Techmeme
March 9, 2023, 4:10 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Silicon Valley Bank launches a $2.25B share sale after losing ~$1.8B on its ~$21B portfolio of US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities; SIVB drops 50%+  —  Technology-focused lender suffered loss on $21bn portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities
Alex Hern / The Guardian:
Meta's Head of WhatsApp, Will Cathcart, says the service would refuse to comply with the UK's Online Safety Bill requirements to remove end-to-end encryption  —  Meta's head of chat app says it would not comply with the requirements set out in online safety bill
Jay Peters / The Verge:
The UK's CMA filings: Microsoft details how Call of Duty games could run on the Nintendo Switch, citing an “optimized” game engine and the success of past ports  —  In a filing (pdf) submitted to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Microsoft shared some details …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple unveils a standalone classical music iPhone app with 5M+ tracks and more, available for pre-order now to Apple Music subscribers and launching on March 28  —  Apple is launching a new music streaming service focused on classical music.  Based on its 2021 acquisition …
Washington Post:
An investigation details how a group of conservative Colorado Catholics bought mobile app tracking data for millions to identify priests using gay dating apps  —  A group of philanthropists poured money into a Denver nonprofit that obtained dating and hookup app data and shared it with bishops around …
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Grammarly announces GrammarlyGO, a generative AI tool that can write and rewrite content in a user's style, coming to all users via a beta program in April 2023  —  Generative AI was made popular by ChatGPT at the end of 2022, and for the first few months of 2023, the floodgates have opened up for the technology.
Yusuf Mehdi / Bing Blogs:
Microsoft says Bing crossed 100M DAUs, driven by the new Bing preview's millions of active users, of which roughly a third are new to the search engine  —  It's hard to believe it's been just over a month since we released the new AI-powered Bing and Edge to the world as your copilot for the web.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord starts testing upgrading its Clyde bot into a ChatGPT-powered chatbot and AI features such as conversation summaries and tools for moderating servers  —  Discord is now using OpenAI's ChatGPT technology to transform its existing Clyde bot into a talkative chatbot.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft makes ChatGPT available in its Azure OpenAI service, letting developers and businesses add the LLM to their apps, priced at $0.002 for 1,000 tokens  —  Microsoft is making ChatGPT available in its own Azure OpenAI service today.  Developers and businesses will now be able …
Jesselyn Cook / NBC News:
Investigation: some Pinterest users are creating sex-themed image boards of kids and the company's algorithm surfaces such content for adults who seek it out  —  Like other kids her age, 9-year-old Victoria signed up for Pinterest because she wasn't allowed on TikTok.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
The White House's proposed budget is set to include a provision closing tax loss harvesting on crypto transactions, with the change expected to raise up to $24B  —  The U.S. President is expected to unveil his budget proposal on Thursday.  —  U.S. President Joe Biden's proposed budget …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Epic Games starts letting developers self-publish to the Epic Games Store, taking a 12% game sales commission and no IAP cut if they use their own payment tool  —  Epic Games is finally going to let developers self-publish games to the Epic Games Store beginning Thursday.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
The FBI is investigating a data breach of DC Health Link servers impacting thousands, including US House members and staff; some data is already for sale online  —  The FBI is investigating a data breach affecting U.S. House of Representatives members and staff after their account …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: ahead of a March 16 launch, Baidu hurries to ready its ChatGPT-style Ernie Bot, which struggles with basic tasks, to get ahead of its Chinese rivals  —  Employees working round-the-clock say the AI chatbot, dubbed Ernie Bot, is still in training mode before a planned March 16 rollout
Dell Cameron / Wired:
In a first, the FBI acknowledges buying US location data, which Director Christopher Wray says was for a national security pilot project that's no longer active  —  Rather than obtaining a warrant, the bureau purchased sensitive data—a controversial practice that privacy advocates say is deeply problematic.
Financial Times:
Sources: Chinese AI surveillance companies iFlytek and SenseTime are evading US sanctions to access high-end chips via cloud providers and other intermediaries  —  AI surveillance groups targeted with US sanctions have found other ways to access restricted technology

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Christiana Loureiro / The Block: