Techmeme
December 4, 2023, 10:00 PM

Top News

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
23andMe says hackers stole the ancestry data of 6.9M of its 14M customers, via a breach first disclosed in October 2023, by leveraging access to ~14K accounts  —  On Friday, genetic testing company 23andMe announced that hackers accessed the personal data of 0.1% of customers, or about 14,000 individuals.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Spotify lays off ~17% of its workforce, or ~1,500 staff, to “rightsize” its costs, citing slow economic growth and rising capital costs, its third cut in 2023  —  Spotify is eliminating about 17% jobs, its third round of layoffs, as the music streaming looks to become “both productive and efficient.”
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Asking ChatGPT to repeat words “forever” now violates OpenAI's terms of service, after Google researchers showed that doing so led it to reveal training data  —  Join the newsletter to get the latest updates.  —  Success  —  Great!  Check your inbox and click the link.  —  Error
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Disinformation scholar Joan Donovan claims in a whistleblower filing that her superiors dismissed her after Harvard got Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's $500M gift  —  In a whistleblower complaint, she breaks her silence over events that unsettled other misinformation researchers
Louis Columbus / VentureBeat:
Researchers scanned public repos and found 1,681 exposed Hugging Face API tokens belonging to Meta, Microsoft, Google, and others, many with write permissions  —  Further validating how brittle the security of generative AI models and their platforms are, Lasso Security helped Hugging Face dodge …
Peter Martin / Bloomberg:
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says her department needs more money to stop China's chip gains and calls out Nvidia for redesigning around the US' curbs  —  - US commerce secretary cites Nvidia designs as case in point  — Tells chip CEOs ‘such is life’ as US security trumps revenue
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Meta says cross-app chatting between Messenger and Instagram will be discontinued in “mid-December 2023”, three years after it announced the feature  —  Meta is beginning the process of disconnecting the ability to have “cross-app chats” with your Instagram contacts via Facebook Messenger and vice-versa.
WABetaInfo:
WhatsApp updates its iOS app to let users send photos and videos in their original quality files, start voice chats without ringing in large groups, and more  —  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?
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Generative AI video startup Runway ML partners with Getty Images on a new AI video model available in the coming months for use in Hollywood and advertising  —  Runway ML, the New York City video AI startup backed by Google and Nvidia, continues to entrench itself in the marketplace of the future.
Financial Times:
IBM announces 10 quantum computing projects, focusing mainly on areas like simulating quantum physics and solving problems in chemistry and materials science  —  Use of technology to solve scientific problems still falls short of commercialisation  —  Quantum computing is starting to fulfil …
The Guardian:
Investigation: Russia- and China-linked hackers targeted UK nuclear site Sellafield with sleeper malware as far back as 2015; data loss extent is still unknown  —  Exclusive: Malware may still be present and potential effects have been covered up by staff, investigation reveals

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More News

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Hayden Field / CNBC: