Techmeme: Q&A with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston on adding AI tools, evolving beyond file syncing, rejecting Steve Jobs' acquisition bid, cloud storage, remote work, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

Top News

Global smartphone shipments grew 7.8% YoY to 289.4M in Q1 2024; iPhone fell 9.6% YoY, more than all top brands, Xiaomi grew 33.8% YoY, and Samsung retook first — 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).

Financial Times:

The US awards Samsung up to $6.4B in CHIPS Act funding and says the company plans to make 2nm chips at its Taylor, Texas plant by 2026, two years ahead of TSMC — South Korean group set to outdo rival TSMC with cutting-edge 2nm chip production in US by 2026 as part of $40bn investment

Bloomberg:

OpenAI opens a Tokyo office, releases a Japanese language GPT-4 model, and taps former President of AWS Japan Tadao Nagasaki to woo enterprises in the country — OpenAI named the former president of Amazon Web Services's Japan arm to spearhead its push to woo enterprise clients in the world's fourth-largest economy.

More: OpenAI, TechCrunch, GeekWire, Silicon Republic, Tech in Asia, Maginative, Cybernews.com, The Verge, CNBC, MSPoweruser, and Reuters

X: @openai, @allgarbled, @borismpower, and @dyett

Stephen Nellis / Reuters:

Adobe says it is in the early stages of developing a way to let Premiere Pro users tap AI models from OpenAI, Runway, and Pika Labs to generate and use video — Adobe (ADBE.O) on Monday said it is in the early stages of allowing the use of third-party generative artificial intelligence tools …

More: The Adobe Blog, Tech Monitor, Adobe Press Releases, The Information, AppleInsider, ZDNet, Engadget, The Verge, The Decoder, CoinGape, WinBuzzer, and Tom's Guide

Alex Koller / CNBC:

Adobe releases Acrobat AI Assistant to summarize documents and answer questions about them for $4.99/month, an “early access” rate, and a mobile version in beta

More: Thurrott, Adobe Press Releases, PCMag, and Inc.com

Bloomberg:

As Microsoft begins its most ambitious security reboot in two decades, critics question if the company has sufficient incentive to make deep and lasting changes — Company has embarked on biggest security reboot in two decades, but critics question whether it has wherewithal to complete the job.

More: Wired and Dark Reading

X: @kimzetter and @ericgeller. Forums: r/technology

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Q&A with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston on adding AI tools, evolving beyond file syncing, rejecting Steve Jobs' acquisition bid, cloud storage, remote work, and more — Leaders can't ‘keep mashing the go back to 2019 button.’ — Today, I'm talking with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston.

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:

An interview with Framework CEO Nirav Patel on ongoing firmware and software issues with its repairable laptops, the promised fixes, Compal and Insyde, and more — New features, security updates, and Linux support are all on a long to-do list. — Since Framework showed off its first prototypes …

Forums: Hacker News, r/hardware, r/framework, and Ars OpenForum

Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:

Source: a16z closed $7.2B for its newest set of funds, with allocations for AI infrastructure, AI apps, its “American Dynamism” strategy, and more — - About half of the targeted capital was aimed for its growth fund. — Instead of dedicated seed or early-stage funds …

More: San Francisco Business Times

Meta:

Meta plans to temporarily shut down Threads in Turkey from April 29 to comply with a TCA interim order prohibiting data sharing between Threads and Instagram — To comply with an interim order of the Rekabet Kurumu/Turkish Competition Authority (TCA), we will shut down Threads in Türkiye from Monday 29 April.

More: Engadget, 9to5Google, TechCrunch, Cybernews.com, Neowin, The Verge, MSPoweruser, Balkan Insight, Bloomberg, Reuters, Turkish Minute, Tech Xplore, and Daily Sabah

Alexandra Sternlicht / Fortune:

Sources detail how China-based ByteDance and US TikTok operations remain intertwined, with some US staff effectively reporting to ByteDance, data sharing, more — In January, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced an intense grilling by skeptical U.S. lawmakers about his company's ties to Beijing and its alleged risk to national security.

More: The Daily Caller

Tony Romm / Washington Post:

AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon quietly lobby to weaken a $42.5B program to improve US internet access, aiming to block new rules on poor customers' bills — As Washington readies the largest burst of broadband funding in U.S. history, AT&T, Verizon and their allies are lobbying hard against lower prices for consumers

Mastodon: @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social. X: @tonyromm, @tonyromm, and @tonyromm. Forums: Slashdot

David Pan / Bloomberg:

Bitcoin's next halving, set for around April 20, will cut miners' earnings for validating transactions from 900 BTC to 450, costing them ~$10B in annual revenue — - Cryptocurrency's update will slash new supply in late April — Competition for favorable electric rates growing from AI firms

More: Blockworks, The Block, The Crypto Times, Cybernews.com, Cointelegraph, CoinGape, Cryptonews, Coinspeaker, and crypto.news

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Enhancements to Zoho Writer's automation flow designer: New PDF operations, password protection, and more — Once we rolled out the automation flow designer in Zoho Writer's merge templates …

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