Techmeme
February 27, 2023, 4:05 AM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Reports: Twitter laid off “well above 50” staff over the weekend, including Director of Product Management 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.
Wall Street Journal:
Some experts, particularly those advocating for “ethical AI” or “responsible AI”, say Microsoft and OpenAI's new Bing experiment is dangerous to the public  —  Even the people behind new artificial intelligence systems say their buzzy products are ‘somewhat broken.’ They're relying on us to fix them.
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Inside Apple's Exploratory Design Group, which is working on advanced tech like a glucose monitor and built some of the iPhone's and Mac's chip and battery tech  —  Apple has a secret team working to bring noninvasive glucose monitoring to its smartwatch, but that's not all it's pursuing.
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
Sources: the cyberattack on Dish Network was “by an outside bad actor, a known threat agent” and the company is working with an external vendor to fix the issue  —  American TV giant and satellite broadcast provider, Dish Network has mysteriously gone offline with its websites …
Molly White:
Jump and Oasis recovering ~120K stolen ether demonstrates how multisig-controlled upgradeable smart contracts undermine trustlessness and censorship-resistance  —  Wormhole, Jump Crypto, and Oasis demonstrate the centralization threat introduced by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts.
Jon Rice / Blockworks:
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 proclamations, 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 …
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.
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

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:
Zoho for your industry: Where business software meets industry knowledge  —  Generic business software has come a long way.  Today, a good CRM, a solid finance tool, or a reliable helpdesk can transform how a business operates …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Channels with Peter Kafka:
Meta's New $1300 Glasses and the Fight to Control AI
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.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan: Why We're Betting On AI And Not Afraid Of It
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.
Sources:
Marc Benioff on the AI boom, SaaSpocalypse, and future of Slack
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Gabe Stengel - Building Investing Superintelligence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
Inside the AI Startup Making Customer Support 65% Cheaper
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:05 AM ET, February 27, 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

Jon Porter / The Verge:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Politico: