Techmeme
August 21, 2023, 4:50 PM

Top News

Ronan Farrow / New Yorker:
Interviews with 30+ of Elon Musk's colleagues and dozens of others detail his growing power, childhood, career, politics, role in Russia's Ukraine war, and more  —  How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.
Craig Trudell / Bloomberg:
Report: before tweeting a pro-Russia Ukraine peace plan, Elon Musk said he had Kremlin consultations; he also told the US of a Putin call but publicly denied it  —  - Magazine reports on October conversation with top official  — The SpaceX CEO later denied speaking with Russian president
More: Insider and UPROXX
Mastodon: @TimKarr@mastodon.socialBluesky: @andimann.bsky.socialX: @mehdirhasan and @businessForums: r/politics
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
YouTube and Universal Music Group partner to explore new products, using music in AI tools, and paying 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 …
Dana Hull / Bloomberg:
Maine's attorney general 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
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Friend.tech, which lets people use crypto to buy “shares” of X accounts, hits 100K users, per a database of wallet addresses that has raised privacy concerns  —  The growth correlates with the more than $25 million in revenue generated by the platform since its Aug. 10 launch.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple adds Subscription Analytics to Podcasts, adds more hosts to Delegated Delivery, and integrates its podcast analytics into Linkfire's marketing platform  —  Apple announced today several new updates to its podcast creator tools, including, most notably, the addition …
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Interviews with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott, and other Microsoft executives on AI, a decade of AI investments, 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.
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
NFT platform Recur plans to shut down by November 16, 2023, after raising a $50M Series A in September 2021, and migrate the metadata of minted NFTs to the IPFS  —  - NFT platform Recur has decided to close less than two years after raising $50 million in a Series A funding round.
AI Snake Oil:
An August 17 paper on ChatGPT's political biases seems to have many flaws, like poor prompts and testing an older model, but the broader topic merits research  —  A new paper making this claim has many flaws.  But the question merits research.  —  Previous research has shown …
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Triller's S-1 filing claims the short-form video app has had 550M signups, but Apptopia estimates it has been downloaded just 73.2M times since its 2015 launch  —  TikTok competitor Triller is preparing to go public, but estimates from Apptopia call its self-reported user numbers into question.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify's new AI commerce stack  —  Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.
Zoho:
Why eIDAS 2.0 might be the EU's boldest digital move yet  —  eIDAS: The first building block of digital trust More than a decade ago, the EU introduced the eIDAS regulation (Regulation [EU] No 910/2014) …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Access:
Betting on reality with Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Lenny's Podcast:
The new AI growth playbook for 2026: How Lovable hit $200M ARR in one year | Elena Verna (Head of Growth)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
CNBC's Jim Cramer: Big Tech Hot Takes, NVIDIA $10 Trillion?, Building Wealth In Any Market
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
"Neither Side Is Used to Losing." Lucas Shaw on What's Next for Netflix and Paramount in the Battle for Warner Bros.
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Saam Motamedi from Greylock Partners
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM 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.

More News

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Dayana Mustak / Bloomberg: