Techmeme
April 4, 2024, 9:45 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is exploring home robotic devices, including a mobile robot that can follow users and a table-top device that uses robotics to move a display  —  - The company has teams working on automated home devices  — The search is on for new growth sources after EV gets nixed
The Guardian:
Sources: Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza used Lavender, an AI system that identified 37,000 potential human targets based on their apparent links to Hamas  —  Israeli intelligence sources reveal use of ‘Lavender’ system in Gaza war and claim permission given to kill civilians in pursuit of low-ranking militants
More: +972 Magazine, Business Today, Gizmodo, The i Paper, ScheerPost, SiliconANGLE, Cryptopolitan, FRANCE 24 English on YouTube, The Sun, The Times of Israel, Firstpost, Daily Kos, and The Guardian
LinkedIn: Ana Brandusescu and Sahar Aziz
Amrita Khalid / The Verge:
X adds blue checks to some large accounts as part of its plan to give free Premium memberships to those with at least 2,500 “verified subscriber followers”  —  Just as Elon Musk said, X is doling out free Premium and Premium memberships to accounts with a high number of verified followers.
Scott Stein / CNET:
An interview with Andrew Bosworth on the 10th anniversary of Reality Labs, the past and future of VR/AR/AI, Meta's next AR glasses prototype, and more  —  Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth talks with CNET about the past and future of VR, AR and AI.  —  2014 doesn't seem that long ago to me.
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Google sues two alleged crypto scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent crypto trading and investment apps to steal users' money  —  Google is suing two alleged crypto scammers, accusing them of using its Play Store to offer fraudulent cryptocurrency trading apps …
Tim Stelloh / NBC News:
A Washington state judge barred the use of AI-enhanced video as trial evidence in a ruling that experts say may be the first-of-its-kind in a US criminal court  —  Lawyers for a man charged with murder in a triple homicide had sought to introduce cellphone video enhanced by machine-learning software.
Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says “Tesla is increasing comp ... of our AI engineering team”, after OpenAI has been “aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers” with “massive” offers  —  - CEO says carmaker is going extra mile to retain specialists  — Exodus may exacerbate concerns about conflicts, governance
Lindsay Ellis / Wall Street Journal:
How some MBA programs in the US are reorienting their courses around AI by adding AI-related classwork, encouraging using AI to solve lab assignments, and more  —  American University, other top M.B.A. programs reorient courses around artificial intelligence; ‘It has eaten our world’
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
An interview with Andres Freund, a Microsoft database engineer working on PostgreSQL, on discovering the XZ Utils backdoor, doubting his own findings, and more  —  The internet, as anyone who works deep in its trenches will tell you, is not a smooth, well-oiled machine.
More: The Intercept and MakeUseOf
Threads: @jenvalentino_nytMastodon: @couts@mastodon.socialX: @kevinrooseLinkedIn: Affan DarForums: Hacker News, r/technology, and r/neoliberal
Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
Some Amazon merchants complain of scam returns, where buyers ship junk back to sellers and claim they are returns, and say Amazon's policies favor customers  —  Merchants receive junk instead of returned purchases, a sore point as they say Amazon's policies favor customers
More: PYMNTS.com
Andrea Grimes / Home With The Armadillo:
Substack's new emphasis on followers, not subscriptions, and its opaque steps to migrate paid subscriptions off the platform make leaving harder for writers  —  And it'll be worse this time around!  —  The writing life, which has never exactly been a picnic for independent journalists and freelancers …
Joyce Lee / Reuters:
SK Hynix plans to invest ~$3.87B in an advanced packaging plant and R&D facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, to produce high bandwidth memory chips from H2 2028  —  SK Hynix (000660.KS), the world's second-largest memory chip maker, said on Wednesday it will invest around $3.87 billion …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A profile of hacker P4x, aka Alejandro Caceres, who took down North Korea's internet in 2022 and says the US needs to wield its hacking powers more aggressively  —  As “P4x,” Alejandro Caceres single-handedly disrupted the internet of an entire country.  Then he tried to show the US military how it can—and should—adopt his methods.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Cohere releases Command R+, a new business-focused model the startup says performs competitively against OpenAI and others on “business-critical” tasks  —  Cohere says its new technology is cheaper than OpenAI's offerings.  —  Artificial intelligence startup Cohere Inc. is releasing …
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
US rock band Kiss sells rights to its music, name, image, and likeness to Swedish entertainment company Pophouse to create a live show, a source says for ~$300M  —  Sale to Swedish entertainment group Pophouse set to 'fulfil the band's vision to become immortal'
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Apple resolves an outage impacting some of its online services, including the App Store, Apple TV, Podcasts, and Music, that lasted for over an hour on April 3  —  Apple's online services were hit with an outage that cut many of us off from the App Store, Apple TV, and Apple Music on Wednesday night.
Hope King / Axios:
AT&T plans to invest an additional $3B by 2030 to help close the US digital divide, after initially committing $2B by 2024, which helped nearly 5M Americans  —  - Many Americans want Congress to handle threats to affordable and reliable internet access, Axios' Maria Curi has reported.

Sponsor Posts

Niantic Spatial:
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Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
Runway's Cris Valenzuela: Building The Hollywood-Friendly Video AI That OpenAI Couldn't
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI's Big Reset + A.I. in the Doctor's Office + Talkie, a pre-1930s LLM
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Food and Beverage Director', With MG Siegler
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Access:
What happens when AI runs a store
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Why Blockbuster Failed
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

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More News

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Business Insider:

Earlier Picks

TechCrunch:
Alex Koller / CNBC:
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Amrita Khalid / The Verge: