Techmeme
November 17, 2023, 2:30 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Internal memo: Amazon plans to cut “several hundred roles” in its Alexa division as part of a broader shift in business priorities and a focus on generative AI  —  Amazon will eliminate several hundred roles in its Alexa division as part of a broader shift in priorities and a focus …
Nicholas Vinocur / Politico:
Internal note: the European Commission plans to “temporarily suspend” X advertising over widespread disinformation concerns and to avoid “reputational damage”  —  Ads on Musk-owned social media site risk causing ‘reputational damage’ to the EU, its executive says in internal note.
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
IBM suspends its advertising on X globally after Media Matters said X has been placing ads for IBM, Apple, Oracle, and others alongside pro-Nazi material  —  Tech company's move is the latest setback to Linda Yaccarino's efforts to convince brands Elon Musk's platform is safe
More: New York Times, The Verge, Media Matters for America, NBC News, Reuters, X Out Hate, Variety, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Ars Technica, Fortune, Axios, The Guardian, Mercury News, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Euronews, Techdirt, TIME, CNBC, CNBC, The Messenger, Semafor Tech, Fortune, WRAL TechWire, Newser, Reclaim The Net, Silicon Republic, Android Headlines, TechSpot, Tech Xplore, Pixel Envy, Business Post, BBC, The Information, Rolling Stone, Mashable, Deadline, and Rolling Stone
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple plans to show green bubbles for RCS messages and keep iMessages blue to denote what the company considers is the most secure way for iPhone users to text  —  Earlier today, Apple announced its plans to bring RCS support to the iPhone in 2024.  Since I published my story on the news this morning …
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Meta unveils new AI tools to edit images and generate videos from text instructions, based on Emu, its model for image generation announced in September 2023  —  Artificial intelligence researchers from Meta Platforms Inc. said today they have made significant advances in AI-powered image and video generation.
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Coinbase updates Coinbase Commerce with its new open-source Onchain Payment Protocol, which offers instant settlement, low fees, and broad asset support  —  - Coinbase has built an open source “Onchain Payment Protocol” to improve its Commerce product.  — The protocol currently supports Ethereum, Polygon and Base ecosystems.
Martin Coulter / Reuters:
The EU Court of Justice says Apple filed a legal case contesting the European Commission's decisions under the DMA; Meta and TikTok separately filed cases too  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has filed a legal case contesting decisions taken by the European Commission under its recently-introduced Digital Markets Act …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
The FBI and the CISA release an advisory detailing the tactics used by Scattered Spider, a hacker group that now collaborates with the BlackCat ransomware group  —  The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released an advisory …
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: Google told some cloud customers not to expect Gemini access until Q1 2024, after previously saying they would get access to the LLM by November 2023  —  Google's company-defining effort to catch up to ChatGPT creator OpenAI is turning out to be harder than expected.
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
MeridianLink confirms a cyberattack after a ransomware gang claimed to have reported the financial software company to the US SEC for not disclosing the breach  —  Financial software company MeridianLink confirmed that it is dealing with a cyberattack after the hackers behind …
Manoj Kumar / Reuters:
Amazon is targeting $20B in merchandise exports from India by 2025 by adding thousands of small sellers and has added 100K+ small manufacturers from the country  —  Amazon (AMZN.O) is targeting merchandise exports worth $20 billion from India by 2025 by adding thousands of small sellers …
More: Inc42 Media
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Forever Companions' service, which let customers talk to an AI girlfriend modeled after influencer Caryn Marjorie, stopped working after CEO John Meyer's arrest  —  Join the newsletter to get the latest updates.  —  Success  —  Great!  Check your inbox and click the link.  —  Error
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Bluesky plans to release a public web interface around the end of November and launch federation in early 2024, and says its social network has crossed 2M users  —  Bluesky, the company building a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X, announced today it has hit 2 million users …

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More News

Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:

Earlier Picks

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ted Johnson / Deadline:
Ryan Felton / Wall Street Journal:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Katie Malone / Engadget:
K.J. Yossman / Variety:
Will Knight / Wired: