Techmeme
March 5, 2024, 1:55 PM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Meta confirms a technical issue caused an outage affecting Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Meta Quest logins, and more, for over two hours  —  Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all experiencing issues.  The three Meta-owned platforms aren't working for many users, with the widespread outage seeming to start around 10AM ET.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Google outlines updates to comply with the EU's DMA: search changes to prioritize large intermediaries and aggregators, new tools for app developers, and more  —  Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google on Tuesday outlined changes to search results and new tools for apps developers to promote their products …
Financial Times:
As Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft comply with the EU's DMA before March 7, experts are skeptical its rules will have the desired effect  —  This week is the deadline for large online platforms to comply with new EU regulations on competition.  Too little too late, say some
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Sources: Microsoft plans to unveil an OLED Surface Pro 10 and a Surface Laptop 6, both available with Intel Core Ultra or Snapdragon X Elite chips, on March 21  —  Microsoft's first AI PCs will be unveiled on March 21, ahead of next-gen Windows 11 AI features coming this fall.  —  What you need to know
Reuters:
A BlackCat ransomware gang website shows a takedown notice; the UK NCA denies involvement and experts suggest an exit scam after an alleged UnitedHealth payment  —  A website used by hackers responsible for a breach at UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N) has been replaced by a notice saying it has been seized by international law enforcement.
Counterpoint Research:
CoinDesk:
Bitcoin surpassed $69K, eclipsing its previous all-time high set on November 10, 2021, with US spot bitcoin ETFs a likely catalyst of the latest bull run  —  The success of the spot ETFs which opened for business on January 11 was the catalyst for this latest bull run for the world's largest crypto.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft will end support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 on March 5, 2025, and consequently, for the Amazon Appstore on Windows as well  —  Microsoft is ending support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 next year.  The software giant first announced it was bringing Android apps …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google rolls out updates to its Search ranking, including downranking content that summarizes others' work, to counter the spread of AI content in results  —  Google is rolling out a few new changes to its ranking systems in search, which are designed to help surface good content in your results …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
The US Treasury sanctions spyware group Intellexa Consortium's founder and one of his business partners, the first US sanctions on people over spyware misuse  —  The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Nothing debuts the 6.7" Phone (2a), its first budget phone, with a 5,000mAh battery and a MediaTek chip, starting at £319 for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage  —  Budget phones tend to be pretty forgettable, but the Nothing Phone 2A isn't your average budget phone — that much is obvious just looking at it.
Emilia David / The Verge:
OpenAI updates ChatGPT with a Read Aloud feature that auto-detects 37 languages and reads GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 responses out loud on the web, Android, and iOS  —  OpenAI's new Read Aloud feature for ChatGPT could come in handy when users are on the go by reading its responses in one of five voice options out loud to users.
TechCrunch:
X's audio and video calls, which are on by default, are peer-to-peer, revealing users' IP addresses to each other unless they toggle an enhanced privacy setting  —  The new X calling feature can hurt your privacy  —  In his quest to turn a simple and functioning Twitter app into X …
Financial Times:
UK digital bank Monzo raised $430M led by Alphabet's CapitalG at a $5B valuation, up from $4.5B in December 2021, and plans to use funds to expand in the US  —  London-based digital bank raised $430mn from investors including CapitalG and HongShan  —  Monzo has secured a fresh round …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
At an event, Sergey Brin said Google “definitely messed up” Gemini's image generation debut and it's “not our intention” for Gemini to lean left “in many cases”  —  - Google's Sergey Brin spoke to a roomful of entrepreneurs over the weekend at the “AGI House” in Hillsborough, California.

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Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Lawrence Bonk / Engadget:
Alexa Corse / Wall Street Journal:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac: