Techmeme
June 27, 2023, 1:00 PM

Top News

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
A Pixel Fold reviewer says the device's flexible OLED screen died after four days of light use, starting at the bottom and moving upwards, likely due to debris  —  The closed display halves almost touch, and that can smash debris into the screen.  —  A flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
Wall Street Journal:
How routine drug use by Silicon Valley executives moved from an after-hours activity squarely into corporate culture, causing issues for boards and tech leaders  —  Entrepreneurs including Elon Musk and Sergey Brin are part of a drug movement that proponents hope will expand minds, enhance lives and produce business breakthroughs
Monica Chin / The Verge:
A survey of 20+ professionals finds all but one do not plan to buy the Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, citing Apple's cheaper and similarly powerful laptops and desktops  —  Apple's latest Mac Pro targets professionals with highly demanding computing workloads.  But we talked to those professionals …
Chris Vallance / BBC:
Apple says the UK's Online Safety Bill, which would mandate scanning messages for CSAM, should be amended to protect encryption, joining WhatsApp and Signal  —  Apple has criticised powers in the Online Safety Bill that could be used to force encrypted messaging tools like iMessage …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta launches new parental controls and other safety features for Messenger and Instagram in the US, the UK, and Canada, including letting parents view contacts  —  Meta announced new parental control tools across Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger today.  This includes a new parental supervision hub …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
A 2019 email by Xbox Game Studios' Matt Booty encouraged buying content to “spend Sony out of business”; Microsoft argues the company didn't pursue the strategy  —  Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios chief, Matt Booty, was encouraging Xbox CFO Tim Stuart to spend big money …
James Vincent / The Verge:
AI is killing the web with spam sites, mass article producing “AI editors”, AI-generated junk on Etsy, Reddit, and Wikipedia that exhausts moderators, and more  —  In recent months, the signs and portents have been accumulating with increasing speed.  Google is trying to kill the 10 blue links.
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
Apple Vision Pro documentation: the device has a “system boundary”, defined as a 1.5-meter radius from the headset, when in a “fully immersive VR experience”  —  Apple has limited a Vision Pro safe area to 10 feet by 10 feet, when using fully immersive VR experiences.
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Baidu claims that its latest LLM, Ernie 3.5, surpasses GPT-3.5-based ChatGPT in general abilities and outperforms GPT-4 in many Chinese-language capabilities  —  Baidu Inc.'s ChatGPT-style service has outperformed OpenAI's seminal product on several measures, China's search leader said on Tuesday.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
An internal Microsoft presentation in June 2022, found via FTC v Microsoft, floated building on Windows 365 to enable “full Windows ... streamed from the cloud”  —  Microsoft has been increasingly moving Windows to the cloud on the commercial side with Windows 365 …
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Some doctors say that their current best use for generative AI is to ease the heavy burden of documentation, which takes hours a day and contributes to burnout  —  The best use for generative A.I. in health care, doctors say, is to ease the heavy burden of documentation that takes them hours a day and contributes to burnout.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
TikTok plans to shut down TikTok Now, its BeReal clone unveiled in September 2022, without giving a reason; user estimates suggest that BeReal has faded in 2023  —  TikTok is killing off its BeReal clone TikTok Now, according to notifications being sent to users.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta says WhatsApp Business crossed 200M MAUs, up from 50M in 2020, adds a tool to let users create “click-to-WhatsApp” ads without a Facebook account, and more  —  Meta announced today that WhatsApp Business, its app designed specifically for small businesses …
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
More: TweakTown, The Decoder, and Fast Company
Bluesky: @iamnow.bsky.socialTwitter: @aaronpholmes, @toughsf, @fromvalue, and @amirForums: Slashdot
Robert D. McFadden / New York Times:
John B. Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in developing the lithium-ion battery used in mobile devices and EVs, dies at 100  —  An unassuming professor who remained active into his 90s, he is credited with the breakthrough that gave rise to the batteries powering today's electronic devices.
Jane Lee / Reuters:
Snowflake partners with Nvidia to let customers build generative AI models using their own data; Nvidia plans to embed NeMo Framework into Snowflake Data Cloud  —  Snowflake (SNOW.N) a cloud data analytics company, is partnering with computing company Nvidia (NVDA.O) to allow customers ranging …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Decentralized social media app Damus says Apple rejected an app update and told the company to remove its tipping feature or use Apple's in-app purchase system  —  Damus, a decentralized social networking app backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, will be removed from the App Store due to Apple's strict payment rules.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Prospect:
A running list of the best startups to join  —  We've analyzed thousands of startups using the same data VCs use and distilled our list down to the top 2%.  Discover and join the next Stripe, Airbnb, or Coinbase today.
Zoho:
Optimizing Business Finances: Leveraging the Synergy of QuickBooks and Zoho Expense  —  Expenses incurred by employees are an essential part of accounting and must be captured and recorded accurately.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Gavin Purcell & Kevin Pereira, The Future of AI (#55)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 05/03 - Apple Earnings Underline Their Predicament
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:00 PM ET, June 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

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
David Meyer / Fortune: