Techmeme
August 23, 2023, 12:55 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 $200 Pulse Explore headphones, utilizing its new PlayStation Link tech to connect to the Portal and offer low-latency performance  —  In addition to announcing the price of its upcoming PlayStation Portal remote gaming gadget, Sony also shared new details today …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
IBM unveils watsonx Code Assistant for IBM Z, which uses a code-generating AI model to translate COBOL code into Java, set for general availability in Q4 2023  —  COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, is one of the oldest programming languages in use, dating back to around 1959.
Joe Tidy / BBC:
A UK court finds 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj and a 17-year-old were part of Lapsus$, the group that hacked Uber, Nvidia, and Rockstar Games in 2021 and 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
Wall Street Journal:
Investigation: despite scaling back in Russia in 2022, Binance continues to handle substantial ruble trading, helping clients evade sanctions via intermediaries  —  Binance is helping Russians move money abroad, potentially adding to its sprawling legal problems in the U.S. The cryptocurrency giant …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
AirPods Max can malfunction or suddenly stop working because of users' sweat or condensation inside of 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 …
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
Elizabeth Napolitano / CoinDesk:
A US judge sentences ex-OpenSea product head Nate Chastain to three months in prison for making ~$50K via insider trades, in the first NFT insider trading case  —  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.
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
Yueqi Yang / Bloomberg:
Binance.US partners with MoonPay to let users use debit or credit cards and Apple Pay or Google Pay to buy Tether, which can then be used to buy other tokens  —  - Payment partnership allows users to convert dollars to Tether  — Exchange has been unable to process users' dollars directly
Elad Gil / Elad Blog:
LLMs, Transformers, and diffusion models represent an entirely new era for AI and discontinuity from the past 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 of this as an entirely new era and discontinuity from the past
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
An analysis of Google's policy dilemma as YouTube and UMG explore AI licensing, Google scrapes the web to train its AI, and lawsuits could upend copyright law  —  Google has made clear it is going to use the open web to inform and create anything it wants, and nothing can get in its way.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI adds fine-tuning to GPT-3.5 Turbo, letting developers customize models with their own data to make them perform better for their use cases for a fee  —  OpenAI customers can now bring custom data to the lightweight version of GPT-3.5, GPT-3.5 Turbo — making it easier to improve …
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.
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
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica:
3D printer maker Bambu Lab blames a cloud connection for an August 15 issue that caused some of its customers' devices to start printing without their consent  —  Bambu Lab says it will help with repairs, replacement parts.  —  Imagine waking in the middle of the night to the sound of your 3D printer, printing away.

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
3 bold predictions for the future of Product Management  —  Do you know how to set up your product organization for success as you embrace AI transformation to supercharge your operations?  Learn how to win with Airtable.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Introducing the Month-Year field in Zoho Forms  —  Zoho Forms is continuously evolving to meet the diverse needs of its users.  Whether you are organizing events or managing project timelines, precise date selection is often critical.
Notion:
Get up to 6 months free of Notion with unlimited AI  —  Notion is trusted and loved by thousands of startups as their connected workspace—from building product roadmaps to tracking fundraising.  Build and scale your company with one tool!
Techmeme Ride Home:
Tue. 10/15 - Tech Going Nuclear
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:55 PM ET, August 23, 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

Ryan Weeks / The Block:
Ioannis Kouvakas / Just Security:

Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Makena Kelly / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Dave James / PC Gamer:
Tom Warren / The Verge: