adobe makes its web-based Photoshop, including Firefly-powered features, generally available for paid plans, and has no “immediate plans” for a freemium plan
9:15 PM  •
Anthony Capaccio / Bloomberg:  SpaceX gets its first US Space Force contract, valued at up to $70M, offering the military custom satellite communications via the company's Starshield service
8:15 PM  •
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:  Paris-based Mistral AI makes its first LLM, Mistral 7B, that it claims outperforms open models with up to 13B parameters, free to use without restrictions
7:40 PM  •
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:  The US DoD awards Palantir a three-year $250M R&D contract to develop AI services, building on the company's work since at least 2018 for the Army Research Lab
6:10 PM  •
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:  Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan plans to retire in March 2024; Ryan joined Sony in 1994, just before the first PlayStation debuted
5:25 PM  •
Matt Tamanini / The Streamable:  Disney tells its Canadian Disney+ subscribers the company updated the service's subscriber agreement to limit usage to a single household, effective November 1
5:00 PM  •
Samrhitha Arunasalam / Reuters:  Micron reports Q4 revenue down 40% YoY to $4.01B, vs. $3.91B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue above est., driven by memory chip demand, and a net loss below est.
4:55 PM  •
Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg:  Epic Games asks SCOTUS to review a judge's 2021 ruling that Apple's App Store doesn't violate antitrust laws; SCOTUS may decide by 2024 whether to take the case
4:30 PM  •
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:  The US and Japan warn that the China-backed BlackTech hacking group is breaching network devices, including Cisco's, to install backdoors on corporate networks
4:25 PM  •
Samrhitha Arunasalam / Reuters:  OpenAI says ChatGPT can now browse the web, available first to Plus and Enterprise users, and the chatbot is “no longer limited to data before September 2021”
3:55 PM  •
Monica Chin / The Verge:  LG Gram 17 Pro review: a discrete GPU, lightweight at 3.2 lbs, a 144Hz screen, and ample ports, but a flimsy chassis and not the best Nvidia GPU for the price
3:20 PM  •
Christine Hall / TechCrunch:  B2B payments startup Slope, which in April debuted SlopeGPT as the first GPT-powered payments risk model, raised $30M led by Union Square; Sam Altman invested
3:15 PM  •
Sean Hollister / The Verge:  Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 for XR devices, with 2.5x the GPU and 8x the AI performance over Gen 1, and the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 for smart glasses
3:10 PM  •
Eddie Makuch / GameSpot:  Mark Zuckerberg says that Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to the Quest 3 in December, letting users play hundreds of titles on “a massive screen, anywhere you go”
3:10 PM  •
Bloomberg:  Kraken plans to offer US-listed stock and ETF trading, a source says in the US and the UK through a new division, Kraken Securities, targeted for a 2024 launch
3:05 PM  •
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:  US v. Google: Microsoft says the company has tried for years to displace Google as the iPhone's default search engine, but Apple never seriously considered Bing
3:00 PM  •
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:  The US DOJ sues eBay for allegedly breaking environmental laws by allowing sales of harmful products, like 343K+ devices that “defeat” vehicle emission controls
2:45 PM  •
Chris Stokel-Walker / Fast Company:  Bard conversations turn up in Google search results; Google says Bard lets users share chats, but they shouldn't be indexed, and the company is working on a fix
2:40 PM  •
Victoria Song / The Verge:  Hands-on with the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: a classic look, 12MP vs. 5MP makes a big difference, some audio leakage, and a promising tool for content creators
2:25 PM  •
David Pierce / The Verge:  Meta unveils the $299+ Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, featuring a 12MP camera, speakers, five mics, a Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, and more, shipping on October 17
2:20 PM  •
The Verge:  Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on Threads, the future of AI, Quest 3, his Elon Musk rivalry, decentralized social media, “open-source” AI tools, encryption, and more
2:10 PM  •
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:  Roblox launches on Meta's Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro, after an open beta started in July 2023; Mark Zuckerberg: Roblox took a long time to optimize for VR
2:05 PM  •
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:  Meta teases Meta Quest for business, set to launch in October with a focus on supporting enterprise AR apps like Microsoft 365, which is coming later in 2023
1:53 PM  •
Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:  Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to Meta Quest 3 in December
1:48 PM  •
Mia Sato / The Verge:  Meta announces AI-generated chat stickers for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, and unveils new AI-powered image editing tools for Instagram
1:42 PM  •
Alex Heath / The Verge:  Meta unveils a Meta AI assistant for WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, and 28 AI characters based on celebrities like MrBeast, Charli D'Amelio, and Snoop Dogg
1:33 PM  •
Adi Robertson / The Verge:  Hands-on with Meta Quest 3: an iterative update, but its mixed reality pass through video is less grainy than the Quest Pro and offers color, unlike the Quest 2
1:30 PM  •
Alex Cranz / The Verge:  A recap of the Meta Connect 2023 keynote
1:23 PM  •
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:  Meta debuts the $500 Quest 3, featuring a 30% higher resolution than the Quest 2, double the processing power, new lenses, a thinner design, and new controllers
1:15 PM  •
Reuters:  Sources: Meta VP of Infrastructure Alexis Black Bjorlin, who oversees the company's efforts to develop AI chips, plans to step down at the end of September 2023
12:35 PM  •
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:  NYC- and Tel Aviv-based Gem Security, which offers a cloud threat detection, investigation, and response service, raised a $23M Series A led by GGV Capital
11:50 AM  •
Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg:  Filing: the US FTC revives its challenge of Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard acquisition, a move that may unwind the deal even after its close by October 18
11:25 AM  •
Dan Primack / Axios:  Sources: dozens of VC firms, including Bain Capital, Lux, Mayfield, and IVP, are working with the US Commerce Department to develop “responsible AI” guidelines
11:15 AM  •
Emma Roth / The Verge:  Amazon CEO Andy Jassy confirms that former Microsoft CPO Panos Panay will be joining Amazon at the end of October to lead its devices and services division
10:45 AM  •
Ted Johnson / Deadline:  Warner Bros. Discovery launches CNN Max in an open beta in the US, offering a 24/7 live news streaming feed and 900 hours of CNN Originals to Max subscribers
10:05 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  Florida-based Lumu, which helps enterprises identify and isolate security compromises, raised a $30M Series B, of which $6M is debt, led by Forgepoint Capital
9:40 AM  •
Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:  Snap closes AR Enterprise Services, launched in March 2023 to let retailers adapt Snap's AR technology for their own websites, citing high costs and complexity
9:15 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  Cloudflare launches tools to help customers build, deploy, and run AI models, like Workers AI, which offers pay-as-you-go GPU access from the company's partners
8:50 AM  •
Daniel Golson / The Verge:  Hands-on with Mercedes-Benz's Drive Pilot, the first and only Level 3 system approved for sale in the US and the EU, available only on Mercedes-mapped freeways
6:55 AM  •
Byron Kaye / Reuters:  Reset says X's removal of a feature to report election misinformation may be in breach of the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation
6:02 AM  •
Bloomberg:  Binance exits Russia as operating there “is not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy”, and sells the business to CommEX, which launched a day earlier
5:45 AM  •
Josh Ye / Reuters:  China lists 26 app stores, including from Tencent, Huawei, Ant Group, Baidu, Xiaomi, and Samsung, that filed with regulators; Apple's App Store is not listed
4:25 AM  •
Stefania Palma / Financial Times:  FTC Chair Lina Khan, who rose to prominence with her 2017 academic paper calling for a break-up of Amazon, now has a chance to test her approach in the courts
2:50 AM  •
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:  Linda Yaccarino reflects on her first 100 days as X's CEO, says the intense public scrutiny is “hard on me”, as sources describe her relationship with Elon Musk
1:50 AM  •
Ming-Chi Kuo:  Ming-Chi Kuo: iPhone 15 temperature issues are likely due to thermal system design compromises to achieve a lighter weight, and are unrelated to TSMC's 3nm node
1:30 AM  •
Georgia Wells / Wall Street Journal:  US-based TikTok staff worry recent executive transfers from ByteDance to TikTok show ByteDance plays a greater role in TikTok's operations than TikTok disclosed
12:45 AM  •
Alex Cranz / The Verge:  The WGA contract calls for streaming data transparency and guarantees on AI use, including preventing AI-generated material to be used as a source material
12:35 AM  •
Gerry Shih / Washington Post:  Employees and allies of India's BJP detail how they crafted posts for a vast network of WhatsApp groups aimed at exploiting the fears of India's Hindu majority
12:20 AM  •
Financial Times:  Sources: China's chip fund is struggling to raise its $41B goal from local governments and state-owned enterprises, which are dealing with the economic slowdown
12:10 AM  •
Washington Post:  Sources and new documents detail how Meta executives repeatedly shied away from punishing the BJP or associated accounts in India for hate speech and propaganda

September 26, 2023

11:00 PM  •
Financial Times:  French billionaire Xavier Niel plans to invest €200M in AI projects, including an Nvidia cloud supercomputer, a research lab in Paris, and an annual conference
10:25 PM  •
Jessica E. Lessin / The Information:  Sources: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, and Masayoshi Son has been involved in some aspects of the conversation
8:40 PM  •
Meir Orbach / CTech:  Sources: Palo Alto Networks is in negotiations to acquire Tel Aviv-based startups Dig Security for $300M to $400M and Talon Cyber Security for $600M to $700M
8:05 PM  •
Wesley Yin-Poole / IGN:  Sony opens an investigation after ransomware group “Ransomed.vc” claimed to have breached the company's systems and threatened to sell or post the stolen data
6:10 PM  •
Bloomberg:  The federal judge overseeing US et al v. Google says documents used during the trial can be posted online at the end of each day, resolving a weeklong dispute
5:35 PM  •
Tom Warren / The Verge:  Microsoft starts rolling out a Windows 11 update that adds the new Windows Copilot and, over the coming months, AI updates to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Photos
5:25 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  Sources: the WGA and AMPTP's deal lets studios train AI models on writers' work while writers would be compensated for work on scripts even if AI tools are used
4:40 PM  •
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:  MoneyGram plans to launch a non-custodial wallet in Q1 2024, letting users move funds between fiat and USDC, limited to ~40 countries with a digital KYC process
4:30 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  Over a dozen senior executives left Binance over the past three months; Kaiko: Binance now handles ~50% of all direct crypto trades, vs. ~70% in January 2023
4:05 PM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  An OpenAI paper on GPT-4 with vision, or GPT-4V, reveals some of the model's biases, flaws, and potential malicious use cases, and the company's safeguards
3:30 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  Sources: OpenAI is pitching investors on a possible share sale that would value the AI startup at between $80B and $90B, almost triple its level earlier in 2023
3:10 PM  •
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:  Researchers discover a cross-origin attack exploiting how modern GPUs compress images to let a malicious website in Chrome or Edge read pixels from another site
3:00 PM  •
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:  FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announces plans to reinstate net neutrality, seeking to “largely return to the successful rules the Commission adopted in 2015”
2:35 PM  •
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:  Review of macOS 14 Sonoma: a better stab at usable widgets, an improved password manager, promising gaming enhancements, but fewer new features for Intel Macs
2:10 PM  •
David Pierce / The Verge:  Eddie Cue's US v. Google testimony: Cue said Google was the only “valid” search choice for a deal; the DOJ noted Apple railed against Google's privacy policies
1:20 PM  •
Khari Johnson / Wired:  Skydio debuts X10, an autonomous drone capable of mitigating high-speed police chases by flying at 45 mph and tracking people in the dark using infrared sensors
1:00 PM  •
New York Times:  Over half of the testimony in the Google antitrust trial so far has been given behind closed doors thanks to arguments from Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others
12:47 PM  •
CNBC:  The FTC and 17 US states sue Amazon for allegedly using monopoly power to raise its prices, force sellers to pay fulfillment and ad fees, and harm its rivals
12:25 PM  •
Bloomberg:  The CIA is planning to roll out a ChatGPT-style tool across the 18-agency US intelligence community to give analysts better access to open-source intelligence
12:07 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  FTC Sues Amazon, Alleging Illegal Online-Marketplace Monopoly
12:00 PM  •
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:  Google Messages has been installed 5B+ times, after crossing 1B installations in May 2020 and becoming the default messaging app on most new Android devices
11:20 AM  •
Aaron Holmes / The Information:  Sources: Microsoft is developing “distilled”, smaller AI models for features like Bing Chat that cost less to operate and mimic OpenAI's more advanced models
10:05 AM  •
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:  Google plans to shut down Google Podcasts “later in 2024”, moving its streaming listeners to YouTube Music, which will support US podcasts and RSS feeds by 2024
9:30 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  Series, which offers ERP-like tools, including for managing payroll and benefits, contract lifecycles, and treasuries, raised $25M across a Series A and a seed
8:55 AM  •
Sandali Handagama / CoinDesk:  Email: Chase bans crypto-linked payments for UK clients starting on October 16 as “fraudsters are increasingly using crypto assets to steal large sums of money”
8:30 AM  •
Lisa O'Carroll / The Guardian:  EU analysis: Twitter had the highest disinformation rate in H1 2023, followed by Facebook; TikTok closed ~6M fake accounts; YouTube closed 400+ channels
7:00 AM  •
Elizabeth Pineau / Reuters:  Sources: French authorities received and are reviewing an iPhone 12 software update from Apple that is meant to defuse a row over the device's radiation levels
6:35 AM  •
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:  San Diego-based edge AI chipmaker Kneron raised a $49M Series B extension, after raising a $48M Series B in October 2022, bringing its total funding to $190M
4:15 AM  •
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:  Spotify launches Jam, a feature that lets up to 32 people curate a playlist together; only Premium subscribers can create Jams, but all users can contribute

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