Techmeme
August 21, 2023, 1:00 PM

Top News

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.
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
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 …
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 …
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 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pinterest unveils new safety features; users ages 16 and older will now be able to opt into either a private or public profile; private is default for under 16  —  Pinterest today introduced a series of new safety features aimed at better protecting teens using its service.

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Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
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Lenny's Podcast:
The 100-person AI lab that became Anthropic and Google's secret weapon | Edwin Chen (Surge AI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw
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.
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Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
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Earlier Picks

Dayana Mustak / Bloomberg: