Techmeme: Google is aware of a “very small number” of Pixel Watch users reporting that the back glass panel falls off and is working to find the cause and fix the issue (Ron Amadeo/Ars Technica)

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June 4, 2023, 6:55 PM

Top News

Forbes:

Interviews, pitch decks, and internal documents suggest that Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque's recent success was bolstered by exaggeration and dubious claims — Stability AI became a $1 billion company with the help of a viral AI text-to-image generator and — per interviews with more than 30 people …

LinkedIn: Jon Lam. Bluesky: @carnage4life.bsky.social and @andy.baio.net

Tweets: @rafat, @kenrickcai, @kenrickcai, @sarahnemerson, @yoda, @kenrickcai, @kenrickcai, @tomgara, @neilturkewitz, @sarthakgh, @kenrickcai, and @ravenben. Thanks:@thealexknapp

Financial Times:

Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida says cloud gaming has many technical difficulties, like latency, and the company could use its AI, GT Sophy, to enhance cloud gaming — Promise of technology remains unfulfilled after more than a decade of development — Sony's chief executive has warned …

More: Wccftech, Neowin, GamingBolt, TheGamer, Video Games Chronicle, TweakTown, Bloomberg, and The Verge

Tweets: @fttechnews, @gameoverthirty, @bankenrepublik, @fosspatents, and @xcloudtimdog

Yvonne Lau / Fortune:

As TSMC plans to hire 4,500 workers at its two Arizona fabs, recruiters say the company's culture, rigid standards, and overseas training turn off candidates — On the Glassdoor profile of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC—the world's biggest manufacturer of semiconductor chips …

More: ChinaTechNews.com. Bluesky: @carnage4life.bsky.social. Tweets: @pstasiatech and @davenewworld_2

Cristiano Lima / Washington Post:

Instagram reinstates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account after he launched his presidential bid; he was banned in 2021 over false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines — The prominent anti-vaccine campaigner was suspended in 2021 for spreading misleading health claims.

More: Breitbart, RADAR, The Daily Caller, and Deadline

Bluesky: @jetjocko.bsky.social and @shellen.bsky.social. Tweets: @viacristiano. Thanks:@viacristiano

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:

A look at The Frost, a 12-minute movie created by Waymark using DALL-E 2, as startups like Waymark and Runway make AI tools for fast and cheap video production — Exclusive: Watch the world premiere of the AI-generated short film The Frost. — The Frost nails its uncanny, disconcerting vibe in its first few shots.

LinkedIn: Theo Priestley and Niall Firth

Tweets: @siggraph, @d_id_, @labenz, @rainisto, @gdalmiathinks, @stephen_parker, @tariqkrim, @fabianmosele, @bildoperationen, and @juliewdesign_

Chris Welch / The Verge:

A look at the ad-supported, free dual-screen TV from Ilya Pozin's Telly, which says its data and analytics tools will be no more invasive than other TV vendors — More than 250,000 people have signed up in hopes of getting Telly's unique TV. There's something to this concept, but plenty of unknowns remain.

More: Pocket-lint. Mastodon: @dcseifert@mastodon.social. Tweets: @paleofuture and @deansepoch

Jessica Lyons Hardcastle / The Register:

Five teams at DEF CON 2023 plan to try to hack Moonlighter, a US-funded 3U cubesat, the first time DEF CON hackers will get to hack a live, in-orbit satellite — 'World's first and only' orbiting infosec playpen due to blast off Sunday — FEATURE Assuming the weather and engineering gods cooperate …

More: The Aerospace Corporation, ISS U.S. National Laboratory, SiliconANGLE, and Space

Tweets: @hack_a_sat, @jessicahrdcstle, @theregister, @iainthomson, and @geeknik

Chris Isidore / CNN:

The CFPB warns users of payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and Apple Cash that their money could be at risk as FDIC insurance does not cover the apps — New York CNN — — Payment apps like PayPal and Venmo might be convenient, but they're not banks — and a federal financial services watchdog …

More: Consumer Financial …, Associated Press, CBS News, PhoneArena, Washington Post, PCMag, Gizmodo, Insider, and CryptoPotato

Bluesky: @willstewart.bsky.social. Tweets: @johnwilson, @marshacollier, @keds_economist, @adam_k_levin, @smtuffy, and @cfpb

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Google is aware of a “very small number” of Pixel Watch users reporting that the back glass panel falls off and is working to find the cause and fix the issue — Several users report the back of the Pixel Watch just falls off after a short time. — UPDATE: GOOGLE STATEMENT

More: Android Police, MobileSyrup, PhoneArena, Wccftech, SlashGear, XDA Developers, 9to5Google, Android Authority, Android Central, Gizchina, The Verge, iFixit News, and BGR

Tweets: @supersanusi and @androidpolice

Annie Njanja / TechCrunch:

A Kenyan court rules that Meta is the primary employer of 184 content moderators suing Meta and contractor Sama for unlawful dismissal, and pauses their layoffs — A Kenyan court has ruled that Meta is the primary employer of content moderators suing the social media giant and its content review partner …

More: Jacobin, Cryptopolitan, Techlusive, BNN Breaking, Nation, and Agence France-Presse

Tweets: @emrys_s, @william_fitz, @waikwawanyoike, @g_mutemi, and @defiwizd

Lisa Bonos / Washington Post:

Some Montana residents speak up against, or for, the state's highly politicized TikTok ban, including one of the influencers suing the state to overturn the ban — How a highly politicized social media ban in Big Sky Country sparked a nationwide debate over freedom of speech

More: The Hill, ChinaTechNews.com, and Federal Computer Week. Tweets: @lisabonos

Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch:

Seattle-based Hubble Network, which aims to build a global satellite network that any Bluetooth device can connect to, raised a $20M Series A led by Transpose — Bluetooth-enabled devices are ubiquitous, but how those devices are used is constrained by the relatively short range provided by Bluetooth technology.

More: Via Satellite and FinSMEs

LinkedIn: Chris Hulls, Jyri Engeström, and Aria Alamalhodaei

Tweets: @dondodge and @ycombinator

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From Mediagazer

Alex Ritman / Variety:

In Channel 4's 2025 Alternative Christmas Message, Jimmy Kimmel said “tyranny is booming” in the US and, on his ABC suspension, “We won, the president lost”

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”, after CBS aired a Late Show rerun in which Colbert mocked Trump

Henry Blodget / Regenerator:

Bari Weiss' 60 Minutes decision may have been a way to both signal that she's serious about shifting CBS' sensibility to the right and “improve” a story

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More News

Wired:

Q&A with media scholar Ethan Zuckerman about why Twitter became the de facto digital public square, the politics of attention, the power of federation, and more

Tweets: @glichfield, @wired, and @ethanz

Michelle Caffrey / EdWeek Market Brief:

Swing Education, which connects schools with substitute teachers, raised a $38M Series C led by Apax Partners and Reach, bringing its total funding to $60.8M

More: Swing Education, TechBullion, Pulse 2.0, and FinSMEs

Financial Times:

A look at Berlin-based Rocket Internet, as founder Oliver Samwer transforms one of Europe's most aggressive tech VCs into a more conservative investment house

LinkedIn: Manolo Fernandez. Tweets: @muradahmed

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Google Wallet for Android rolls out support for US state IDs, starting with Maryland, and plans to add Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia IDs “in the coming months”

More: Reclaim The Net, NextPit, TechRadar, and ZDNet

LinkedIn: Daniel Kornitzer and Tawanda Michael Mahere. Tweets: @sytaylor

Paresh Dave / Wired:

AI researchers say ChatGPT and rival chatbots are significantly less capable in languages other than English, exacerbating the bias against non-English speakers

LinkedIn: Pascale Fung, Hans Uszkoreit, Yasmina Jraissati, and Sandhya Surendran. Mastodon: @kentborg@social.tchncs.de

Tweets: @blader, @aleyda, @senalexpadilla, @alexpadilla4ca, @dorrego, and @dxmartinjr

Patrick McGee / Financial Times:

With AR/VR startup funding from October 2022 to March 2023 falling 74% YoY to $800M, per PitchBook, the industry hopes Apple's MR headset could lure back VCs

More: PYMNTS.com, Tom's Guide, The Verge, Associated Press, and CNN

Tweets: @patrickmcgee_ and @oablanchard

Earlier Picks

Clive Cookson / Financial Times:

Scientists and DNA sequencing startup Illumina identified 4.3M genetic variants in ~800 primates and then used AI to predict genetic health risks in 454K humans

More: Illumina, Science, and TNW

Tweets: @fdesouza and @newsfromscience

David D. Kirkpatrick / New Yorker:

A look at India's hacking-for-hire industry, which has a tacit alliance with the government and is unusually brazen, with firms publicly touting their services

More: Metacurity. Tweets: @tallstories, @hartoshsinghbal, @rondeibert, @oxleyio, @ddk_nyc, @digitaldutta, @apar1984, @sandeepvioc, and @soutikbbc

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:

A profile of Nvidia: how Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem, and Chris Malachowsky started the company at Denny's, bet early on what Huang calls “$0B markets”, and more

More: The Week. LinkedIn: Lauren Coltrane and Ed Alfriend

Tweets: @heatherhaddon, @bzcohen, @bzcohen, @hkanji, @dennysdiner, and @jordannovet

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:

Harvard's popular CS50 MOOC plans to use AI to grade assignments, teach coding, and personalize learning tips, and is testing a virtual TA for student feedback

More: Livemint. Tweets: @apartovi

Sara Fischer / Axios:

YouTube stops removing content advancing “false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections”