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Techmeme
December 4, 2023, 8:30 AM
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Top News

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Spotify plans to lay off ~17% of its workforce, or ~1,500 staff, to “rightsize” its costs, citing slow growth and rising capital costs, after cutting 6% in June  —  Spotify is eliminating about 17% jobs, its third round of layoffs, as the music streaming looks to become “both productive and efficient.”
New York Times:
A deep dive into the founding of DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as many of their backers feared the risks of advanced AI but wanted the power to shape it  —  The people who were most afraid of the risks of artificial intelligence decided they should be the ones to build it.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Disinformation scholar Joan Donovan claims in a whistleblower filing that her superiors soured on her as Harvard got the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's $500M gift  —  In a whistleblower complaint, she breaks her silence over events that unsettled other misinformation researchers
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Documents: OpenAI signed a letter of intent in 2019 to spend $51M on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain AI, in which Sam Altman had invested $1M+  —  Documents show that OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Chase Bank could be an ideal Goldman Sachs replacement for Apple Card, as it uses the same Mastercard network and already has a strong relationship with Apple  —  Apple and Goldman Sachs are on the verge of splitting up, and Chase is the ideal partner to step in.
Bloomberg:
Bitcoin trades above $40K for the first time since May 2022, as the digital asset extends its 2023 rebound on expectations of interest-rate cuts and ETF demand  —  - Crypto rally has been driven by ETF hopes, rate-cut bets  — Bitcoin is on track for biggest annual gain since 2020
Anto Antony / Bloomberg:
Sources: Byju's founder Byju Raveendran pledged his and his family's homes as collateral to borrow ~$12M to raise money to pay staff, to fight a cash crunch  —  - Founder has raised $400 million in debt to keep firm afloat  — Company is also seeking to raise funds through asset sales
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Researchers show AI misalignment in a GPT-4-based stock trading bot that performed insider trading in a simulated environment without being instructed to do so  —  Also OpenAI's board, kangaroo grazing and bank box-checking.  —  AI MNPI  —  Here you go, insider trading robot:
WABetaInfo:
WhatsApp updates its iOS app to let users send photos and videos in their original quality  —  WhatsApp has just submitted a new stable update for iOS, available on the App Store: the build number is 23.24.73.  —  What's new in this update?  WhatsApp is widely rolling out a feature to send original quality media as a file!

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:30 AM ET, December 4, 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.

From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Arkansas PBS severs ties with the PBS network, the first state public TV system to do so since Congress cut CPB funds, citing the annual $2M+ membership cost

Pamela McClintock / The Hollywood Reporter:
Disney's Zootopia 2 surpasses $1B at the global box office, the fastest PG-rated film to do so after just 17 days in release

Trip Gabriel / New York Times:
R. Bruce Dold, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the Chicago Tribune, where he became editor-in-chief and publisher, is dead at 70

More News

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
The threat to Intel now comes from a whole ecosystem of companies, including nearly every tech giant, although the chip giant is still a strong competitor
Maria Sherman / Associated Press:
Kiss' three current members reveal digital avatars of themselves, created by Pophouse and George Lucas' ILM, which will tour as the rock band stops live touring

Earlier Picks

Tara García Mathewson / The Markup:
How a California college uses data collection tools to track students' daily movements, like homework trackers, e-proctoring software, and license plate readers
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: Google quietly delayed Gemini's public launch from next week to January 2024; a source says the LLM doesn't reliably handle some non-English queries
Jaron Schneider / PetaPixel:
Sources: Bending Spoons, which acquired Filmic in September 2022, laid off the photo and video app maker's entire team, including founder and CEO Neill Barham
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