Techmeme
April 12, 2024, 8:40 PM

Top News

Jaffer Zaidi / The Keyword:
Google tests removing links to CA news sites to measure the impact of the California Journalism Preservation Act and pauses investments in the CA news ecosystem  —  A pending bill in the California state legislature, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), would create a “link tax” …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI gives premium ChatGPT users access to an updated GPT-4 Turbo, promising “more direct, less verbose” responses that “use more conversational language”  —  ChatGPT, OpenAI's viral AI-powered chatbot, just got a big upgrade.  —  OpenAI announced today …
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Palo Alto Networks alerts customers that hackers are exploiting a zero-day in its popular GlobalProtect VPN product and promises a patch by April 14  —  Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks is alerting customers that a zero-day vulnerability in its firewall tool is being exploited by hackers.
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:
A US judge sentences ex-Amazon security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed to three years in prison for stealing $12.3M+ from Nirvana and another crypto exchange in 2022  —  - Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced Friday for hacking smart contracts  — Ahmed admitted to stealing $12 million from two platforms
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Roku says hackers accessed ~576K accounts using credential stuffing, and made purchases in ~400 cases, after a similar breach affecting ~15K accounts in March  —  The new security incident was discovered a month after the company learned that 15,000 accounts were impacted in a similar breach.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft starts testing ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 in the Insider builds in the US, and says the app promotions can be disabled in Settings  —  Microsoft says it's starting to test ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11.  The software maker will use the Recommended section of the Start menu …
Reuters:
A UK judge throws out Apple's motion to dismiss a ~$979M lawsuit representing 1,500+ UK-based developers alleging that the App Store's 30% commission is unfair  —  Apple (AAPL.O) on Friday lost a bid to throw out a mass lawsuit valued at just under $1 billion, brought in London on behalf …
Mike Scarcella / Reuters:
Epic asks a US court to require Google to allow alt app stores in Play Store and limit Google's ability to restrict alt app store preloading on Android phones  —  “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games has urged a federal judge in California to force Google (GOOGL.O) to open up its Play Store …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Meta is testing an AI-powered search bar in Instagram to let users chat with Meta AI and discover content  —  Meta is pushing ahead with its efforts to make its generative AI-powered products available to more users.  Apart from testing Meta AI chatbot with users in countries like India on WhatsApp …
Liza Lin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: earlier in 2024, China told its largest telecom carriers to phase out foreign chips from their networking equipment by 2027, in a blow to Intel and AMD  —  Beijing's move is the latest installment in a U.S.-China technology war that is splintering the global chip industry
Bloomberg:
Adobe used images created by tools like Midjourney and uploaded to its stock marketplace by users, to train Firefly; Adobe says ~5% of images were AI-generated  —  Company promotes its tool as safe from content scraped from the internet.  —  When Adobe Inc. released its Firefly image-generating software …
Jamie Grierson / The Guardian:
As Meta lowers the minimum age for WhatsApp users from 16 to 13 in the UK and EU, after announcing the move in February, child safety groups criticize the move  —  Child safety group says Meta ‘putting profits before protecting children’, as messaging app lowers age limit from 16
Hannah Miller / Bloomberg:
Berachain, a bear-themed crypto project building a Layer 1 blockchain, raised a $100M Series B through a SAFT, a simple agreement for future tokens  —  - The platform positions itself as a community-driven blockchain  — Funds will be used to expand international footprint

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