Techmeme
October 24, 2023, 11:40 AM

Top News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review:
A look at Nightshade and Glaze, tools made by researchers at UChicago that help artists “poison” their work to confuse or break AI models that later train on it  —  A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it's scraped …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Automattic plans to acquire Texts, a $15 per month messaging app that works with WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, iMessage, and more, for $50M  —  Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and a number of other popular web properties, just made a different kind …
Marissa Newman / Bloomberg:
Google disables live traffic conditions in Israel and the Gaza Strip for its Maps and Waze apps, a source says at the request of the Israel Defense Forces  —  - Israeli army asked tech giant to limit real-time information  — Google took similar action in Ukraine during war with Russia
Benedict Evans:
A Twitter user since 2007 reflects on leaving due to Elon Musk swapping stasis at the company for chaos, his constant bullshitting, and spreading toxic content  —  Twitter always used to look a lot like Craigslist.  It stumbled into something that a lot of people found very useful …
Reuters:
Sources: Nvidia has begun designing ARM CPUs for Windows PCs, and AMD also plans to build ARM chips; source: Nvidia and AMD could start selling them in 2025  —  Nvidia (NVDA.O) dominates the market for artificial intelligence computing chips.  Now it is coming after Intel's longtime stronghold of personal computers.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Sources: many people inside Apple do not believe its own AI/ML team can deliver on generative AI, and worry that the company will only use its own team's output  —  Speaking of Mark Gurman, he has an interesting bit about Apple's AI efforts in his latest Power On column:
Kenza Bryan / Financial Times:
EU environmental groups criticize Apple branding its new Apple Watches as “carbon neutral” and using credits to cancel out the 7kg to 12kg of emissions per unit  —  iPhone maker flags credentials of its latest Watch products as EU seeks to clamp down on ‘greenwashing’
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Spotify Q3: revenue up 11% YoY to €3.4B, MAUs up 26% to 574M, subscribers up 16% YoY to 226M, and €32M operating income, vs. a €44.6M loss est.; SPOT jumps 9%+  —  Spotify Technology SA rose the most since January after the music-streaming giant reported third-quarter results …
David Pierce / The Verge:
A look at POSSE, a decade-old idea that a user should Publish (on your) Own Site and Syndicate Elsewhere, and the challenges of building a system based on that  —  The platform era is ending.  Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Xreal, formerly Nreal, announces the $399 Xreal Air 2 and $449 Air 2 Pro, AR glasses with brighter Micro OLED displays, available in five countries in November  —  Xreal is opening preorders for its latest generation of augmented reality glasses, the Xreal Air 2 and Air 2 Pro …
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
Q&A with FTC Commissioner and digital privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya on the agency's plan to hire child psychologists to understand social media's impact on kids  —  I saw and I heard stories from parents about the mental health issues that their children were experiencing and how both the parents and …
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
A paper from Geoffrey Hinton and other experts warns of AI systems' worrying capabilities and says 33% of companies' AI R&D budgets should go to managing risks  —  Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, two of the so-called AI godfathers, have joined with 22 other leading AI academics …
Financial Times:
Analysts: Chinese AI startup SenseTime's pivot from government surveillance work to data centers now seems doomed by new US export controls on powerful AI chips  —  Hong Kong-based AI company SenseTime faces ‘end of the road’ for data centre ambitions  —  SenseTime, once the darling …
Tyler Cowen / Marginal Revolution:
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Hands-on with DALL-E 3: suggests more detailed prompts, restrictive, denies art requests in the style of living artists, and shows how quickly AI is improving  —  To understand how quickly AI is improving, forget ChatGPT — use an image generator  —  Earlier this month …
More: Synced, Mashable, and CNET
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
After Unciphered developed a crack for an old IronKey USB drive to recover 7,002 BTC, the owner declines their help because he agreed to work with other experts  —  Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins.  One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
How integrating WhatsApp with your CRM leads to better customer interactions  —  This is a guest post by ControHippo.  Timely assistance and post-service support are key to effective customer relations.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Gavin Purcell & Kevin Pereira, The Future of AI (#55)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 05/01 - An Elon Catchup
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:40 AM ET, October 24, 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

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Earlier Picks

Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
NBC News:
Push Square: