Techmeme
January 24, 2023, 8:35 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sources: the DOJ is poised to sue Google this week over dominating the US digital ad market, the fifth major US case challenging its business practices  —  The US Justice Department is poised to sue Alphabet Inc.'s Google as soon as Tuesday regarding the search giant's dominance …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's ~$3,000 MR headset will have eye and hand tracking, a 3D iOS-like interface, AR and VR modes, a Mac external display feature, and more  —  Apple Inc.'s long-anticipated mixed-reality headset is an ambitious attempt to create a 3D version of the iPhone's operating system …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
A manager at Activision Blizzard's Blizzard unit, who oversaw World of Warcraft Classic, departs after internally criticizing the company's stack ranking system  —  A manager at video game developer Blizzard Entertainment said he was ousted after refusing to give a low evaluation to an employee …
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
The FBI says North Korea-backed hacking groups Lazarus and APT38 are behind the June 2022 theft of ~$100M in ETH, USDT, and wBTC from Harmony's Horizon bridge  —  Lazarus Group and APT38, both associated with North Korea, are responsible for the attack in June, the agency concluded.
Tiernan Ray / ZDNet:
Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun says ChatGPT is “not particularly innovative” in its underlying techniques and other research labs are doing similar work  —  Much ink has been spilled of late about the tremendous promise of OpenAI's ChatGPT program for generating natural-language utterances in response to human prompts.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amazon launches RxPass, letting US Prime users pay $5 per month to get as many generic versions of medications as needed, starting with drugs for 80 ailments  —  More than two years since announcing Amazon Pharmacy to take some of the prescription drugs business away from big (and smaller) …
Jon Christian / Futurism:
An investigation finds extensive evidence that AI used by CNET appears to have plagiarized the work of competitors and human writers at Bankrate and even CNET  —  CNET's AI-written articles aren't just riddled with errors.  They also appear to be substantially plagiarized.
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
New York-based VC firm Thrive sells a 3.3% stake for ~$175M to Disney CEO Robert Iger and others, valuing Thrive at $5.3B, a rare move to expand its reach  —  Group of five investors is paying about $175 million for 3.3% of venture firm  —  Venture firm Thrive Capital is selling a stake …
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
At a town hall, Sundar Pichai asked staff to stay motivated as Google faces competition in areas like AI and indicated there would be executive bonus cuts  —  - Google CEO Sundar Pichai and executive leaders addressed employee questions at a town hall meeting on Monday after last week's job cuts.
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Binance acknowledges mistakenly storing collateral for some of its tokens in the same wallet as customer funds; reserves for around 47 coins are in one wallet  —  Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest crypto platform, acknowledged that it mistakenly keeps collateral for some of the tokens …
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
How a “stealth address system” using zero-knowledge proofs could improve Ethereum's privacy vs. trying to hide or mix transfers using services like Tornado Cash  —  Special thanks to Ben DiFrancesco, Matt Solomon, Toni Wahrstätter and Antonio Sanso for feedback and review
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
How Esther Crawford, Twitter's director of product management, became one of the most influential leaders from the old guard in Elon Musk's “hardcore” Twitter  —  Days after Elon Musk had completed his $44bn buyout of Twitter, Esther Crawford shared a picture of herself sleeping …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: increased SEC scrutiny of Circle, eToro, Galaxy Digital, and other crypto companies have blocked them from going public in the US over the past year  —  Companies including Circle Internet Financial and eToro have failed to secure the regulator's approval  —  Crypto's Crash Has Been Swift but Largely Self-Contained.
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard's games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23  —  Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc …
Kevin McLaughlin / The Information:
Source: CEO Satya Nadella voiced concerns for years that Microsoft was slow to commercialize its AI research; in 2022, its researchers said rivals seemed ahead  —  For more than a decade, Microsoft Research, the company's in-house research group, has touted artificial intelligence breakthroughs …
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Ben Bajarin / Creative Strategies:
Apple's M2 chips appear to have two subtle upgrades: more efficient high-performance cores and more performant efficiency cores, helping improve battery life  —  Many years ago, I used to give a presentation to business school students specifically about the semiconductor industry.
Chris Welch / The Verge:

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