Techmeme
December 12, 2023, 7:20 PM

Top News

Gene Park / Washington Post:
The ESA shuts down the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, after new competitors, partner withdrawals, changing audience habits, and more; E3 began in 1995  —  The collapse ends years of attempts to revive the event that once dominated the industry  —  The Electronic Entertainment Expo …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney discusses beating Google, but not Apple, thanks to a jury trial, Google erasing chats, and because “Apple didn't write anything down”  —  - The verdict is a significant win for Epic Games and its CEO Tim Sweeney, which have been fighting against mobile app stores …
Bloomberg:
Google's legal defeat to Epic threatens to roil an app store duopoly with Apple that generates nearly $200B/year and accelerate the weakening of app store rules  —  - Jury decision poised to accelerate crumbling of business model  — Case takes aim at app store commissions of up to 30%
Wall Street Journal:
Apple releases an iOS beta with Stolen Device Protection; if enabled, the feature limits actions like Apple ID password resets when not in a “familiar location”  —  Stolen Device Protection can prevent criminals from using your passcode to change your Apple account
Zoë Schiffer / The Verge:
A look at Twitter's culture prior to Elon Musk's acquisition, when it focused on improving the health of online conversations, rather than growth at all costs  —  the early '10s, Twitter was at the height of its power.  The company had yet to turn a profit, but it had played a crucial role …
Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: X generated just over $600M in ad revenue in each of 2023's first three quarters, down from $1B+ per quarter in 2022 and on track for ~$2.5B in 2023  —  - X to miss internal goals for ad revenue, people familiar say  — Musk's personal tweets continue to scare off advertisers
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Netflix publishes its first What We Watched report, detailing the most-watched content from January to June 2023; The Night Agent was #1 with 812M+ hours viewed  —  Netflix is going to start publishing a new report twice a year that details the most popular shows and movies on the platform.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: Apple offers to let rivals access its tap-and-go payments systems for mobile wallets, hoping to settle EU antitrust charges and avoid a possible fine  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has offered to let rivals access its tap-and-go mobile payments systems used for mobile wallets …
Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg:
Stanford professor David Mills, who led SBF's defense as a favor to his parents, says the ex-FTX CEO is “the worst person I've ever seen do a cross examination”  —  Stanford Law Professor David Mills, who led defense for FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried as favor to his parents, now fears ‘unwinnable’ case has ended their friendship.
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division announces the end of perpetual licenses and a move to subscriptions, plus a simplification of its product portfolio  —  Also kills perpetual licenses, adds a vSphere bundle for smaller users  —  +COMMENT Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division …
Scott Stein / CNET:
Meta adds multimodal AI to its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses as an early access beta in the US, letting Meta AI answer voice queries by taking and analyzing photos  —  I tried these Ray-Ban AI glasses, and they're pretty wild.  Here's how the experimental feature works.  —  “Hey, Meta.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Microsoft releases Phi-2, an AI language model the company says outperforms Mistral and Llama 2 at 7B and 13B parameters and is small enough to run on a phone  —  The rapid pace of generative AI news and announcements isn't slowing down, even as we reach the final stretches of 2023 and the traditional winter holiday quiet period.
CNN:
A US GAO review of nearly 24 agencies' AI usage catalogs 200+ current applications and 500+ planned uses of AI and ML, despite the lack of government guidance  —  The US government plans to vastly expand its reliance on artificial intelligence, but it is years behind on policies …
Joseph Bernstein / New York Times:
A look at Praxis, which raised $19.2M from Paradigm, Alameda Research, and others to build a city on the Mediterranean for tech bros and downtown NY tastemakers  —  Dryden Brown wants Praxis to be a crypto-city for tech bros and tastemakers.  Just don't ask for details.
Reuters:
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Gina Raimondo says Nvidia “can, will, and should” sell AI chips to China for commercial use, but not advanced AI chips, and spoke to Jensen Huang about US rules  —  The Biden administration is in discussions with Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) about permissible sales of artificial intelligence chips …

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Financial Times:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: