Techmeme
March 28, 2023, 12:35 PM

Top News

Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
Documents: Twitter closely monitors and boosts ~35 accounts, including AOC, President Biden, Ben Shapiro, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, @catturd2, and MrBeast  —  Congratulations to Ben Shapiro, AOC, and ... LeBron?  —  Last week, Twitter began notifying users who were verified under …
The Verge:
Elon Musk says only verified accounts will be recommended in Twitter's For You tab and be able to vote in polls to address “AI bot swarms”, starting April 15  —  Twitter users will need a “verified account” to get recommended on the platform's For You page starting on April 15th …
More: BBC, MacRumors, PCMag, KnowTechie, The Guardian, Gizmodo, The Hill, Thurrott, The Register, CNN, Social Media Today, MobileSyrup, T3, Fast Company, BGR, Reuters, Insider, Android Authority, iPhone in Canada Blog, Neowin, iMore, CNBC, Pocket-lint, The Apple Post, Coinspeaker, Android Central, Comic Book, Memeburn, Music Ally, and Silicon Republic
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Disney eliminates its metaverse unit, cutting ~50 jobs, and ceases work on an Amazon Prime-like program integrating Disney+ and other Disney platforms  —  The unit, once seen as developing a new form of storytelling, had about 50 employees  —  Mickey Mouse has left the metaverse.
Reuters:
Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers and prosecutors agree on new bail terms, including giving SBF a phone without internet and a monitored laptop with limited functions  —  Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried said they reached an agreement with U.S. prosecutors on Monday on revised bail conditions …
Reuters:
US prosecutors file a new indictment against SBF, accusing him of directing the transfer of $40M+ of cryptocurrency in bribes to Chinese government officials  —  U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, charging the founder of now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange …
Zhou Xin / South China Morning Post:
Alibaba plans to reorganize its businesses into six independent entities and devolve operational decisions to each unit's CEO, in its biggest restructuring ever  —  Alibaba Group Holding will overhaul its sprawling operations, as China's largest technology conglomerate undertakes …
Binance Blog:
Binance CEO CZ says CFTC's complaint contains “incomplete recitation of facts” and Binance does not agree with “characterization of many of the issues alleged”  —  Today, the CFTC filed an unexpected and disappointing civil complaint, despite our working cooperatively with the CFTC for over two years.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Apple begins a multi-month roll out of its Apple Pay Later service in the US, for online and in-app purchases on iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4  —  Apple is finally launching Apple Pay Later, the company's take on the buy now, pay later (BNPL) business.  The company has announced that users can use …
Katyanna Quach / The Register:
Europol details how LLMs can be exploited to fuel fraud, cybercrime, and terrorism, and claims people are already using ChatGPT to carry out illegal activities  —  There is no honor among chatbots  —  Criminals are already using ChatGPT to commit crimes, Europol said in a Monday report …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Substack invites its newsletter writers to invest, along with others, aiming to raise $2M; source: the raise is an extension of Substack's $65M Series B in 2021  —  Substack, the newsletter platform, will open up a community fundraising round on Tuesday, allowing writers on the platform to invest in the company.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon opens Sidewalk to developers, providing SDKs and hardware development kits, and claims over 90% of the US population can now access the public network  —  It turns out that I have a low-power, low-bandwidth, long-range IoT network all around me, ready and waiting for my smart gadgets to jump on.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches Security Copilot, a GPT-4-powered assistant to help security professionals with incident investigations, event summaries, reporting, and more  —  After announcing an AI-powered Copilot assistant for Office apps, Microsoft is now turning its attention to cybersecurity.
Kiyoshi Takenaka / Reuters:
Japan's FTC says it does not expect the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal to stifle competition and closes its review without issuing a cease and desist order  —  Japan's antitrust watchdog said on Tuesday it did not expect a merger between Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Activision Blizzard …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google and ADT debut ADT Self Setup, a SimpliSafe-like security system that ties in with nearly all Nest products and also offers its own sensors, keypad, more  —  Nearly three years after the two companies first announced a partnership, we're finally seeing Google and ADT debut the product that makes it worth it.
Tweets: @killedbygoogleThanks:@nexusben
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Source: Microsoft-owned GitHub lays off its entire engineering team in India, eliminating 100+ jobs, as part of a ~10% cut announced in February  —  GitHub, the popular developer platform, has laid off virtually its entire engineering team in India in an unusual move as the Microsoft-owned firm cuts …
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer plan to step down as CEO on April 17 and president on June 30; ex-Amazon executive David Risher is set to be CEO  —  - Lyft's cofounders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, will step back from their day-to-day roles as CEO and president, respectively.

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Zoho:
Security update: Retiring weak TLS cipher suites  —  At Zoho Corp, we are dedicated to maintaining the highest security and compliance standards.  As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance security …
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.

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Earlier Picks

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal: