Techmeme
August 23, 2023, 2:55 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sony unveils the PlayStation Portal, an 8-inch handheld console that can stream games from a PS5 over Wi-Fi in 1080p at 60fps, available later in 2023 for $200  —  Sony is officially launching its portable PlayStation later this year, the PlayStation Portal remote player.
Bo Moore / IGN:
Hands-on with Sony PlayStation Portal: a slightly weird design but lighter than the Switch, expansive and vibrant 60Hz LCD screen, no Bluetooth, and needs a PS5  —  PlayStation Portal-ble  —  Sony has a storied, if a bit neglected, history with handheld gaming.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sony announces the $200 Pulse Explore headphones, utilizing its new PlayStation Link tech to connect to the Portal and offer low-latency performance  —  In addition to announcing the price of its upcoming PlayStation Portal remote gaming gadget, Sony also shared new details today …
Ryan Weeks / The Block:
The FBI details North Korea's Lazarus-tied actors, responsible for the Alphapo, CoinsPaid, and Atomic Wallet hacks, and says they may try to sell $40M+ in BTC  —  - The warning, issued today, comes after a series of high profile crypto heists carried out by North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group in recent years.
Katherine Ross / Blockworks:
The US DOJ charges Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm, of Auburn, WA, and Roman Semenov, a Russian national, with money laundering and sanctions violations  —  The inclusion of the Tornado Cash co-founder on the list marks an escalation of the US government's previous investigations into the crypto mixer
Joe Tidy / BBC:
A UK court finds that 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj and a 17-year-old were part of Lapsus$, which hacked many companies, including Uber, Nvidia, and Rockstar in 2022  —  A court has found an 18-year-old from Oxford was a part of an international cyber-crime gang responsible for a hacking spree against major tech firms
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
IBM unveils watsonx Code Assistant for IBM Z, which uses a code-generating AI model to translate COBOL into Java, and aims for general availability in Q4 2023  —  COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, is one of the oldest programming languages in use, dating back to around 1959.
Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware:
Qualcomm updates its lineup of processors designed for gaming handhelds, adding the G1 and G2 chips for cheaper devices and the flagship Snapdragon G3x Gen 2  —  Three tiers of chips, anchored by the new G3x Gen 2  —  Qualcomm is updating its lineup of processors designed for dedicated gaming handhelds …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
The AirPods Max can malfunction or entirely stop working due to users' sweat or condensation inside the earcups, an issue Apple has not publicly acknowledged  —  Apple's $550 flagship headphones have a problem: They can malfunction, or suddenly stop working entirely, because of users' sweat …
Elizabeth Napolitano / CoinDesk:
A US judge sentences former OpenSea executive Nate Chastain to three months for making $50K+ via insider trading of NFTs to be featured on OpenSea's homepage  —  Chastain was found guilty on charges of buying and selling NFTs from collections he knew would later be featured on his former company's home page.
Laura Noonan / Financial Times:
Bank for International Settlements: crypto has amplified, rather than reduced, financial risks in less developed economies, offering only an “illusory” appeal  —  Currency's appeal as a low-cost solution for countries with high inflation is ‘illusory’, says BIS
Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: despite scaling back in Russia in 2022, Binance still handles substantial ruble trading volumes, helping clients evade US sanctions via intermediaries  —  Binance is helping Russians move money abroad, potentially adding to its sprawling legal problems in the U.S. The cryptocurrency giant …
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Binance.US partners with MoonPay to let its users buy USDT using a debit card, a credit card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay; MoonPay plans to perform KYC checks  —  - Payment partnership allows users to convert dollars to Tether  — Exchange has been unable to process users' dollars directly
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Antenna: Netflix added ~2.6M new US users in July, more than any other paid streaming service but down 26% from June 2023; ~23% signed up for Netflix's ad tier  —  - The streaming service had more sign-ups than any other in July  — Netflix user growth in the US had stopped in recent years
Elad Gil / Elad Blog:
LLMs, Transformers, and diffusion models represent an entirely new AI era and discontinuity from the past machine learning capabilities of the CNN/RNN/GAN world  —  Rather then view LLMs, Transformers, and diffusion models as part of a continuum with past “AI”, it is worth thinking …
Bloomberg:
SIA: Huawei is building secret chip fabrication facilities across China that would let the company skirt US sanctions, and is receiving ~$30B in state funding  —  - Tech giant is reportedly getting $30 billion in state support  — Biden administration monitoring and ready to take action
Kevin Jiang / Toronto Star:
Experts warn that Meta, and possibly Google, blocking trusted news outlets in Canada will worsen misinformation as the world nears a “precipice” of AI content  —  As it becomes increasingly difficult to trust what we read online, experts say it's critical to learn how to tell real media from fake — here's how.
Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:
LinkedIn is benefiting from recent social media upheavals, as the only place where old-school self-promotion still works; sharing was up 41% YoY in spring 2023  —  The professional network is benefiting from upheavals elsewhere in the social media landscape.  —  The biggest social media platforms all have their niches.

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Earlier Picks

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Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
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Tom Warren / The Verge: