Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
February 20, 2024, 7:30 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Messaging app Signal finally rolls out usernames in beta, letting users conceal their phone numbers; Signal still requires inputting a phone number to register  —  We tested the end-to-end encrypted messenger's new feature aimed at addressing critics' most persistent complaint.  Here's how it works.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Authorities arrest two LockBit operators in Poland and Ukraine, issue arrest warrants and a decryption tool, seize 200+ crypto wallets; US indicts two Russians  —  Law enforcement arrested two operators of the LockBit ransomware gang in Poland and Ukraine, created a decryption tool …
Bloomberg:
Law enforcement agencies from 11 countries, including the FBI and UK National Crime Agency, disrupt the LockBit group and seize 11K domains used for ransomware
Jacob Pramuk / CNBC:
Walmart agrees to acquire TV maker Vizio for $2.3B, or $11.50/share, to boost its ad business via Vizio's SmartCast OS, which lets users stream content with ads  —  Walmart's acquisition of Vizio for $2.3BN was confirmed today.  The European Commission rejected Amazon's acquisition of iRobot for $1.7BN.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Gary Geaves, Apple's longtime VP in charge of acoustics, is stepping down, replaced by Ruchir Davé, adding to the hardware engineering group's upheaval  —  - Apple acoustics chief Gary Geaves is stepping down from role  — Executive has been key to development of AirPods and HomePod
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Google engineers hacked a Sony PlayStation Portal, which can only stream PS5 games, to run games locally via a PPSSPP emulator using a “software based” exploit  —  Sony's new PlayStation Portal has been hacked by Google engineers to run emulated games locally.
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple debuts a monthly Apple Music Replay, offering insights like total listening time, top songs, artists, and albums, and releases 2024's Replay Mix playlist  —  Apple today updated the Apple Music Replay experience, available at replay.music.apple.com, with visualizations of your favorite music habits …
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:
Demos from AI chip maker Groq go viral after the company's inference engine shows remarkable speeds running LLMs, including with real-time conversations  —  Two AI companies are claiming the science fiction term, “Grok,” as their own, but only one is turbocharging the AI industry.
John Voorhees / MacStories:
A look at ways to play games on Apple Vision Pro: spatial and iPad App Store games, streaming via MirrorPlay for PS5, NDI, Macs, browsers like Nexus⁺, and more  —  The lack of any kind of port significantly limits the type of gaming you can do in the Apple Vision Pro - or does it?
More: 9to5Mac, iMore, Six Colors, and The Verge
Threads: @viticci.  Mastodon: @viticci@mastodon … and @johnvoorhees@mastodon ….  Forums: r/apple
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Samsung details its Auracast, 360 Audio, and Auto Switch features, rolling out to Buds 2, Buds FE, the S24 series, Neo QLED and OLED TVs, Book laptops, and more  —  None are appearing on Samsung's devices for the first time, but we now know how broadly they'll be supported across the lineup.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Stop re-entering Shopify order details in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes AI Inc).Here's a scene that plays out in many growing Shopify stores every day: a customer places an order …
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
 Why companies are becoming a series of loops | Anish Acharya (a16z)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
 GPT-6 & OpenAI's Comeback, Hugging Face Attack Debate, Ballmer's Scandalous Legacy
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
 The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
 Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
 Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
 Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:30 PM ET, February 20, 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

New York Times:
Fox News pulling Maria Bartiromo off the air reflects a growing willingness to break from Trump on certain issues, following its $787.5M Dominion settlement

CBS News:
A US federal judge allows the Pentagon to fire three Stars and Stripes journalists, ruling the government likely did not violate their First Amendment rights

Jennifer Bowers Bahney / Mediaite:
FCC Chairman says “Trump is over the target” and “we're looking at a lot of actions”, after Trump said he will report NBC News' Kristen Welker to the FCC

More News

Larry Dignan / Constellation Research:
Palo Alto Networks reports Q2 revenue up 19% YoY to $1.98B, vs. $1.97B est., and lowers its full-year guidance for billings and revenue; PANW drops 19%+
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe launches AI Assistant in Acrobat in beta, to summarize PDFs, answer and recommend questions, and more, letting paying users “easily chat with documents”

Earlier Picks

Antonia Mufarech / Bloomberg:
Tinder plans to roll out its new ID checks in the US, the UK, Brazil, and Mexico, after tests in Australia and New Zealand, to combat AI scams and dating crimes
HouseFresh:
How some big publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations without testing the products, and how Google is helping them through inaction
Reuters:
Microsoft President Brad Smith says the company plans to invest $2.1B in Spain over the next two years to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in the country
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The European Commission opens an investigation into whether TikTok breached DSA rules meant to protect children, the second DSA investigation after one into X
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter