Techmeme
February 15, 2023, 7:15 AM

Top News

Platformer:
Sources: Twitter engineers built a system to boost Elon Musk's tweets over everyone else's after Musk complained Joe Biden's Super Bowl tweet outperformed his  —  After his Super Bowl tweet did worse numbers than President Biden's, Twitter's CEO ordered major changes to the algorithm
Bloomberg:
Speaking at a conference, Elon Musk says he is “guessing toward the end” of 2023 will be time for a new Twitter CEO as the company will be in “stable condition”  —  Elon Musk said he may need the rest of this year to put things right at Twitter Inc. before handing off …
Andrew Griffin / The Independent:
Some users say the “new Bing” is questioning its existence, outright lying, and responding with “unhinged”, aggressive, and nearly incomprehensible answers  —  System appears to be suffering a breakdown as it ponders why it has to exist at all  —  Microsoft is adding Chat GPT tech to Bing
Stephen Wolfram Writings:
An in-depth look at how OpenAI's ChatGPT decodes input queries to produce a “reasonable continuation” of the text, the underlying dataset, neural nets, and more  —  It's Just Adding One Word at a Time  —  That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially …
The Guardian:
An investigation exposes “Team Jorge”, an Israeli hacking and social media disinformation unit for hire claiming covert involvement in 33 presidential elections  —  - Group sells hacking services and access to vast army of fake social media profiles  — Evidence unit behind disinformation campaigns across world
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to evaluate Pay Later borrowers based on spending history, the Apple devices they own, whether they applied for an Apple Card, and more  —  With Apple Inc. pushing into the lending business with a “buy now, pay later” service, the company is laying out rules for how it will approve transactions.
Bloomberg:
Filing: Berkshire Hathaway cut its holdings of TSMC's American depositary shares by 86% last quarter to 8.29M, valued at $617.7M; TSMC's stock drops 3.5%+  —  Warren Buffett slashed his holding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. just months after disclosing a major stake …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Hyundai and Kia are offering free anti-theft software updates for 8M+ vehicles, after hundreds of car thefts inspired by the viral “Kia Challenge” on TikTok  —  Hyundai and Kia are offering free software updates for millions of their cars in response to a rash of car thefts inspired …
Benjamin Robertson / The Block:
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius proposes a sale to investment firm NovaWulf, founded in 2021 by Wall Street dealmakers; smaller creditors may regain 70% of funds  —  - Proposed sale would see smaller creditors get around 70% of their money back  — Larger creditors would become shareholders …
Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google launches Privacy Sandbox for Android in beta, starting with a “small percentage” of Android 13 devices, similar to Apple's App Tracking Transparency  —  Here's a preview of the Privacy Sandbox, the newfangled way companies will follow you around the web that's supposed to be better for your privacy.
Jane Lanhee Lee / Reuters:
SandboxAQ, a startup spun out of Alphabet that is developing post-quantum cryptography and simulation software for drug and material development, raised $500M  —  Sandbox AQ, a startup spun off from Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) last year, said on Tuesday it raised $500 million as it helps customers prepare for a quantum computing future.
Catherine Wang / Forbes:
How BandLab, a music production app and social network for creators, woos users through its SongStarter AI tool, which generates royalty-free instrumental ideas  —  A scion of Malaysia's richest family, Kuok Meng Ru transformed his love of classic rock and blues into a music empire.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker on the company's history, battling Microsoft, working with rivals, generative AI, WebKit, iOS, Chrome, Mastodon, and more  —  Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker on competing — and cooperating — with Google, Apple, and the rest of Big Tech.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apptopia: consumer interest in Lensa AI and other top AI-powered photo apps fell quickly after hitting peak downloads and in-app purchases in mid-December 2022  —  Is the AI photo app trend already over?  Over the past several months, AI-powered photo apps have been going viral on the App Store …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub's enterprise AI code completion tool Copilot for Business hits general availability after the beta launch in December 2022, available for $19 per month  —  GitHub today announced that Copilot for Business, the company's $19/month enterprise version of its AI-powered code completion tool …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Xiaomi's earlier mover advantages are eroding in India, where it is facing declining shipments, a tax investigation, and key top-level management departures  —  The Chinese giant is challenged in the world's second-largest smartphone market, with key local departures and declining shipments
South China Morning Post:
At a recent event, senior execs at Tencent, NetEase, and other Chinese gaming companies said they plan to better promote China's culture, as regulations ease  —  China's major video gaming companies are looking to better promote the nation's culture and uphold social values …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft releases 77 security fixes, patching three actively exploited zero-day flaws in Windows and Office, and nine critical RCE vulnerabilities  —  Today is Microsoft's February 2023 Patch Tuesday, and security updates fix three actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities and a total of 77 flaws.

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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's User Growth Miss, Musk vs. Altman, Prediction Market Ban
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Training Data:
OpenAI's Greg Brockman: Why Human Attention Is the New Bottleneck
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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The Upstarts Podcast:
Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Hard Fork:
OpenAI's Big Reset + A.I. in the Doctor's Office + Talkie, a pre-1930s LLM
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Food and Beverage Director', With MG Siegler
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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More News

Levi Sumagaysay / MarketWatch:
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Earlier Picks

Shubham Agarwal / Wired:
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Chloe Xiang / VICE:
Bloomberg: