Techmeme
October 20, 2023, 6:35 AM

Top News

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Source: X removed the main New York Times account's “verified” badge on October 17 without notice; source: X traffic to the NYT is down ~50% since August 2023  —  The unexplained decision removes the only symbol distinguishing the news organization from impostors and comes amid …
New York Times:
News publishers scramble to adjust to declining referral traffic, as Meta, X, and even Google become less dependable at amplifying and supporting journalism  —  News organizations are scrambling to adjust to the latest rift in the long-fractious relationship between publishers and tech platforms.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
The US Treasury's FinCEN proposes labeling international crypto mixing as a “primary money laundering concern”, citing its use by Hamas and other illicit actors  —  Under pressure to address reports that Hamas and other terrorist groups are partially funded with crypto …
RT Watson / The Block:
CoinDesk:
Filing: the US SEC drops charges alleging Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Chairman Chris Larsen aided and abetted the company in violating securities laws  —  The regulator had included them as defendants in its securities violation case revolving around XRP transactions, and the agency now says it's just pursuing Ripple for damages.
Mark Hachman / PCWorld:
AMD unveils the Radeon RX 7900M, a rival to Nvidia's RTX 4080 and the first laptop GPU to use a chiplet design, available in Dell's new Alienware m18 laptop  —  It will debut in the new Alienware m18, launching today.  —  AMD is setting its sights on Nvidia's RTX 4080 mobile GPU with the Radeon RX 7900M …
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
New York Times:
Jon Stewart's Apple TV+ show abruptly ends, sources say over creative differences; source: Stewart said potential China and AI topics concerned Apple executives  —  Mr. Stewart and Apple are parting ways because of creative differences over “The Problem,” people with knowledge of the decision said.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
23andMe is investigating a possible new data leak of 4M users' records on BreachForums; the hacker claims the stolen dataset includes info on people from the UK  —  The same hacker who leaked a trove of user data stolen from the genetic testing company 23andMe two weeks ago has now leaked millions of new user records.
Wes Davis / The Verge:
The FCC unanimously approves a petition by Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others for access to the 6GHz band for Wi-Fi tethering for AR and VR headsets  —  The FCC has unanimously approved plans by several tech companies to use the 6GHz band for wireless devices.
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Elon Musk says X plans to launch two new premium tiers: a lower cost tier with all features, but no reduction in ads, and a more expensive tier with no ads  —  Elon Musk today said that X (formerly Twitter) is going to soon launch two new premium tiers, confirming previous reports and code sightings.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
India's Central Bureau of Investigation works with Microsoft and Amazon to raid 76 locations in a nationwide crackdown on tech support scams and crypto fraud  —  India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided 76 locations in a nationwide crackdown on cybercrime operations behind tech support scams and cryptocurrency fraud.
Jim Salter / Associated Press:
The FBI and the DOJ say thousands of IT workers sent by North Korea to work remotely for US companies using false IDs have sent millions in wages to North Korea  —  Thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Product Hunt's CEO says layoffs announced on October 10 were for “strategic” not “financial or company performance reasons”, and impacted ~60% of the team  —  Product Hunt, the product discovery site for smaller startups, apps, tech tools, and developers' side projects, is cleaning house.
Threads: @chris and @carnage4life.  X: @rajivayyangar.  LinkedIn: Daniel Tunkelang
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
OpenAI rolls out DALL-E 3 access to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers, after preparing a safety mitigation stack to ready the model for expanded release  —  OpenAI is launching wider availability of its latest text-to-image generator.  On Thursday, the company is giving ChatGPT Plus …

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More News

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