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December 15, 2023, 3:50 PM
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Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
How Microsoft's 10-year-old Digital Crime Unit uses unique legal tactics and the company's technical reach to disrupt global cybercrime and state-backed actors  —  Ten years in, Microsoft's DCU has honed its strategy of using both unique legal tactics and the company's technical reach …
Forbes:
Google says it will no longer respond to geofence warrants after making changes to how Google Maps stores and accesses users' opt-in Location History  —  “Geofence warrants,” which allow law enforcement to get location data across a wide area, have become commonplace in recent years.
David Gilbert / Wired:
Researchers: Microsoft Copilot answers some political queries in the US and other countries with conspiracies, misinformation, and out-of-date or incorrect info  —  Research shared exclusively with WIRED shows that Copilot, Microsoft's AI chatbot, often responds to questions about elections with lies and conspiracy theories.
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Cox Media Group claims it can listen to consumers' conversations through microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices and use the data to target ads  —  A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations …
Stacy Elliott / Decrypt:
Crypto wallet maker Ledger updates Connect Kit to remove some malicious code, live for five hours, after a former employee “fell victim to a phishing attack”  —  Crypto wallet manufacturer Ledger has confirmed an exploit that led it to warn users to “stop using dapps” …
Financial Times:
Sources: Elon Musk verbally guaranteed some US banks that they would not lose money on the Twitter deal; banks face serious losses on the “uninvestable” debt  —  Banks are facing serious losses on the debt as social media platform's business deteriorates
Glenn Fleishman / Retool:
A look back at Yahoo Pipes, which from 2007 to 2015 let users drag and drop elements in a browser to make data feeds, influencing a generation of UI designers  —  Want to know whether the latest logged earthquakes were near you?  Aggregate 100 top news sites, but only see items that mention cats?
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple plans to use advanced OLED screens in high-end iPads in 2024 and in a MacBook model in H2 2025, and is also considering making foldable tablets  —  Display industry in for disruption as investment pours into newer technology  —  Apple is the leader in the global tablet computer market thanks to its popular iPad lineup.
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
Days after updating its content policy to permit certain kinds of sexual content, Twitch rescinds the “artistic nudity” portion, citing “community concern”  —  Mere days after Twitch updated its content policy to permit certain kinds of sexual content …
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes / ZDNet:
In iOS 17.2, Apple has closed off Flipper Zero devices' ability to carry out DoS attacks on iPhones by continuously sending Bluetooth pairing requests  —  Apple has finally closed off the ability of the Flipper Zero pen-testing tool to flood iPhones with so many popups that the handset would lock up and require a reboot.
Nicholas Sutrich / Android Central:
Microsoft launches its basic Office suite on the Meta Quest store for free, letting all Quests run Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in a mixed reality environment  —  Now you can tweak spreadsheets while playing Xbox, all in VR.  —  What you need to know  — Meta Quest users can now use Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in VR.
Wall Street Journal:
Some publishers estimate that Google's Search Generative Experience could cut referral traffic by 20% to 40% if the final version resembles recent iterations  —  Tech giant's AI-powered search product is being tested on roughly 10 million users; publishers rely on Google for traffic and see a gathering storm
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:
Toy startup Curio launches three AI-powered plush toys, including a $99 one called Grok, that use OpenAI's tech to converse with kids and are voiced by Grimes  —  Grok is the first in a line of toys from start-up Curio intended to allow kids to converse with an AI chatbot
Jordan Pearson / VICE:
Some X users report seeing ads for apps that use AI to “undress” women in photos; TikTok and Meta blocked certain search terms related to such “nudify” apps  —  A week after TikTok and Meta blocked certain search terms related to so-called “nudify” apps, X has not taken the same measures, Motherboard found.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:50 PM ET, December 15, 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

Financial Times:
OpenAI hopes the Disney deal boosts Sora, which has high costs and limited traction; Sensor Tower: users average 13 minutes per day on Sora vs. 90 on TikTok

Sam Roberts / New York Times:
Arthur L. Carter, who started a Connecticut newspaper in 1981, bought and sold The Nation, and founded the New York Observer in 1987, has died at 93

More News

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
The US SEC rejects Coinbase's petition for formal digital asset rules, because the “existing securities regime appropriately governs crypto asset securities”
Timmy Shen / The Block:
SafeMoon filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on December 14 after the US SEC charged the company on November 1 for selling unregistered crypto securities
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel Xeon Platinum 8592+ review: the $11,600 64-core 5th-Gen Xeon chip outperforms AMD's 64-core EPYC Genoa in several benchmarks, particularly in AI workloads

Earlier Picks

Ben Horowitz / Andreessen Horowitz:
Andreessen Horowitz says “we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values” for technology
Will Knight / Wired:
OpenAI details how its Superalignment research team is exploring ways to control stronger AI models like GPT-4 using weaker supervisor models like GPT-2
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
The US DOJ announces an indictment for four people, two of whom have been arrested, in an alleged international pig butchering crypto scam costing victims $80M+
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
Google DeepMind's FunSearch model cracks the unsolved cap set problem in pure mathematics, the first time an LLM has solved a long-standing scientific puzzle
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google launches a Pixel Diagnostic App and repair manuals in English in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and European countries where Pixel devices are sold
Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch:
Amazon validates Project Kuiper's optical inter-satellite links, which use infrared lasers to move data around 30% faster than terrestrial fiber optical cables
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Instagram launches a generative AI background editing tool in the US, letting users change the background for their Stories using text prompts
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