Techmeme
May 15, 2023, 10:50 AM

Top News

Adam Satariano / New York Times:
EU regulators approve Microsoft's $69B Activision Blizzard deal after the company made concessions over giving rivals access to Call of Duty and other games  —  The green light follows objections to the blockbuster deal by American and British regulators on the grounds that it would undercut competition.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
Google's AI-heavy I/O suggests AI is a sustaining innovation for Big Tech; the true fight will be between major players' centralized models and open source  —  Some things in tech are shocking, but not surprising — think of a CEO of a struggling company losing their job.
Khari Johnson / Wired:
At I/O 2023, Google Assistant was an afterthought, superseded by Bard, a notable omission after Assistant took center stage at multiple previous I/O keynotes  —  Google's generative AI chatbot Bard took center stage at the company's I/O conference.  The company's answer to Siri was left backstage.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Developer logs: Apple tests an M3 with 12 CPU cores, 18 GPU cores, and 36GB of RAM; Meta pulls Messenger from Apple Watch and launches WhatsApp on WearOS  —  As Apple prepares to launch its next M2 Macs, the company is already ramping up testing of M3 chips.
Stefania Palma / Financial Times:
Malcolm Harris / Wired:
A profile of Douglas Rushkoff, an internet theorist since the 1990s and a former techno-optimist who all but renounced being a digital revolution spokesperson  —  The former techno-optimist has taken a decisive political left turn.  He says it's the only human option.
Jared Newman / Fast Company:
Pluto TV co-founder Ilya Pozin's Telly opens a waitlist to give away 500,000 55-inch 4K HDR TVs in 2023 with a second screen that constantly shows ads  —  Would you take a free TV if it constantly ran banner ads beneath everything you watched?  —  That's the proposition for Telly …
Associated Press:
The TSA is testing facial recognition tech at 16 US airports, calling the pilot voluntary and accurate, as critics raise bias, privacy, and consent concerns  —  A passenger walks up to an airport security checkpoint, slips an ID card into a slot and looks into a camera atop a small screen.
Bloomberg:
How Sea, one of Southeast Asia's largest internet companies that burned billions per year for market share, made huge cuts to turn its first profit in 14 years  —  Just over a year ago, Forrest Li was laid up in bed with Covid, fretting about the future of his company, Sea Ltd. So he propped himself …
Randall Chase / Associated Press:
A Delaware judge rules in favor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in a shareholder lawsuit alleging the company overpaid for Netsuite's $9.3B acquisition in 2016  —  A Delaware judge has ruled in favor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that he coerced …
Kate King / Wall Street Journal:
Nearly half of online footwear, apparel, and accessories brands tracked by Coresight have expanded to physical stores due to rising digital advertising costs  —  Warby Parker planned to sell glasses online and shake up retailing.  Now it's discovered the value of real stores—900 of them, in fact.
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