Techmeme
April 15, 2024, 5:00 AM

Top News

IDC:
Global smartphone shipments in Q1 2024 grew 7.8% YoY to 289.4M units; iPhone shipments fell 9.6% YoY, more than any other top brand, and Xiaomi grew 33.8% YoY  —  Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , global smartphone shipments increased 7.8% year over year to 289.4 million units in the first quarter of 2024 (1Q24).
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google's new Pixel 9 series, next-generation Pixel Fold, and an under-development 5G tablet will use a new Samsung modem that has satellite connectivity  —  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdwN- WKDVec  —  Most people don't consider the modem when considering buying a new phone, and why should they?
TechCrunch:
Meta is testing its Meta AI chatbot with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger users in India and parts of Africa; Meta announced chatbot plans in February 2023  —  Meta has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with WhatsApp …
Joseph Politano / Apricitas Economics:
An overview of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which shows California's percentage of US tech jobs has continued to steadily decline since 2020  —  The Golden State Used to Dominate Tech Employment—But Its Share of Total US Tech Jobs has Now Fallen to the Lowest Level in a Decade  —  Thanks for reading!
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Elon Musk's xAI previews Grok-1.5 Vision, its first multimodal model, and says the AI model will be available soon to “early testers and existing Grok users”  —  Elon Musk's OpenAI rival has introduced its first multimodal model.  Not only can it understand text …
Hannah Giorgis / The Atlantic:
A look at BlackPlanet, a social network for African Americans that went live in 1999, had ~15M users in 2008, and arguably laid the foundation for Black Twitter  —  Revisiting BlackPlanet, and a lost era when social media was still fun  —  A few years ago, Stephanie Williams and her husband fielded …
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
As Netflix's new film chief Dan Lin takes charge, the company aims to shift its film strategy to focus on audience appeal and cost efficiency  —  Dan Lin, the streaming service's new film chief, wants to produce a more varied slate of movies to better appeal to the array of interests among subscribers.
Anuj Ahooja / augment:
An experiment to see how a Threads feed would work on Mastodon, using lists and testing third-party clients, which shows the bright future of the fediverse  —  This is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences …
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:
Sources detail how Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell, who recently proposed a privacy bill, has undermined privacy negotiations for years  —  Many aides say Maria Cantwell, a powerful Democratic leader, has repeatedly upended privacy negotiations.
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Bluesky says it is now allowing heads of state to sign up, and adds features including hashtags in profile bios and the ability to long press a link to share  —  Bluesky is apparently ready for a bigger challenge.  It says it's allowing heads of state to sign up now, a little over two months after it opened for general signups.
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Airchat, Naval Ravikant's social media app built around audio recordings, which the app transcribes, relaunches on iOS and Android; the app is invite-only  —  Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”  —  A previous version of Airchat was released last year …

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