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% |
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 |