Techmeme
March 30, 2024, 8:15 AM

Top News

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers find malicious code in versions of the compression tool XZ Utils that were incorporated into Linux distributions from Red Hat, Debian, and others  —  Malicious code planted in xz Utils has been circulating for more than a month.  —  Researchers have found a malicious backdoor …
More: Evan Boehs, Red Hat, Cybersecurity …, oss-security, lcamtuf's thing, Debian bug tracking system, LWN.net, Debian Mailing Lists, Arch Linux, openSUSE News, The Register, BleepingComputer, The Record, Cyber Kendra, The Stack, Hackaday, Help Net Security, Gist, SC Media, Dark Reading, The Hacker News, Decipher, 9to5Linux, The Stack, CRN, BetaNews, CRN, and OSnews
The Information:
Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI are planning a $100B data center project with a US-based supercomputer dubbed “Stargate” to power OpenAI's products  —  Executives at Microsoft and OpenAI have been drawing up plans for a data center project that would contain a supercomputer …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: Amazon's AGI team is aiming to outperform Anthropic's latest Claude models by the middle of 2024 using the company's forthcoming LLM, codenamed Olympus  —  This week, Amazon completed the second phase of a deal announced last September, when it committed to investing up to $4 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic.
Eric Benjamin Seufert / Mobile Dev Memo:
EU's hostility towards Meta's “Pay or Okay” model is misguided as the model does not force users to use Meta's platforms and it has been deemed GDPR compliant  —  On Monday, the European Commission announced that it is launching investigations into Alphabet, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
LinkedIn confirms testing a new TikTok-like short-form video feed; a demo shows a Video tab in LinkedIn app's navigation bar  —  LinkedIn is testing a new TikTok-like short-form video feed, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday.  With this new test, LinkedIn joins numerous …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI debuts Voice Engine, which lets users generate synthetic copy of a voice from a 15-second sample, available to around 100 partners, including HeyGen  —  As deepfakes proliferate, OpenAI is refining the tech used to clone voices — but the company insists it's doing so responsibly.
Axios:
Source: the US House set a strict ban on congressional staffers' use of Microsoft Copilot; Microsoft hopes its upcoming tools will address the House's concerns  —  - The House last June restricted staffers' use of ChatGPT, allowing limited use of the paid subscription version while banning the free version.
Victoria Song / The Verge:
As Gmail turns 20 on April 1, a look at its impact on online communication and its future as other messaging apps have come to dominate how we communicate  —  Gmail revolutionized email with fast search and a whole gigabyte of storage.  But where's it headed next?
Colin Lecher / The City:
NYC's Microsoft-powered MyCity chatbot, launched as a pilot program last October, often gives inaccurate info, including telling businesses to break the law  —  The Microsoft-powered bot says bosses can take worker's tips and that landlords can discriminate based on source of income.  That's not right.
Frank Landymore / Futurism:
Many of Amazon's Kindles are displaying ads for blatantly AI-generated books on the lock screen, with some appearing to be flagrant copies of existing works  —  “I've never minded the ads on them... until they became flooded with AI-generated books.”  —  Amazon has been a huge staging ground …
Candice L. Odgers / Nature:
There is no evidence that using social media is driving an epidemic of mental illness and blaming it can distract from effectively responding to the real causes  —  The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt Allen Lane (2024)
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
Several legal experts say Section 230 will not protect firms from lawsuits over the outputs of generative AI, echoing SCOTUS Justice Gorsuch's 2023 statement  —  Legal scholars, lawmakers and at least one Supreme Court justice agree that companies will be liable for the things their AIs say and do …

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More News

Knowing Machines:
Keumars Afifi-Sabet / LiveScience:
Darius Rafieyan / Business Insider:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:

Earlier Picks

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:
Steve Banker / Forbes:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: