Techmeme
January 31, 2024, 5:25 PM

Top News

Washington Post:
A recap of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on kids' online safety, including testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Linda Yaccarino, and Evan Spiegel  —  The chief executives of five major tech companies are testifying Wednesday about allegations they failed to protect children from abuse …
New York Times:
US lawmakers release 90 pages of Meta emails from 2021, showing Mark Zuckerberg rejected calls to bulk up resources for children's well-being and safety  —  Lawmakers released internal emails detailing the company's failed efforts to add staff to focus on the online safety of minors, hours before a hearing on the topic.
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Angela Yang / NBC News:
Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal:
The FBI and US DOJ disrupt Volt Typhoon, a uniquely dangerous Chinese hacking operation to hijack hundreds of Cisco and Netgear routers at end-of-life status  —  Chinese hackers prepare to ‘wreak havoc’ against Americans, FBI Director Chris Wray tells Congress
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen confirms “unauthorized access” to “a few of my personal XRP accounts”, after ZachXBT noted outflows of 213M XRP, worth $112.5M  —  - Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen said Wednesday that there had been “unauthorized access” to “a few of my personal XRP accounts.”
Aoyon Ashraf / CoinDesk:
An FTX lawyer says the defunct crypto exchange expects to fully repay its customers and has abandoned efforts to restart the platform, due to a lack of buyers  —  Its FTT token surged about 11% after the news.  —  10 Years of Decentralizing the Future  —  May 29-31, 2024 - Austin …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says that Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Loop, and Copilot features will be available on Apple Vision Pro on February 2  —  Microsoft is launching a suite of its Microsoft 365 apps on Apple's Vision Pro headset later this week.
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
OpenAI says GPT-4 poses “at most” a slight risk of helping create biological threats, according to early tests to evaluate “catastrophic” risks from LLMs  —  Artificial intelligence startup carried out tests as part of efforts to understand and prevent any “catastrophic” risks from its technology.
Eri Sugiura / Financial Times:
UK prosecutors say the Met Police seized 61K bitcoin, worth £1.4B+, in 2018, as part of a trial over an alleged ~£5B investment fraud in China from 2014 to 2017  —  One of the world's largest seizures revealed during trial of woman accused of laundering cryptocurrency for her former employer
Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal:
The US DOJ says eBay agreed to pay $59M to settle allegations of violating the Controlled Substances Act by allowing the sale of pill presses and other items  —  Justice Department says eBay has also agreed to enhance its compliance program  —  EBay will pay $59 million to settle …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review: a $200 price cut to $999, 16GB of VRAM, and impressive 4K performance, but a bulky adapter and outperforms the RTX 4070 a little  —  Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super is the third and potentially final of Nvidia's refreshed 40-series GPUs.
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology.  It's past time we call it what it is.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
UMG plans to stop licensing content to TikTok after their deal expires on January 31, saying they didn't reach terms over issues like artist compensation and AI  —  UMG said that its agreement with TikTok is set to expire on Jan. 31.  “The companies have not agreed to terms for a new agreement …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Bipartisan Senators unveil the DEFIANCE Act, which would let people sue over deepfake porn and other AI “intimate” images, after the viral Taylor Swift images  —  US lawmakers have proposed letting people sue over faked pornographic images of themselves, following the spread …
Jeffrey Gottfried / Pew Research Center:
US adults survey: 83% use YouTube; 68% use Facebook; 47% use Instagram; 27% to 35% use Snapchat, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Pinterest; 22% use X and Reddit  —  YouTube and Facebook are by far the most used online platforms among U.S. adults; TikTok's user base has grown since 2021
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
Legislators and privacy experts detail how the tech industry has sought to water down state privacy regulation in the US; 13 US states now have privacy laws  —  New Jersey's governor signed a hard-fought data privacy law earlier this month, making the state one of eight nationwide …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
More: BloombergThreads: @aaronrosspowellX: @senbrianschatz and @ksandler1Forums: r/politics

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