Techmeme
February 26, 2023, 7:05 PM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reports: 50+ Twitter staff were laid off over the weekend, including Twitter's product lead Esther Crawford, and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper  —  Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company's Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter's forthcoming payments platform.
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Some AI companies are hiring “prompt engineers”, who create and refine text prompts for chatbots to understand the AI systems' flaws and coax optimal results  —  When Riley Goodside starts talking with the artificial-intelligence system GPT-3, he likes to first establish his dominance.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Inside Apple Exploratory Design Group, which works on a glucose monitor, other advanced tech, and was behind some of the chip and battery tech in iPhones, Macs  —  Apple has a secret team working to bring noninvasive glucose monitoring to its smartwatch, but that's not all it's pursuing.
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
Sources: Dish Network has been hit by a cyberattack “by an outside bad actor” and the company is working with an external vendor to resolve the issue  —  American TV giant and satellite broadcast provider, Dish Network has mysteriously gone offline with its websites and apps ceasing to function over the past 24 hours.
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Molly White:
The recovery of ~120K stolen ether by Jump and Oasis demonstrates the centralization of DeFi enabled by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts  —  Wormhole, Jump Crypto, and Oasis demonstrate the centralization threat introduced by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts.
Jon Rice / Blockworks:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Q&A with sci-fi author Neal Stephenson about inventing the metaverse concept, his blockchain startup Lamina1, not using ChatGPT to help write novels, and more  —  Neal Stephenson's science-fiction writing has predicted (and inspired) innovations from cryptocurrency to Alexa.
Kate Lindsay / The Verge:
As AI tools and CGI creations get better at pretending to be human, some creators online are sometimes being asked to prove that they're human  —  Last April, 27-year-old Nicole posted a TikTok video about feeling burned out in her career.  When she checked the comments the next day, however, a different conversation was going down.
Ranjan Roy / Margins:
How the potential of voice as a platform was wasted: closed ecosystems, overly ambitious claims, distorted monopolistic incentives, and too much capital  —  Sometimes innovation just ain't enough … I have four Echo devices in my household.  For years, we used them to control the lights in our apartment …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
HMD Global announces the £150 Nokia G22 and claims users will be able to replace its battery in around five minutes and screen in ~20 minutes with an iFixit kit  —  HMD has worked to make what it says are the most common smartphone repairs — replacing a broken screen, charging port …
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
The skirmishes over generative AI show how tech companies have become political lightning rods, as even efforts to steer AI away from politics can appear biased  —  ChatGPT and Bing are trying to stay out of politics — and failing  —  Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who led campaigns …
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times:
Sources: Sequoia resigned from Citizen's board after the startup offered a “pay to play” deal obliging existing investors to participate in a new funding round  —  Investor abandons start-up over fundraising that has massively diluted its shareholding, as Silicon Valley VCs re-evaluate deals

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More News

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

Earlier Picks

Scott Chipolina / Financial Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Politico: