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February 13, 2024, 11:20 PM
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Top News

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Sources: Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in its VPN, Relay, its Online Footprint Scrubber, and mozilla.social, shut down Hubs, and cut ~60 employees  —  After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser …
David Pierce / The Verge:
OpenAI starts testing a “memory” feature that is on by default and lets ChatGPT and custom GPTs remember info about users and their conversations over time  —  Talking to an AI chatbot can feel a bit like Groundhog Day after a while, as you tell it for the umpteenth …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
The EU ends its DMA investigation into iMessage and Microsoft Bing, Edge, and Advertising, deciding not to designate the services as gatekeepers  —  - Services not dominant enough to face Digital Markets Act … A probe concluded that the services don't hold a dominant enough position …
The Information:
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, leaves the company; Karpathy was developing a product that he described as an AI assistant  —  Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, has left the company, a spokesperson confirmed.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
In a video, Mark Zuckerberg shares his thoughts on the Vision Pro, saying Quest 3 “is the better product, period”, highlighting Apple's tradeoffs, and more  —  Now that it can be strapped to our faces and worn in strange places, opinions about Apple's Vision Pro are flying left and right.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia releases an early version of Chat with RTX, an app that lets users run an AI chatbot on a PC powered by an RTX 30- or 40-series GPU with 8GB+ of VRAM  —  Nvidia is releasing an early version of Chat with RTX today, a demo app that lets you run a personal AI chatbot on your PC.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Walmart is in talks to buy smart TV manufacturer Vizio for more than $2B, as it looks to bolster its advertising business in its battle with Amazon  —  Retail giant discussing a more than $2 billion deal that would boost its advertising business in battle with Amazon
Alison Snyder / Axios:
Cohere's nonprofit research lab releases its open-source multilingual LLM Aya, which it says can follow instructions in more than 100 languages  —  A new open-source generative AI model can follow instructions in more than 100 languages. … - It covers more than twice as many languages …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft plans to launch select Xbox games on the PS5 and Switch, starting with Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Sea of Thieves, a seismic strategy shift  —  With rumors of some Xbox games coming to PS5 and Switch, Microsoft gets ready to lay out its vision for the future of Xbox.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft plans an Xbox business update event on February 15 at 12PM PT, delivered via a podcast hosted by Xbox's Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Matt Booty
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Copilot for Microsoft 365 testers question the $30/seat price and find Copilot the most useful in Teams and the least in Excel; Dow and others plan big rollouts  —  Artificial-intelligence aide handles email, meetings and other things, but its price and limited use have some skeptical
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Foundry Group, an 18-year-old VC firm with nearly $3.5B in assets under management, has quietly decided to wind down and not raise any more funds  —  Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds.
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 6% YoY to $803M vs. $804M est., plans to lay off ~250 workers, or ~7% of staff; three top execs are leaving for personal reasons  —  - Instacart on Tuesday announced it would lay off about 250 employees, or roughly 7% of the company, alongside reporting fourth-quarter earnings …
Kylie Robison / Fortune:
Sierra, an enterprise-focused conversational AI startup co-founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, launches with $110M in funding led by Sequoia and Benchmark  —  Bret Taylor, right, launches Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses, with former Google executive Clay Bavor, left.
Lucas Ropek / Gizmodo:
Flipper Zero multi-tool device maker Flipper Devices announces a $49 Video Game Module, powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040, that turns a Flipper into a controller  —  The creators behind the popular Flipper device have teamed up with Raspberry Pi to expand its capabilities.
Reuters:
A US federal judge sets the trial date for an FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon for October 2026  —  A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday set an October 2026 trial date for a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com (AMZN.O).  —  The consumer protection agency filed …
Zachary Small / New York Times:
GLAAD's first gaming industry survey featuring nearly 1,500 participants: <2% of console video games include LGBTQ characters, 17% of gamers are queer, and more  —  In its first survey of the video game industry, the advocacy group GLAAD determined that few console games include queer characters.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:20 PM ET, February 13, 2024.

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

Scott Nover / Washington Post:
Sources: DOD barred press photographers from briefings on the Iran conflict after they published photos of Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering”

Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg:
Google's AI Futures Fund invests $1M into Animaj, an AI animation studio focused on making high-quality videos for children on YouTube

Hanaa' Tameez / Nieman Lab:
A look at Newpress, a production company and community platform for “creator journalists”, which helps them build shows on platforms including YouTube

More News

Antonia Mufarech / Bloomberg:
Lyft reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.2B, net loss of $26.3M, vs. $588.1M YoY, active riders up 10% to 22.4M, and Q1 forecast above est.; LYFT jumps 10%+
MK Manoylov / The Block:
Elliptic: an exploit of NFT gaming platform PlayDapp let hackers mint 1.8B PLA tokens, “worth” ~$290M; before the hack, only 577M PLA tokens were in circulation

Earlier Picks

Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Shopify Q4: revenue up 24% YoY to $2.1B, vs. $2.08B est., $657M net income, vs. a $623M loss YoY, and GMV up 23% YoY to $75.1B, vs. $71.6B est.; SHOP drops 10%+
Krystal Hu / Reuters:
Virginia-based software testing startup Antithesis raised a $47M seed, a source says led by Amplify, Tamarack Global, and First In at a $215M valuation
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Proofpoint: unknown hackers are targeting hundreds of Azure accounts, some belonging to senior executives, aiming to steal sensitive data and financial assets
Mia Sato / The Verge:
Websites with seemingly AI-generated obituaries litter Google Search, sometimes listing living people as deceased and turning private individuals into clickbait
Threads: @miasato.2 and @knguyen.  Mastodon: @annaecook@mstdn.social.  Bluesky: @djcentos7.bsky.social
Forums: r/technews and Slashdot
Rebekah Valentine / IGN:
Interviews with 40+ developers detail the reasoning behind layoffs in gaming, including high costs, growing risks, and executives with little regard for staff
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