Techmeme
September 21, 2023, 1:20 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Cisco plans to acquire cybersecurity company Splunk in cash for $157 per share, a 31% premium on Splunk's September 20 closing price, in a deal valued at ~$28B  —  - Acquisition is largest deal ever for networking stalwart  — Cisco is trying to lessen dependence on one-time sales
Nathan Edwards / The Verge:
Microsoft announces a unified Copilot built into Windows 11, launching across all of its apps and services, including Office 365, from September 26  —  Microsoft today announced a new, unified Copilot experience launching on September 26th.  The new “AI companion,” just called Copilot …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft plans to release its next Windows 11 update, 23H2, on September 26, offering the new AI-powered Windows Copilot, a redesigned File Explorer, and more  —  Microsoft will release its next big Windows 11 update, 23H2, on September 26th.  The update will include the new AI-powered …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
David Pierce / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils the 14.4" Surface Laptop Studio 2, offering Intel's 13th Gen i7 H chips, Nvidia's RTX 4050 or RTX 4060, and up to 2TB of storage, for $1,999+  —  Microsoft just showed off its new high-end convertible laptop, the Surface Laptop Studio 2, at its launch event in New York City.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple spent billions of dollars developing a modem chip for the new iPhones to cut ties with Qualcomm, but the chip was slow and prone to overheating  —  The company set out to design a silicon chip that would allow it to cut ties with Qualcomm, a longtime supplier and bitter foe
Ashley Stewart / Insider:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
South Korea-based game publisher Krafton says Striking Distance Studios' CEO Glen Schofield, COO, and CFO are leaving, months after its new horror game flopped  —  Video-game developer Striking Distance Studios, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Krafton Inc., is appointing new management several months …
Wired:
Docs: up to a dozen of Neuralink's primate subjects had to be euthanized after suffering complications; Elon Musk said no primates died because of the implants  —  Elon Musk says no primates died as a result of Neuralink's implants.  A WIRED investigation now reveals the grisly specifics …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Mastodon releases Mastodon 4.2, making it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, more easily search for content, and more  —  As changes at Elon Musk's X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open-sourced, decentralized social network Mastodon …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Jonathan Weil / Wall Street Journal:
Tether confirms resuming lending its stablecoins to clients, less than a year after committing to end such loans; $5.5B of its assets were loans as of June 30  —  Cryptocurrency issuer had said it would cut loans to zero in 2023  —  Tether Holdings resumed lending out its own stablecoins to customers …
Bloomberg:
The US DOJ removes public access to Google's emails, charts, and internal presentations that came out as evidence in its antitrust lawsuit against the company  —  Trial is already limited in visibility to those who personally attend court … Google had challenged the government's posting …
Wayne Ma / The Information:
Source: Google extensively discussed dropping Broadcom as its TPU supplier as early as 2027 and designing the chips itself to save billions of dollars annually  —  Google executives have extensively discussed dropping Broadcom as a supplier of artificial intelligence chips as early as 2027 …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub expands its Copilot Chat beta in Visual Studio and VS Code to Copilot for Individual subscribers, after launching the tool for businesses in July 2023  —  Three months ago, GitHub launched Copilot Chat, its ChatGPT-like programming-centric chatbot, out of private preview by making …
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Apple's FineWoven accessories and iPhone cases are really bad: they are expensive, quickly show wear, and scratch very easily, leaving seemingly permanent marks  —  Apple's new FineWoven iPhone cases and accessories are bad.  Like, really bad.  I've been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles.
Keisha Oleaga / nft now:
A look at AI-generated geometric art crafted using Stable Diffusion and ControlNet, a neural network structure that adds extra conditions to diffusion models  —  This past weekend, a new kind of artwork made waves across the Internet: AI-generated spiral art.

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Earlier Picks

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Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
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Dana Mattioli / Wall Street Journal: