Techmeme
October 10, 2023, 2:00 PM

Top News

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google starts prompting users to create a passkey to use as their account default, but says passwords will “still remain part of our lives as we make the pivot”  —  Google is making it easier for users to ditch passwords on their Google accounts in favor of passkeys — a fast …
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Amazon, Google, and Cloudflare say a DDoS attack hit 398M RPS in August, ~8x larger than the previous record, due to a new bug; Google was able to mitigate it  —  Amazon, Google and Cloudflare said they detected the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on record in August due to a newly discovered vulnerability.
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Adobe debuts Firefly Image 2 Model in Firefly for the web; the model is larger than its predecessor, better at rendering humans, and coming to Creative Cloud  —  At MAX, its annual conference for creatives, Adobe today announced that it has updated the models that power Firefly, its generative AI image creation service.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
As X fails to moderate Israel-Hamas misinformation, Meta has an opportunity to make real-time news a pillar of Threads and give the app an existential purpose  —  Three months into its existence, the app's purpose may be coming into focus — if Meta will embrace it
More: Wired, CNN, The Verge, The Guardian, 9to5Mac, Engadget, Bloomberg, Rolling Stone, Livemint, Media Matters for America, The Messenger, The Messenger, Hindustan Times, The Information, CNBC, Morning Brew, Social Media Today, Telegraph, and Variety
LinkedIn: Mark Little and Tomer Poran
Erin Woo / The Information:
Sources: X shut down a tool for identifying coordinated disinformation campaigns in recent months, as the company moved services off Google Cloud to cut costs  —  Elon Musk's X, in the months before conflict erupted in Gaza, ceased utilizing a software tool used to identify organized misinformation …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sony announces a new $500 PS5 model with a detachable disc drive, 1TB of internal storage, and a slightly slimmer and shorter design, shipping in November  —  Sony officially announced a new PS5 model with a detachable disc drive and 1TB of internal storage.
Wired:
As the Israel-Hamas war escalates, a look at the role of hacktivism for both sides, supported by outside groups, including DDoSing Israeli government sites  —  Since the conflict escalated, hackers have targeted dozens of government websites and media outlets with defacements and DDoS attacks …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
X now lets users “limit replies to verified users”  —  The latest turn in the Elon Musk-directed platform X, previously known as Twitter, is that users can now block unverified accounts from replying to their posts.  —  This change arrives about 11 months after Musk launched paid verification …
IDC:
Global PC shipments fell 7.6% YoY to 68.2M in Q3 2023; among the top five vendors, Apple experienced the largest decline, down 23.1%, and only HP grew, up 6.4%  —  The downward spiral for PC shipments continued during the third quarter of 2023 (3Q23) as global volumes declined 7.6% year …
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: EU regulators sent out questionnaires asking users and rivals whether iMessage, Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising should be regulated under the DMA  —  EU antitrust regulators are asking Microsoft's (MSFT.O) users and rivals whether Bing should comply with new tough tech rules …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
AMD plans to acquire Santa Clara-based Nod.ai, whose tech helps companies deploy AI models that are tuned for AMD's chips and has raised ~$36.5M, per PitchBook  —  AMD said on Tuesday it plans to buy an artificial intelligence startup called Nod.ai as part of an effort to bolster its software capabilities.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Unity CEO John Riccitiello resigns in the wake of the company's fee controversy; Unity names former Red Hat President and CEO James Whitehurst as interim CEO  —  John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, has resigned from the company in the wake of a pricing controversy that left developers in open revolt.

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