Techmeme
April 3, 2024, 3:55 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Memo: AWS plans to cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization, and a few hundred in its Physical Stores Technology team  —  Amazon Web Services will cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization …
Debby Wu / Bloomberg:
TSMC expects to resume production overnight after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, Taiwan's biggest in 25 years, and says “there is no damage to our critical tools”  —  - Chipmakers move some staff off of unspecified operation areas  — The earthquake rocked Taiwan and triggered tsunami warnings
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft and Quantinuum detail a breakthrough in quantum error correction, helping run 14,000+ experiments with no errors, an issue that has vexed the industry  —  Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction.  Using Quantinuum's ion-trap hardware …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Spotify plans to raise prices by $1 to $2 per month in the UK, Australia, Pakistan, and two other markets by the end of April, and the US later in 2024  —  - The audio service will raise prices in a few major markets  — Spotify will create new plan that doesn't include audiobooks
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says Windows 10 security updates will cost $61 per device for the first year, doubling for the next two years, after ending support in October 2025  —  Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 on October 14th, 2025, and you'll need to pay yearly if you want to continue using the operating system securely.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Opera now lets Opera One users download and run 150 LLMs from ~50 families locally, like Meta's Llama and Google's Gemma, via the Ollama open-source framework  —  Web browser company Opera announced today it will now allow users to download and use Large Language Models (LLMs) locally on their computer.
Emilia David / The Verge:
Stability AI releases Stable Audio 2.0, which lets users create three-minute sound clips from copyright-free audio samples, available for free via its website  —  Stable Audio 2., an audio generation model for Stability AI, now lets users upload their own audio samples which they can then …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
WhatsApp appears to be experiencing a global outage, preventing users from exchanging messages; Facebook Messenger and Instagram are also experiencing issues  —  WhatsApp appears to be experiencing a global outage, preventing users from sending or receiving messages, while other Meta apps …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Newzoo: PC and console game revenue grew 2.6% YoY to $93.5B in 2023, but average quarterly playtime hours fell 26% from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023  —  The PC and console market grew 2.6% in 2023, but playtime hours fell during the year, according to the second annual report on the market-by-market researcher Newzoo.
Wired:
A look at XZ Utils attacker “Jia Tan”, a persona experts say nation-state hackers used that left little trace after working on the project since November 2021  —  The thwarted XZ Utils supply chain attack was years in the making.  Now, clues suggest nation-state hackers were behind …
Russ Cox / research!rsc:
David Shepardson / Reuters:
The US FCC plans to vote on April 25 to restore net neutrality rules and assume regulatory oversight of broadband internet that former President Trump rescinded  —  The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight …
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
EU removes from draft rules a requirement that non-EU cloud providers must set up a joint venture with an EU company to qualify for an EU cybersecurity label  —  Amazon (AMZN.O), Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google and Microsoft (MSFT.O) may find it easier to bid for EU cloud computing contracts …
More: Euractiv
Michael Kan / PCMag:
Google details Device Bound Session Credentials, a Chrome feature that uses a PC's TPM chip to try to stop cookie theft, available in some Chrome beta versions  —  ‘Device Bound Session Credentials’ will tap the TPM chip in today's PCs.  Google is testing it with some users running the beta version of Chrome.
New York Times:
An interview with Oren Etzioni, the former CEO of Allen Institute for AI, on his nonprofit TrueMedia.org, which offers free tools for identifying deepfakes  —  Oren Etzioni worries A.I.-generated fakes could overwhelm upcoming elections.Kyle Johnson for The New York Times

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
The best time to become a Zoho Partner  —  The business world is not only changing but it is being rebuilt.  Customers want connected ecosystems that will help them automate, unify their data, and do more with less.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
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:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
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.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:55 PM ET, April 3, 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.

More News

Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review:

Earlier Picks

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: