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Techmeme
December 18, 2023, 6:35 AM
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Top News

New York Times:
Disney, WBD, and other studios are licensing more content to Netflix in return for much-needed cash, but are holding back their most popular movies and shows  —  When building their own streaming companies, many entertainment studios ended lucrative licensing deals with Netflix.
Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch:
Saudi shopping and BNPL startup Tamara raised a $340M Series C led by PIF-owned SNB Capital at a $1B valuation, taking its total funding to $500M since 2020  —  Tamara, a buy now pay later platform for consumers in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC region, has raised $340 million in a financing round that values the fintech at $1 billion.
More: Bloomberg
Wall Street Journal:
Western intelligence officials say that former Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek, who fled to Moscow after nearly $2B went missing, was likely a Russian agent for years  —  Jan Marsalek, the jet-setting former COO of now-defunct Wirecard, enabled Moscow to fund covert operations around the world, officials say; ‘whiff of Silicon Valley’
Justine Calma / The Verge:
How conservationists are using AI tool CeruleanAI, developed by the Coral Restoration Foundation, to analyze 3D maps of reefs and monitor restoration  —  Time is running out to save the world's coral reefs, so conservationists are turning to every tool they can to protect vanishing reefs — including AI.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:35 AM ET, December 18, 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

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

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

More News

Washington Post:
Experts and lawmakers say Tesla's largest recall yet is unlikely to solve Autopilot's fundamental flaw: Tesla failing to limit where drivers can use the feature
Yue Wang / Forbes:
SenseTime says co-founder Tang Xiao'ou, who was also a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, died of an unspecified illness at 55; 0020.HK drops 11%
George Hammond / Financial Times:
An interview with Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li on the lack of resources for academic AI, Silicon Valley's “bro” culture, keeping AI safe for humanity, and more
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Former Amazon security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed pleads guilty to hacking and stealing over $12.3M from Nirvana Finance and an unnamed crypto exchange in July 2022
Erin Woo / The Information:
A look at the wearable AI race as Meta adds multimodal AI to its Ray-Ban smart glasses and a source says OpenAI discussed GPT-4 with Vision for Snap's devices

Earlier Picks

Michael Acton / Financial Times:
An interview with Tim Sweeney about Epic's win over Google and his concern that Google will “get away with continuing their scheme” by offering “fake” remedies
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple announces contingent pricing for App Store subscriptions, letting developers give users a discounted price if they are subscribed to another subscription
Alex Heath / The Verge:
OpenAI says “ByteDance's use of our API was minimal”, but suspends the account and investigates, after a report that ByteDance used OpenAI's API for its own LLM
Margi Murphy / Bloomberg:
How Spamouflage Dragon, China's largest disinformation campaign per Google and Meta, infiltrates platforms to promote Chinese policies and criticize dissidents
New York Times:
California drops its Activision Blizzard sexual harassment 2021 case, saying investigations didn't substantiate any allegations; Activision agrees to pay ~$54M
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