Techmeme
December 12, 2023, 8:55 PM

Top News

Gene Park / Washington Post:
The ESA shuts down the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, after new competitors, partner withdrawals, changing audience habits, and more; E3 began in 1995  —  The collapse ends years of attempts to revive the event that once dominated the industry  —  The Electronic Entertainment Expo …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discusses beating Google, but not Apple, thanks to a jury trial, Google erasing chats, and because “Apple didn't write anything down”  —  - The verdict is a significant win for Epic Games and its CEO Tim Sweeney, which have been fighting against mobile app stores …
Bloomberg:
Wall Street Journal:
Apple releases an iOS beta with Stolen Device Protection; if enabled, the feature limits actions like Apple ID password resets when not in a “familiar location”  —  Stolen Device Protection can prevent criminals from using your passcode to change your Apple account
Zoë Schiffer / The Verge:
A look at Twitter's culture prior to Elon Musk's acquisition, when it focused on improving the health of online conversations, rather than growth at all costs  —  the early '10s, Twitter was at the height of its power.  The company had yet to turn a profit, but it had played a crucial role …
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: X generated just over $600M in ad revenue in each of 2023's first three quarters, down from $1B+ per quarter in 2022 and on track for ~$2.5B in 2023  —  - X to miss internal goals for ad revenue, people familiar say  — Musk's personal tweets continue to scare off advertisers
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division announces the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions, plus a simplification of its product portfolio  —  Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users  —  +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Netflix publishes its first What We Watched report, detailing the most-watched content from January to June 2023; The Night Agent was #1 with 812M+ hours viewed  —  Netflix is going to start publishing a new report twice a year that details the most popular shows and movies on the platform.
Scott Stein / CNET:
Meta adds multimodal AI to its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses as an early access beta in the US, letting Meta AI answer voice queries by taking and analyzing photos  —  I tried these Ray-Ban AI glasses, and they're pretty wild.  Here's how the experimental feature works.  —  “Hey, Meta.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: Apple offers to let rivals access its tap-and-go payments systems for mobile wallets, hoping to settle EU antitrust charges and avoid a possible fine  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has offered to let rivals access its tap-and-go mobile payments systems used for mobile wallets …
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Microsoft releases Phi-2, an AI language model the company says outperforms Mistral and Llama 2 at 7B and 13B parameters and is small enough to run on a phone  —  The rapid pace of generative AI news and announcements isn't slowing down, even as we reach the final stretches of 2023 and the traditional winter holiday quiet period.
Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg:
Stanford professor David Mills, who led SBF's defense as a favor to his parents, says the ex-FTX CEO is “the worst person I've ever seen do a cross examination”  —  Stanford Law Professor David Mills, who led defense for FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried as favor to his parents, now fears ‘unwinnable’ case has ended their friendship.
Joseph Bernstein / New York Times:
A look at Praxis, which raised $19.2M from Paradigm, Alameda Research, and others to build a city on the Mediterranean for tech bros and downtown NY tastemakers  —  Dryden Brown wants Praxis to be a crypto-city for tech bros and tastemakers.  Just don't ask for details.
CNN:
A US GAO review of nearly 24 agencies' AI usage catalogs 200+ current applications and 500+ planned uses of AI and ML, despite the lack of government guidance  —  The US government plans to vastly expand its reliance on artificial intelligence, but it is years behind on policies …
Reuters:
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Gina Raimondo says Nvidia “can, will, and should” sell AI chips to China for commercial use, but not advanced AI chips, and spoke to Jensen Huang about US rules  —  The Biden administration is in discussions with Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) about permissible sales of artificial intelligence chips …

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Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon: Future Of AI Devices, AI Fashion, Blending Reality and Computing
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Lenny's Podcast:
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Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Hard Fork:
Jonathan Haidt Strikes Again + What You Vibecoded + An Update on the Forkiverse
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Special Edition: Key findings from the Microsoft AI Diffusion Report
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: