Techmeme
May 17, 2023, 10:35 AM

Top News

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
A federal judge in the Ripple lawsuit rules the US SEC cannot seal docs tied to former official William Hinman, who said ether isn't a security in a 2018 speech  —  The order deals a blow to the SEC in its longstanding procedural fight against Ripple.  —  A federal judge ruled …
Ryan Weeks / The Block:
CNBC:
In an interview, Elon Musk discussed acquiring Twitter, defended his inflammatory tweets, called tech workers the “laptop class living in la-la-land”, and more  —  Tesla CEO Elon Musk sat down for a sprawling interview with CNBC anchor David Faber on Tuesday following .
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google updates its inactivity policy: accounts inactive for at least two years will be deleted, except for those with YouTube videos, starting in December 2023  —  In 2020, Google said it would remove content stored in an inactive account (but not the account itself) to preserve storage space.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Cybersecurity researchers and IT admins raise concerns over Google's new .zip and .mov TLDs, warning that threat actors could use them for phishing and malware  —  Cybersecurity researchers and IT admins have raised concerns over Google's new ZIP and MOV Internet domains …
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Symantec says the advanced persistent threat Lancefly used custom malware to attack Asian governments, telcos, and other organizations from mid-2022 to Q1 2023  —  A government-backed hacking group known as “Lancefly” has been seen using custom-made malware to attack governments, telecoms and other organizations across Asia.
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Researchers bought 228 phones from PropertyRoom.com, a top auction house for US police departments, and found many had not been wiped and had no PIN or passcode  —  Countless smartphones seized in arrests and searches by police forces across the United States are being auctioned online without …
Judith Bannermanquist / Cointelegraph:
Crypto wallet startup Ledger faces criticism after unveiling an optional seed phrase recovery subscription service that some security experts say is insecure  —  Many members of the crypto community believe Ledger's latest seed phrase recovery feature is a bad idea.  —  362 Total views
Tech Transparency Project:
Researchers find that YouTube recommends videos on guns and school shootings to young gamers, despite the platform's policies against “violent or gory content”  —  YouTube says it delivers ‘responsible’ video recommendations.  But its algorithms steered accounts …
Kevin Purdy / Ars Technica:
Belkin says the company won't patch a buffer overflow vulnerability in the Wemo Mini Smart Plug V2 disclosed on March 14 as the device is at the end of its life  —  Tricking a plug with a too-long name could lead to buffer overflows, injections.  —  I once co-owned a coworking space.
Financial Times:
Sources: Volkswagen held talks to use Huawei software in its cars in China, after its software unit Cariad missed its development goals and exceeded its budget  —  Turmoil at German carmaker's in-house software arm threatens to affect market share  —  Volkswagen has held talks …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple touts $2B+ in App Store fraud stopped in 2022, nearly 3.9M stolen credit cards blocked, 147M+ ratings/reviews removed, and 428K developer accounts closed  —  Apple is out with a new press release today touting the success of the App Store's ability to prevent fraud.
Richard Waters / Financial Times:
Tech companies are racing to run generative AI natively on mobile devices to reduce computing costs, but face hurdles like limited memory and processing power  —  Tech companies seek processing power in handsets to reduce computing costs and improve speed of AI chatbots
Washington Post:
The US announces charges, sanctions, and a $10M reward for info leading to the arrest of Russian national Mikhail Matveev, a Babuk ransomware campaign suspect  —  The Justice, Treasury and State departments announced a crackdown on suspect Mikhail Matveev, with economic sanctions and a $10 million reward for his arrest
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
The US DOJ alleges former Apple engineer Weibao Wang stole Apple's autonomous tech, including source code, for a Chinese company working on a self-driving car  —  - Weibao Wang was charged with six counts of theft or attempted theft by prosecutors, who allege he stole troves of source code …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Instagram adds support for GIFs in comments on posts and Reels, plans to launch a lyrics feature for Reels, and will roll out Instagram Gifts in India  —  On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg held a chat with Instagram head Adam Mosseri as part of the company launching collaboration feature on broadcast channels.
Reuters:
Since April 6, the Cyberspace Administration of China closed 107K online accounts of counterfeit news outlets and anchors and removed 835K pieces of content  —  China has intensified efforts to clean up the internet from false news and rumours, closing more than 100,000 online accounts …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
IBM acquires cloud data protection startup Polar Security, a source says for ~$60M, and plans to integrate Polar into its Guardium unit, itself acquired in 2019  —  Update: IBM has now confirmed the news and said Polar will be integrated into its Guardium unit (itself based on an acquisition from way back in 2009).

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Command Line:
GitHub Universe 2026: Highlights from the developer's developer conference  —  Copilot Fusion was the belle of the ball, but the hero at the heart of the two-day event was the developer community.
Zoho:
Introducing the new Zoho Analytics: Agentic analytics for every business  —  We're excited to announce the launch of the new Zoho Analytics!  This release marks a major shift for the product …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:35 AM ET, May 17, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Chris Welch / The Verge:
CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: