Techmeme
August 21, 2023, 5:10 PM

Top News

Ronan Farrow / New Yorker:
Interviews with 30+ of Elon Musk's colleagues and dozens of others detail his growing power, childhood, career, politics, role in Russia's Ukraine war, and more  —  How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in.
Craig Trudell / Bloomberg:
Report: before tweeting a pro-Russia Ukraine peace plan, Elon Musk said he had Kremlin consultations; he also told the US of a Putin call but publicly denied it  —  - Magazine reports on October conversation with top official  — The SpaceX CEO later denied speaking with Russian president
More: Insider and UPROXX
Mastodon: @[email protected]Bluesky: @andimann.bsky.socialX: @mehdirhasan and @businessForums: r/politics
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
YouTube and Universal Music Group partner to explore new products, using music in AI tools, and paying artists whose work is used to make AI-generated content  —  YouTube has recruited Frank Sinatra's estate and other Universal Music Group UMG .39%increase; green up pointing triangle acts …
Dana Hull / Bloomberg:
Maine's attorney general says Tesla's May 2023 data breach impacted 75,735 people, included employee-related records, and was a result of “insider wrongdoing”  —  - Data breach included employee-related records, Maine AG says  — Tesla says two former employees shared info with Handelsblatt
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Friend.tech, which lets people use crypto to buy “shares” of X accounts, hits 100K users, per a database of wallet addresses that has raised privacy concerns  —  The growth correlates with the more than $25 million in revenue generated by the platform since its Aug. 10 launch.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple adds Subscription Analytics to Podcasts, adds more hosts to Delegated Delivery, and integrates its podcast analytics into Linkfire's marketing platform  —  Apple announced today several new updates to its podcast creator tools, including, most notably, the addition …
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Interviews with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, CTO Kevin Scott, and other Microsoft executives on AI, a decade of AI investments, Office Copilots, Bing, and more  —  “In general, I get excited by new things,” says the CEO.  The story of a transformative moment that's been a decade in the making.
More: OnMSFT.comMastodon: @[email protected]X: @mikehofman and @harrymccrackenLinkedIn: Michele Fisher
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Triller's S-1 filing claims the short-form video app has had 550M signups, but Apptopia estimates it has been downloaded just 73.2M times since its 2015 launch  —  TikTok competitor Triller is preparing to go public, but estimates from Apptopia call its self-reported user numbers into question.
Vishal Chawla / The Block:
NFT platform Recur plans to shut down by November 16, 2023, after raising a $50M Series A in September 2021, and migrate the metadata of minted NFTs to the IPFS  —  - NFT platform Recur has decided to close less than two years after raising $50 million in a Series A funding round.
AI Snake Oil:
An August 17 paper on ChatGPT's political biases seems to have many flaws, like poor prompts and testing an older model, but the broader topic merits research  —  A new paper making this claim has many flaws.  But the question merits research.  —  Previous research has shown …

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
How Zoho Workplace makes your Zoho CRM lighter  —  If you use Zoho CRM daily, you already know it's powerful.  It handles pipeline management, forecasting, automation, reporting, and everything that makes …
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

Cheeky Pint:
The 20-year journey to fully autonomous cars with Dmitri Dolgov of Waymo
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Invest Like the Best:
Mitchell Green - Lessons from Cold Calling 10,000 Companies
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
The Silicon Valley Insider In The Pentagon | DoW Emil Michael
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
The art of influence: The single most important skill that AI can't replace | Jessica Fain (Webflow, ex-Slack)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
Live @ Nvidia's nerd Super Bowl, poker takes over tech, and the future of AI banking
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, August 21, 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

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Wall Street Journal:
Dayana Mustak / Bloomberg: