Techmeme
December 13, 2023, 2:40 AM

Top News

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 …
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 …
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
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 …
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 Ray-Ban Meta 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.
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.
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Google plans to shorten Maps' default auto-delete history feature from 18 months to three months and let users store Maps Timeline data locally on their devices  —  Google Maps has gotten some fun updates recently, and now it's offering some more privacy-forward tweaks as it adds more ways to control your location data.
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Apple updates its law enforcement guidelines to now require a judge's order before handing over users' push notification data, instead of only a subpoena  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has said it now requires a judge's order to hand over information about its customers' push notification to law enforcement …
Malak Saleh / Engadget:
Meta is working to extend its fact-checking to Threads early next year; its fact-checking now only rates Threads content matching posts on Facebook or Instagram  —  The program will roll out next year, according to executives.  —  Threads is going to make an effort to moderate more of the user-generated content on the platform.
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.
Bloomberg:
True Anomaly, a startup designing hardware and software for military and intelligence space reconnaissance systems, raised a $100M Series B led by Riot Ventures  —  - Contractor's spacecraft to track national threats in orbit  — Threats can range from enemy satellites to space debris
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Foxconn plans to invest at least $1B more, on top of $1.6B it allocated earlier, in its 300-acre Bengaluru plant to make Apple devices  —  - World's largest iPhone maker setting aside more money for site  — Apple's partners are shifting capacity away from China
More: Reuters
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Paris-based Pivot, which sells spend management and procurement software, raised a $21.6M Series A, after raising a $5.3M pre-seed round in April 2023  —  French startup Pivot is an interesting startup story as it is scaling at a rapid pace even though startup investments are down in Europe.
Miguel Cordon / Tech in Asia:
Line Next, a Line Corporation unit that focuses on NFTs and currently has 5.5M users globally, raised $140M led by Peter Thiel-backed Crescendo Equity Partners  —  Line Next Corporation, a Line unit that focuses on the NFT ecosystem, raised a US$140 million round from a consortium led …

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Prospect:
A running list of the best startups to join  —  We've analyzed thousands of startups using the same data VCs use and distilled our list down to the top 2%.  Discover and join the next Stripe, Airbnb, or Coinbase today.
Zoho:
From orders to alerts with Zoho Inventory and Zoho Cliq integration  —  Running a business is challenging, especially when it comes to managing incoming orders from online sales channels.
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:
Carolina Reis Oliveira & Alessandra Zonari | OneSkin: Aging Myths, Senescent Cells, and How to Age Slower (#56)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 05/08 - Bethesda Bloodbath
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 2:40 AM ET, December 13, 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

Earlier Picks

CNN:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Reuters:
Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg:
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: