Techmeme: Sources: Meta plans to launch a web version of Threads early this week, addressing a longstanding wish list item; Adam Mosseri confirmed testing the web app (Wall Street Journal)

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August 21, 2023, 11:30 AM

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Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Meta plans to launch a web version of Threads early this week, addressing a longstanding wish list item; Adam Mosseri confirmed testing the web app — Meta Platforms plans to launch a web version of microblogging app Threads early this week, the biggest new feature to be introduced …

More: 9to5Mac, Dexerto, Gizmodo, Mashable ME tech, Digit, Tech Startups, Ghacks, Wccftech, PYMNTS.com, iPhone in Canada Blog, Coinspeaker, PhoneArena, T3, The Verge, Mashable, Engadget, TweakTown, The Information, Livemint, Reuters, Phandroid, and SamMobile

Threads: @salrodriguez. Bluesky: @zitron.bsky.social. X: @bariawilliams, @ivanthek, @parkerortolani, @jeremychrysler, and @sivavaid

Ronan Farrow / New Yorker:

Interviews with 30+ of Elon Musk's colleagues and others detail his growing international power, childhood, career, politics, role in the Ukraine war, and more — How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.

More: The Verge. Mastodon: @GaryRLundberg@newsie.social, @DM_Ronin@mstdn.social, @jayreding@mastodon.world, and @KimPerales@toad.social

X: @sirsteven, @ronanfarrow, @pkafka, @om, @gettingsome, @mbusse, @drewfitzgerald, @sifill_, @michaelluo, @robtornoe, @nxthompson, and @julie_bush

Dana Hull / Bloomberg:

A notice from Maine's AG says Tesla's May 2023 data breach impacted 75,735 people, included employee-related records, and was a result of “insider wrongdoing” — - Data breach included employee-related records, Maine AG says — Tesla says two former employees shared info with Handelsblatt

More: Office of the Maine Attorney General, Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Insider, MobileSyrup, Livemint, Quartz, Techaeris, Tech.co, SecurityWeek, PYMNTS.com, DataBreaches.net, and RestorePrivacy

Vishal Chawla / The Block:

NFT platform Recur plans to shut down by November 16, 2023, less than two years after raising a $50M Series A, and tells owners to move NFT metadata to the IPFS — - NFT platform Recur has decided to close less than two years after raising $50 million in a Series A funding round.

More: TechCrunch, CryptoPotato, crypto.news, Cryptopolitan, NFT Evening, Cointelegraph, Coinpedia Fintech News, Decrypt, and Inside Bitcoins

X: @recurforever, @nft4dummies, @rolexslimsr, and @jasonmdesimone. Forums: r/CryptoCurrency

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:

YouTube is working with Universal Music Group to explore the use of music in AI programs and ways to pay artists whose work is used to make AI-generated content — YouTube has recruited Frank Sinatra's estate and other Universal Music Group UMG .39%increase; green up pointing triangle acts …

More: YouTube Official Blog, TechCrunch, Reuters, Music Technology Policy, WinBuzzer, Music Ally, and Billboard

Bluesky: @noahkeatonhawks.bsky.social. X: @reneritchie and @youtubeliaison

See also Mediagazer

AI Snake Oil:

A recent paper on ChatGPT's political biases seems to have many flaws, including testing an older model and prompt types, but the broader topic merits research — A new paper making this claim has many flaws. But the question merits research. — Previous research has shown …

Mastodon: @randomwalker@mastodon.social. X: @random_walker, @cbarrie, @simonw, @emollick, @random_walker, and @colin_fraser

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:

PeckShield: a wallet tied to the ~$600M Binance Coin hack in October 2022 had $63M liquidated on lending platform Venus Protocol, after using BNB as collateral — Cryptocurrencies' sudden tumble this week flushed out legions of speculators — and also, judging from blockchain data, the perpetrator of a giant hack.

More: CoinDesk, NewsBTC, The Daily Hodl, and Cryptopolitan

X: @peckshieldalert, @venusprotocol, and @peckshieldalert

Harry McCracken / Fast Company:

Interviews with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott, and other executives on AI, investment in AI over the past decade, Office Copilots, Bing, and more — “In general, I get excited by new things,” says the CEO. The story of a transformative moment that's been a decade in the making.

Mastodon: @harrymccracken@sfba.social. X: @mikehofman and @harrymccracken

Dayana Mustak / Bloomberg:

John Warnock, who co-founded Adobe in 1982 with Charles Geschke and was the company's CEO until 2000 and CTO until retiring in 2001, died on August 19 at age 82 — Technology entrepreneur John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Inc., died on Saturday at age 82, the company said in a statement.

More: Reuters, Adobe Press Releases, Silicon Valley Business …, Engadget, AppleInsider, PetaPixel, The Verge, Cybernews.com, TechCircle, Mercury News, International Business Times, and Stack Diary

Mastodon: @misty@digipres.club and @harrymccracken@sfba.social. Bluesky: @danilo.redeem-tomorrow.com

X: @timsweeneyepic, @johnnie, @stevesi, @_danilo, @pbump, @affinitybyserif, @themoridwan, and @trengriffin

LinkedIn: Tim Marklein and Vish Mishra

Forums: r/technology and r/technews

Wall Street Journal:

A look at the potential impact of the EU DSA and DMA on Big Tech; some say the effect could be as severe as Great Depression-era laws that reined in US banks — Google, Meta Platforms and others are set to face regulations that resemble the detail and sweep of those imposed on banks

More: PYMNTS.com, The Information, and Sramana Mitra

X: @wsjtech, @hutko, @wavesblog, @richardhanania, and @samschech

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:

BeReal replaces its Discovery feed with a Friends of Friends feed, adds pinned profile posts and mentions, and says the app is holding steady at ~20M DAUs — BeReal is trying to be real. And if we're being real, what's the point of that Discovery feed, anyway?

More: BeReal

Financial Times:

Sources: Instacart, Databricks, and Socure are considered candidates to launch IPOs in 2024, as Arm's forthcoming IPO provides a good test of investor sentiment — Instacart, Databricks and Socure are among the private tech companies reconsidering a stock market flotation

More: Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Information

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:30 AM ET, August 21, 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.

From Mediagazer

Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: activist investor Ancora Holdings has built a roughly $200M stake in WBD and is planning to oppose the Netflix-WBD deal, favoring a deal with Paramount

Amanda Meade / The Guardian:

Lenore Taylor, editor of Guardian Australia, is leaving the outlet after 13 years in senior roles and 10 years as editor; David Munk will serve as acting editor

Tina Brown / FRESH HELL Tina Brown's Diary:

The Jeff Bezos who bought WaPo in 2013 is not the same one allowing its destruction now, and he has ended the myth that a tech billionaire could save journalism

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More News

Monica Chin / The Verge:

LG Gram Style (2023) review: 120Hz OLED, bold color-changing body, and lightweight, but limited power, poor thermal management and trackpad, and bendy chassis

Kavish Harjai / Associated Press:

The US announces a ~$667M fourth round of rural broadband infrastructure grants and loans for 37 new projects after setting aside $771.4M in April and June 2023

More: Light Reading, Telecompetitor, and The Verge

Mastodon: @billseitz@toolsforthought …. Forums: Slashdot

New York Times:

A look at Music: Not Impossible's haptic suit, consisting of a backpack and ankle and wrist bands, which lets people feel music as vibrations on their bodies

X: @smbahr14, @smbahr14, @smbahr14, and @dave_parisi

Jessica Lucas / The Verge:

Some clinicians think unrealistic depictions of dissociative identity disorder on TikTok are influencing young people to self-diagnose or imitate the disorder

Mastodon: @jiejie@mastodon.social. X: @verge and @psycgrad

Bloomberg:

A look at online trading scams that have cost European consumers billions, perpetrated by fraudsters in highly professional call centers dubbed “boiler rooms”

X: @jeremylawhodges, @samdagher, and @bloomberguk

James Titcomb / Telegraph:

Sources: the UK is in talks with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to buy up to £100M in GPUs for a national “AI Research Resource”; some officials want to spend far more

More: New York Times, The Guardian, inews.co.uk, TNW, UKTN, Coinspeaker, Cointelegraph, Bloomberg, and Wccftech

X: @jamestitcomb, @darrenpjones, @stokel, @martinsfp, and @telegraph. Forums: r/ukpolitics

Earlier Picks

Amanda Hoover / Wired:

How Science, Nature, and other peer-reviewed journals are grappling with outlines, drafts, or papers that authors used generative AI to write without disclosure

X: @wiredscience, @byamandahoover, @nalanpog, @kunews, @gcabanac, @wired, and @microbiomdigest

Louise Matsakis / Semafor:

Q&A with TikTok Head of Music Ole Obermann on launching TikTok Music in Indonesia and Brazil before the US and helping artists from discovery to distribution

X: @arpithadesai, @semafor, and @reedalbergotti

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:

As Big Tech companies compel employees to return to the office, Atlassian, Airbnb, Dropbox, Twilio, and others remain steadfast backers of remote work

More: Fortune. Threads: @carnage4life. X: @news_by_nick and @business

LinkedIn: Matthew Boyle, Annie Dean, and Brody Ford

Matt Novak / Forbes:

Many images uploaded directly to X between 2011 and 2014 are not loading and links from those years that used Twitter's native shortening service are broken too

More: The Guardian, The Verge, MobileSyrup, TechCrunch, PetaPixel, PCMag, Social Media Today, Fortune, Insider, Ghacks, Livemint, Stack Diary, Digital Trends, SlashGear, and Gizchina

Threads: @reporterzoe, @reporterzoe, and @carnage4life

Mastodon: @tchambers@indieweb.social, @fraying@xoxo.zone, @koutropoulos@social.ds106.us, @adwright@mastodon.social, @reedmideke@mastodon.social, @atax1a@infosec.exchange, and @jenbanim@mastodo.neoliber.al

Bluesky: @brandrick.bsky.social, @fudge.org, @melwell.bsky.social, and @westernspinster.bsky.social

Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, r/EnoughMuskSpam, r/conspiracy, and r/DataHoarder

Alex Reisner / The Atlantic:

Analysis: Books3, a dataset used to train Meta's Llama, BloombergGPT, and EleutherAI's GPT-J, contains 170K+ books from authors like Stephen King and Junot Díaz