Techmeme
February 17, 2023, 11:50 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
The SEC sues Terraform Labs and Do Kwon, accusing them of selling unregistered securities and perpetrating a fraudulent scheme that lost $40B+ in market value  —  The US Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing to sue the company behind TerraUSD, a crypto stablecoin whose collapse …
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
The SEC says Do Kwon and Terraform Labs have withdrawn $100M+ in fiat currency from a Swiss bank since June 2022, after moving 10K+ Bitcoin out of a cold wallet  —  Crypto fugitive Do Kwon and the firm he founded transferred over 10,000 Bitcoin out of their doomed project and turned …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta gave ~10% of staff subpar ratings in recent performance reviews, a sign of more workforce reductions, and cut a bonus metric to 85% of its target  —  The performance-review process is expected to set the stage for more workforce reductions this year  —  Why Tech Layoffs Don't Reflect the Job Market
Sheila Dang / Reuters:
Source: Microsoft is demoing Bing chatbot to ad agencies, saying it plans paid links within the chatbox responses and industry-specific ads  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) has started discussing with ad agencies how it plans to make money from its revamped Bing search engine powered …
New York Times:
OpenAI:
OpenAI plans to improve ChatGPT's behavior to reduce biases, allow more user customization, and get more public input into decision-making about system defaults  —  We're clarifying how ChatGPT's behavior is shaped and our plans for improving that behavior, allowing more user customization …
Reuters:
Clothilde Goujard / Politico:
Under the Digital Services Act, online platforms disclose their MAUs in the EU: YouTube has 401M, Facebook 255M, Instagram 250M, TikTok 125M, Twitter 101M  —  TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have now confirmed they will face the strictest rules under the EU's content-moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Fitbit plans to remove adventures, challenges, and open groups from its app and replace Studio with an SDK; Google says the features were of “limited use”  —  Fitbit users: better one-up your friends in challenges while you still can.  Starting March 27th, Fitbit will remove all adventures …
Josh Ye / Reuters:
Sources: Tencent cuts its 300-strong metaverse unit and drops VR hardware plans due to trouble achieving quick profitability and the need for a big investment  —  Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) is abandoning plans to venture into virtual reality hardware, as a sobering economic outlook prompts …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Apple's iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 betas add support for Safari web apps on the homescreen to send push notifications and show notification badges  —  Apple's new iOS and iPadOS 16.4 betas will let Safari web apps on your homescreen send you push notifications, according to a new post on the WebKit blog.
Bloomberg:
Filing: the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund's Savvy Games Group now owns 8.3% of Nintendo, the largest outside shareholder, up from ~6% in early 2023  —  Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund became the largest outside shareholder of Nintendo Co. on Friday, in the latest move by the Gulf state to lower its reliance on oil.
Mia Sato / The Verge:

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Stop re-entering Shopify order details in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes AI Inc).Here's a scene that plays out in many growing Shopify stores every day: a customer places an order …
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
GPT-6 & OpenAI's Comeback, Hugging Face Attack Debate, Ballmer's Scandalous Legacy
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
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.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Brian Singerman from GPx
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:50 AM ET, February 17, 2023.

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.

More News

Chainalysis:
Janko Roettgers / Lowpass:

Earlier Picks

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: