Techmeme
March 19, 2024, 12:55 AM
 

March 18, 2024

11:55 PM  •
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:  Unity's 2024 Gaming Report: the number of multiplatform games up 40% since 2021, in-app advertising revenue up 26.7% YoY, 62% of studios are using AI, and more
11:10 PM  •
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:  Google promotes Liz Reid to Head of Search and names Cheenu Venkatachary as the lead of Search quality and ranking, among other changes to its Search team
10:50 PM  •
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:  Stability AI debuts Stable Video 3D, a generative AI tool built on its Stable Video Diffusion model, letting users create 3D video from a text or image prompt
10:30 PM  •
Nikkei Asia:  Sources: TSMC and Intel suppliers have delayed construction of facilities in Arizona, citing surging construction costs, a labor shortage, and weak local demand
8:35 PM  •
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:  The Connectivity Standards Alliance launches a cybersecurity standard that aims to provide a globally recognized security certification for consumer IoT devices
8:00 PM  •
Wesley Hilliard / AppleInsider:  Nvidia announces a software framework built with its Omniverse Cloud APIs to let enterprise developers stream interactive 3D experiences into Apple Vision Pro
7:20 PM  •
Samuel Tolbert / Windows Central:  Valve debuts Steam Families in beta, allowing a group of up to six Steam users to share their games, manage parental controls, and more
6:55 PM  •
George Hammond / Financial Times:  Hippocratic AI, which is building an LLM for health care, raised a $53M Series A co-led by Premji Invest and General Catalyst at a $500M valuation
6:35 PM  •
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:  Nvidia unveils Project GR00T, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots, and Jetson Thor, a new computer designed specifically for humanoid robots
6:30 PM  •
Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:  Nvidia launches Quantum Cloud, a service that simulates a quantum computer and allows researchers to test out their quantum computing software
6:15 PM  •
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:  Nvidia announces NIM, a set of microservices designed to streamline the deployment of custom and pre-trained AI models into production environments
5:45 PM  •
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:  Nvidia unveils the Earth-2 platform, letting users create AI-powered climate simulations ranging from global atmospheric conditions to local weather phenomena
5:20 PM  •
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:  Crypto trading platform Bakkt names Andy Main as its CEO and president, as it faces being dropped from the NYSE for failing to maintain listing requirements
4:40 PM  •
Kif Leswing / CNBC:  Nvidia announces Blackwell, a new generation of AI chips available later in 2024, starting with the GB200 superchip, which pairs two B200 GPUs with a Grace CPU
4:00 PM  •
Abhinaya Prabhu / Tech Funding News:  Carlsmed, which is developing an AI-powered personalized surgery tool, raised a $52.5M Series C co-led by B Capital and US Venture Partners
3:55 PM  •
NVIDIA on YouTube:  A recording of the Nvidia GTC 2024 keynote at the SAP Center in San Jose, California
3:35 PM  •
Lex Fridman:  Q&A with Sam Altman on the OpenAI board saga, Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk's lawsuit, Sora, Q*, GPT-5, raising $7T, Google and Gemini, AGI, aliens, and more
2:40 PM  •
John Herrman / New York Magazine:  X's pivot to video mirrors past social media trends, but its reliance on user-generated videos from TikTok and other platforms may not ensure long-term success
2:25 PM  •
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:  Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says, on his channel, that the company raised $330M through bond sales last week, and that the offering was oversubscribed
1:45 PM  •
The Verge:  Microsoft is holding a Windows and Surface AI event on May 20; sources: the event will include the consumer versions of Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6
1:40 PM  •
Reuters:  After hearing oral arguments, SCOTUS appeared wary of curbing US government contacts with social media platforms to remove posts deemed misinformation
1:15 PM  •
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:  Searches for “As of my last knowledge update”, a phrase used by ChatGPT, return 115 results on Google Scholar, suggesting the use of AI-generated text in papers
12:45 PM  •
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:  In partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, the US DHS rolls out pilot programs to test AI tech to help combat drug and human trafficking crimes, and more
12:25 PM  •
Austin Weinstein / Bloomberg:  The US SEC fines Delphia and Global Predictions a combined $400K for making “false and misleading statements” about their use of AI
12:15 PM  •
Mia Sato / The Verge:  TikTok launches Creator Rewards, a creator monetization program that has payouts based on “search value”, originality, play duration, and audience engagement
11:50 AM  •
Dave Lee / Bloomberg:  An Apple-Google deal around AI could solve short-term headaches for both, giving Apple a compelling AI story for investors and Google access to affluent users
11:15 AM  •
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:  App analytics company Sensor Tower acquires Data.ai for an undisclosed amount; Crunchbase says Data.ai had raised $157M+ while Sensor Tower has raised just $46M
11:00 AM  •
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:  Some GPT Store developers express disappointment by the lack of users and OpenAI not offering user analytics; OpenAI does not yet let developers charge money
10:45 AM  •
Nilay Patel / The Verge:  Q&A with Figma CEO Dylan Field on the failed Adobe deal, competing with Adobe, Figma's new Multi-edit tool, building tools, AI, AGI, Dev Mode, the web, and more
10:35 AM  •
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:  Google Research details VLOGGER, an AI model that can generate lifelike videos of people speaking, gesturing, and moving, from a single photo and an audio clip
10:15 AM  •
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:  A profile of Mumbai-based Yotta Data Services, which plans to have ~20K Nvidia H100 chips by June 2024 to offer Indian companies compute to build AI services
10:00 AM  •
Clare Duffy / CNN:  YouTube now requires creators to label their realistic-looking videos made using AI, via an upload checklist; clearly unrealistic videos will not need a label
9:30 AM  •
Danny Park / The Block:  Figure Markets, a crypto trading platform developed by Figure Technologies, raised a $60M Series A led by Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Lightspeed Faction
8:25 AM  •
Sean Lyngaas / CNN:  The US says Poland, Ireland, Finland, Germany, Japan, and South Korea joined the US-led anti-spyware pact; Five Eyes and six countries signed the pledge in 2023
7:45 AM  •
Paul Tassi / Forbes:  Respawn and EA postpone the North American Finals of Apex Legends, after an unknown hacker gave pro players hacks like aimbots and wallhacks during the event
7:20 AM  •
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:  At an EU DMA hearing, an Apple lawyer fended off criticism over DMA compliance; Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, ByteDance, and Microsoft will now have similar hearings
6:50 AM  •
Paresh Dave / Wired:  Reviewing Reddit's IPO filings: signs of stalling user growth, struggles to grow overseas, a dependence on Google, wooing brands, a new Class C stock, and more
6:30 AM  •
Abner Li / 9to5Google:  Google quietly refreshes its Fitbit branding from “Fitbit by Google” to “Google Fitbit” and updates the watermark font to match Google Pixel and Google Nest
6:00 AM  •
Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:  A profile of Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, who blends the personal and professional as CEO and plans to test a tepid IPO market for the unprofitable company
5:40 AM  •
Financial Times:  Filings: in December 2023, Reddit canceled CEO Steve Huffman's pay incentives tied to hitting a $25B valuation, signaling reduced hopes for a blockbuster IPO
5:20 AM  •
Allison Johnson / The Verge:  Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3, aiming to bring most 8 Gen 3 features, including on-device AI models, to mid-range smartphones in the “coming months”
4:15 AM  •
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:  Behind the rise of AI ambient clinical documentation tools, which let doctors record and automatically turn conversations with patients into clinical notes
2:20 AM  •
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:  A look at the proliferation of gimmicky online crypto-certification programs, as the lack of a well recognized professional crypto accreditation leaves a vacuum
1:37 AM  •
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:  Sources: Apple and Google are in active talks to use Gemini to power some new iPhone features in 2024; Apple also held talks with OpenAI to use its models
12:05 AM  •
Brian Hiatt / Rolling Stone:  Inside generative AI music startup Suno, whose model can compose songs, including human vocals, using a text prompt, as Suno aims to “democratize” music making

March 17, 2024

10:40 PM  •
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:  Sources: Sony pauses PSVR2 production to clear unsold inventory after making 2M+ units; shipments have declined every quarter since PSVR2's February 2023 launch
9:40 PM  •
New York Times:  In the years since Facebook and Twitter banned Donald Trump after the January 6 attacks, he and his allies have beaten down efforts to filter election lies
7:55 PM  •
Angus Whitley / Bloomberg:  To settle a class action suit, Uber agreed to pay ~$178M to compensate taxi drivers in Australia who claimed they lost income when Uber entered the local market
6:40 PM  •
Washington Post:  Experts say forcing a TikTok US sale within 180 days, as the bill requires, would be too complicated and costly, and likely mean the app would be banned
4:35 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  A profile of server maker Supermicro, whose flexibility in offering custom servers has been an advantage in the AI boom, as the company joins the S&P 500
3:30 PM  •
xAI:  xAI open sources the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, a 314B parameter Mixture-of-Experts model trained in October 2023, under Apache 2.0
3:20 PM  •
Echo Wang / Reuters:  Sources: Reddit's IPO is currently between four and five times oversubscribed, making the company more likely to at least attain its $6.5B valuation target
2:40 PM  •
Rachel Graf / Bloomberg:  A US judge rules Apple must face a class-action suit over AirTag stalking, as three plaintiffs made sufficient negligence and liability claims under CA law
1:00 PM  •
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:  An interview with Aaron Levie about Box's acquisition of Crooze, as Box embraces the content management industry's shift toward AI and workflow automation
10:40 AM  •
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:  A look at issues and monetization options for CarPlay; sources say Apple plans to produce 20M-25M units of the entry and mid-tier AirPods launching in fall 2024
8:10 AM  •
Megha Mandavia / Wall Street Journal:  How China's chip spending may swamp India's ambitions; TrendForce estimates China's global mature-node production share to grow from 31% in 2023 to 39% in 2027
5:05 AM  •
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:  How an Uber Eats worker created UberCheats, a web app that computed the actual distance a courier traveled, after suspecting algorithmic error and underpayment
2:00 AM  •
Magdalene J. Taylor / New York Times:  A look at the collapse of dating apps' usability, which can be blamed on the paid subscription model and the near monopoly the apps have over the dating world
1:15 AM  •
Scharon Harding / Ars Technica:  In a company blog post, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan acknowledged “unease” among VMware customers and partners after making sweeping post-acquisition changes
12:30 AM  •
Joshua Oliver / Financial Times:  FTX's collapse exposed problems with crypto that are just as relevant today, including a lack of decentralization and companies' persistent regulatory battles
12:00 AM  •
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times:  A profile of former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch, whose trial begins on March 18 in SF, where federal prosecutors have accused him of defrauding HP of billions

March 16, 2024

11:25 PM  •
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:  Apple researchers detail MM1, a series of multimodal LLMs with up to 30B parameters that they say achieve state-of-the-art performance in multiple AI benchmarks
11:10 PM  •
Josh Taylor / The Guardian:  Epic's antitrust cases against Apple and Google in Australia, which were paused in April 2021, are set to be heard at the same time over the next five months
7:30 PM  •
Benjamin Shestakofsky / IEEE Spectrum:  An excerpt from the book Behind the Startup details how an unnamed Silicon Valley-based unicorn's push for rapid growth left little time for actual engineering
6:00 PM  •
Miranda Bryant / The Guardian:  Lotte Rubæk, a psychologist who advises Meta on suicide prevention and self-harm, quits, accusing Meta of “turning a blind eye” to harmful content on Instagram
3:55 PM  •
Tim Higgins / Wall Street Journal:  How Elon Musk courted Don Lemon to show that X isn't a right-wing tool, as the breakup highlights Linda Yaccarino's thankless task of trying to assure brands
2:33 PM  •
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:  LinkedIn confirms it is working on adding puzzle-based games; a researcher says it is testing ranking companies in the games based on the scores of employees
1:25 PM  •
Wall Street Journal:  Sources: US prosecutors in Virginia, with FDA's help, are investigating whether Meta's platforms are facilitating and profiting from the illegal sale of drugs
12:45 PM  •
Axios:  A look at a potential TikTok US sale, with an estimated valuation of $100B, or $40B without the algorithm, as Steven Mnuchin and others form investor groups
11:55 AM  •
Reuters:  Sources: SpaceX's Starshield is building a network of spy satellites under a classified, $1.8B contract with the US spy agency National Reconnaissance Office
11:25 AM  •
Matt Novak / Gizmodo:  Filing: SBF wrote a Google doc in which he floated “bad ideas” to improve his image, including going on Tucker Carlson and coming out “against the woke agenda”
10:25 AM  •
Bloomberg.com:  Two of the UK's biggest supermarket chains, Tesco and Sainsbury's, were hit with technical issues on Saturday; Sainsbury's blames a software update
9:45 AM  •
Joanna Nelius / The Verge:  Review of Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold 16: sets the bar for foldables with a large 4:3 display and seamless centerfold, but the trackpad is prone to missed inputs
8:35 AM  •
The Economic Times:  Bain: Indian startups raised $9.6B in 2023, down from $25.7B in 2022; over 35K Indian startups shut down in 2023 and leading startups laid off 20,000+ employees
6:00 AM  •
Elle Hardy / New Republic:  How evangelicals proselytize using Bless Every Home, an app that lets users create neighborhood maps and data tables based on people's religion and ethnicity
3:25 AM  •
Mariella Moon / Engadget:  Twitch plans to remove Prime Video Watch Party from April 2, 2024; Watch Party launched in 2020, allowing streamers to broadcast Prime Video content to viewers
2:30 AM  •
Tabby Kinder / Financial Times:  Reddit's down round IPO is a signal that rationality is slowly returning to VC and could encourage other tech companies looking to go public do the same
12:50 AM  •
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:  Researchers detail ArtPrompt, a jailbreak that uses ASCII art to elicit harmful responses from aligned LLMs such as GPT-3.5, GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and Llama2
12:20 AM  •
James O'Donnell / MIT Technology Review:  Self-driving startup Waabi unveils Copilot4D, a generative AI model trained on lidar data to predict traffic flow around a vehicle 5-10 seconds into the future

March 15, 2024

11:30 PM  •
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:  Gumroad, an e-commerce company for creators, updates its rules to more strictly limit NSFW content, citing policies of payment processors like Stripe and PayPal
10:00 PM  •
New York Times:  The TikTok divestment bill's progress slows down in the Senate, as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not decided whether to bring the bill to the floor
9:45 PM  •
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:  Game developer Scopely says Monopoly Go! crossed $2B in revenue in February 2024, just 10 months after launching and three months after hitting $1B in revenue
8:50 PM  •
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:  Starbucks is ending Odyssey, which launched in December 2022 in closed beta offering NFT-based rewards minted on the Polygon blockchain, on March 31, 2024
7:43 PM  •
Bloomberg:  Sources: HashiCorp, which helps companies manage their cloud infrastructure, has been considering options including a sale; HCP jumps 11%+ after hours
7:35 PM  •
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:  Sources: Social Capital fired two of its partners after they tried to raise ~$2M from outside the firm for AI chipmaker Groq, which rankled Chamath Palihapitiya
7:30 PM  •
Tom Henderson / Insider Gaming:  Leaked PS5 Pro docs mention rendering 45% faster than the PS5, 2x to 3x the ray tracing performance, and more; sources say it's set for a holiday 2024 release
6:20 PM  •
Tom Warren / The Verge:  Microsoft is again injecting pop-ups into Chrome on Windows in a bid to get users to switch to Bing, after previously pausing them citing “unintended behavior”
5:10 PM  •
Alex Koller / CNBC:  Layoffs.fyi: 50,000+ workers have been laid off from over 200 tech companies since the start of 2024; some recently laid-off employees recall their experiences
4:25 PM  •
Dan Primack / Axios:  Reddit says FTC launched an inquiry into Reddit's licensing of user data to AI companies; an ex-FTC official says other companies also got such “hold letters”
3:55 PM  •
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:  After criticism, India's Ministry of Electronics and IT revises its AI advisory to drop plans to require government approval before new AI models are launched
3:50 PM  •
Elena Schneider / Politico:  Some Democrats warn that a ban of TikTok, used by nearly two-thirds of Americans under 30, could imperil Biden's reelection by depressing young voter turnout
3:30 PM  •
CNN:  SCOTUS rules that public officials may block people on social media in certain circumstances, tossing aside challenges against Michigan and California officials
3:15 PM  •
Bob Van Voris / Bloomberg:  Filing: prosecutors ask a judge to sentence SBF to up to 50 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 28; SBF's lawyers had suggested five to six years
2:30 PM  •
Business Insider:  Sources: BeReal is weighing raising a Series C or being acquired, as what is left of its $90M in funding is set to run out this year and DAUs stagnate at 25M
2:10 PM  •
Steven Levy / Wired:  Michael Seibel steps down as YC's managing director, says he did not feel disappointed when he was not tapped as CEO but would have accepted the job if offered
1:20 PM  •
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:  Banning TikTok is a performative, unconstitutional, authoritarian move that won't stop China from spreading propaganda or getting Americans' data
1:10 PM  •
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:  A look at Murthy v. Missouri, a case SCOTUS will hear Monday, which may upend how government communicates with social media platforms on topics like misinfo
12:40 PM  •
Emma Roth / The Verge:  Uber and Lyft threaten to leave Minneapolis on May 1, after the city passed an ordinance to guarantee drivers a minimum rate of $1.40/mile and $0.5/minute
12:05 PM  •
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:  Lawyers warn that the bill to ban TikTok unless it's sold gives POTUS unchecked power to ban any app or website the President deems a “national security threat”
11:45 AM  •
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:  Walmart starts selling Macs directly for the first time, partnering with Apple to sell the M1 MacBook Air for $699 a week after Apple stopped selling the laptop
11:30 AM  •
Bloomberg:  Sources: Binance tightened the requirements for listing new tokens, including extending partial coin supply lockups from up to six months to at least a year
11:11 AM  •
Financial Times:  Sources: TikTok's US revenue hit a record $16B in 2023 while ByteDance saw revenue grow ~40% YoY to $120B in 2023 and recorded a $28B net profit
10:50 AM  •
Ailbhe Rea / Bloomberg:  Sources: X declined requests by the UK's Labour party to take down a deepfake audio clip of leader Keir Starmer, raising concerns ahead of the general election
10:00 AM  •
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:  Apple reaches a $490M settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit that alleged Tim Cook defrauded shareholders in 2019 by hiding falling iPhone demand in China
9:15 AM  •
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:  The Competition Commission of India orders an antitrust investigation into Google for charging app developers an “unfair” Play Store service fee of 10% to 30%
8:10 AM  •
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:  In an open letter to Nick Clegg, 36 MEPs urge Meta to scrap its “pay or okay” choice for EU users and to “align your business with the principles of the GDPR”
6:40 AM  •
Bloomberg:  Vodafone sells its Italian business to Switzerland's Swisscom for €8B in cash and plans a ~€4B stock buyback; Swisscom will merge Vodafone Italia with Fastweb
6:15 AM  •
Ryan Weeks / Bloomberg:  Binance CEO Richard Teng, who has been in the role for only four months, quietly spun out Binance Labs, the company's $10B venture capital arm, earlier in 2024
5:45 AM  •
Bloomberg:  Sources: China quietly asked EV makers like BYD and Geely to sharply increase their purchases from local auto chipmakers, to reduce reliance on Western imports
4:40 AM  •
Wired:  A deep dive into Reddit's history and the power of its 60K+ unpaid moderators, based on interviews with 60+ current and former mods, employees, and contractors
2:00 AM  •
David Wethe / Bloomberg:  Oil companies are increasingly using AI and remote operations to drill faster, suggest better ways to frack, and predict when active well pumps will fail
12:55 AM  •
Melissa Rohman / New York Times:  How Facebook Marketplace keeps Gen Z thrift-shoppers coming back to Facebook, which they see not as a place to socialize but as a place to score some deals
12:15 AM  •
Annie Palmer / CNBC:  How Amazon refund fraud gangs organized like businesses exploit the retailer's lenient refund policies and promote their schemes on Reddit, TikTok, and Telegram

March 14, 2024

11:45 PM  •
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:  Researchers detail how a side channel can be used to read encrypted responses from AI assistants, except Google's Gemini; OpenAI and Cloudflare made mitigations
11:30 PM  •
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:  El Salvador moved 5,689.68 BTC, “a big chunk” or ~$400M worth, into a cold wallet this week; public trackers had estimated El Salvador had less than 3,000 BTC
11:15 PM  •
The Economic Times:  Bethesda, Maryland-based HiLabs, whose AI-powered tools provide clean data for health care organizations, raised a $39M Series B led by Eight Roads and Denali
10:50 PM  •
New York Times:  Taiwan is building its own satellite internet network, as China's threats, Ukraine war, and Elon Musk's total control over Starlink make Taiwan's leaders wary
9:55 PM  •
Bloomberg:  Sources: the US plans to award over $6B to Samsung to help the company expand beyond its $17B chip fab in Taylor, Texas, under the 2022 Chips and Science Act
8:55 PM  •
Robert Barrie / Pharmaceutical Technology:  Zephyr AI, which uses AI to generate insights into improving patient care and research in oncology and cardiometabolic diseases, raised a $111M Series A
8:30 PM  •
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:  An investigation into Onerep.com, which helps people remove their personal data from people-search sites, suggests its CEO founded dozens of people-search sites
6:45 PM  •
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:  The FCC raises its broadband speed benchmark to 100Mbps for downloads and 20Mbps for uploads, from the previous standard of 25Mbps and 3Mbps set in January 2015
6:20 PM  •
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:  Small-business owners and activists who rely on TikTok say the US House measure forcing a sale or ban would damage their livelihoods and harm their communities
5:35 PM  •
Augusta Saraiva / Bloomberg:  At the UN, the US pushes for global AI regulations, with a draft resolution calling for “effective safeguards”; the push contrasts with a lack of US regulations
4:31 PM  •
Jordan Novet / CNBC:  Adobe reports Q1 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.18B, vs. $5.14B est., Digital Media revenue up 12% YoY to $3.82B, and Q2 revenue guidance below est.; ADBE drops 10%+
4:15 PM  •
Emma Roth / The Verge:  Spotify emails the European Commission to say Apple is holding up an iPhone app update that adds pricing information and links to its subscription options
4:10 PM  •
Abner Li / 9to5Google:  Google schedules I/O 2024 for May 14, where details on Android 15 and Android XR, AI announcements, and more are expected; the date was hidden behind a puzzle
3:55 PM  •
Todd Spangler / Variety:  Pornhub blocks access to users in Texas, after a federal appeals court upheld a Texas law last week requiring porn sites to institute age-verification measures
3:35 PM  •
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:  WarpStream, which is building a cloud-native data streaming service based on the Apache Kafka protocol, raised $20M led by Greylock and Amplify
3:30 PM  •
Sara Fischer / Axios:  Snapchat is testing Infinite Retention Mode, which lets users save DMs indefinitely, bringing it closer to a pure-play messaging app like iMessage or WhatsApp
3:15 PM  •
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:  Sources: Apple acquired DarwinAI, which makes tech for inspecting components during manufacturing and focuses on making AI systems smaller and faster
2:45 PM  •
Tom Warren / The Verge:  Microsoft launches Copilot Pro worldwide with a one-month free trial; Pro subscribers can use the AI assistant in Office web apps without a Microsoft 365 sub
2:35 PM  •
Kimberly Chin / Axios:  Netherlands-based TheyDo, which helps companies map customer journeys, raised a $34M Series B led by Blossom Capital, bringing its total funding to about $50M
1:05 PM  •
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:  Massachusetts-based Pi Health, which uses AI to automate tasks in cancer treatment trials, raised a $30M+ Series A co-led by AlleyCorp and Obvious Ventures
12:25 PM  •
Bloomberg:  Damage to the West Africa Cable System, MainOne, and ACE sea cables disrupts internet services across Africa; the cause of the faults has not been determined
12:20 PM  •
Sheena Vasani / The Verge:  Google adds real-time URL protection to Chrome's Safe Browsing Standard on desktop and iOS, claiming to guard users' privacy; Android will get the feature soon
12:05 PM  •
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:  Reddit launches free-form ads, an ad format that looks similar to posts made by users, but with a “Promoted” label, to help advertisers get maximum engagement
11:45 AM  •
Bloomberg:  India grants a consumer payments license to Paytm, which has until now operated under a license connected to its beleaguered affiliate, Paytm Payments Bank
11:30 AM  •
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:  Intel launches the $689 Core i9-14900KS Special Edition processor, with clock speeds up to 6.2GHz on two cores to become the company's fastest mainstream chip
10:55 AM  •
Craig Trudell / Bloomberg:  X removes a graphic video shared by Elon Musk purporting to show cannibalism in Haiti, for violating its rules; there's no evidence the video was shot in Haiti
10:45 AM  •
Assaf Gilead / Globes Online:  US cybersecurity company Zscaler acquires Israel-based cybersecurity startup Avalor for $350M; Avalor was founded in 2022 and has raised just $30M to date
10:30 AM  •
PYMNTS.com:  Deliveroo reports adjusted EBITDA of £85M in 2023, its first-ever profit and up from a loss of £45M in 2022, after launching Deliveroo Shopping in November 2023
10:15 AM  •
Joel Khalili / Wired:  A UK High Court judge rules that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, saying the “evidence is overwhelming”
9:35 AM  •
Chainalysis:  In 2023, crypto investors achieved total gains of $37.6B, up from a $127.1B loss in 2022 but down from the $159.7B in gains during the 2021 bull run
9:15 AM  •
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:  After the House vote, Chinese officials say the US has shown “robber's logic” toward TikTok, and Washington must “stop unfairly suppressing foreign companies”
9:05 AM  •
Nathan Ingraham / Engadget:  Proton releases its mail app for macOS and Windows out of beta, available as part of its $4/month Mail Plus or $10/month Unlimited tier, and a Linux app in beta
8:50 AM  •
Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:  Unstructured, which helps companies prepare messy data for AI training, raised a $40M Series B led by Menlo Ventures at a $230M valuation
8:15 AM  •
Reuters:  Sources: in 2019, Donald Trump authorized the CIA to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese social media to turn China's public against its government
7:45 AM  •
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:  The EU opens a DSA investigation into Alibaba's AliExpress over illegal content concerns, ad and product recommendations, and more, the third DSA investigation
7:07 AM  •
Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:  Meta plans to shut down CrowdTangle in August 2024 and replace it with Meta Content Library, available to academic and nonprofit researchers, not news outlets
6:30 AM  •
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:  Amazon says “a tiny fraction” of sellers paid for ads for products users couldn't buy and pledges a fix; Amazon offered a $15K refund to a seller seeking $300K
6:10 AM  •
Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:  A TikTok-funded study on SMBs using TikTok in the US suggests that TikTok drove $14.7B in SMB revenue, added $24.2B to US GDP, and supported 224K+ jobs in 2023
5:55 AM  •
Bloomberg:  Memo: TikTok is “disappointed” that the US House passed the TikTok divestment bill, and reiterates its plans to lobby the Senate not to pass the legislation
5:35 AM  •
Kosaku Narioka / Wall Street Journal:  Foxconn reports Q4 revenue down 5.7% YoY to ~$59B, as cloud and networking demand falls, net profit up 33% YoY to $1.69B, and expects flat 2024 consumer demand
5:00 AM  •
Russ Crupnick / MusicWatch:  US paid music subscribers hit a record 109M in 2023, or 136M if SiriusXM and Amazon Prime Music are included; seven of every 10 US millennials pay to subscribe
3:55 AM  •
Damilare Dosunmu / Rest of World:  A look at Visa's and Mastercard's efforts to stay relevant in Africa, including by funding local startups, as users switch to digital wallets and QR codes
2:35 AM  •
Jonathan Haidt / The Atlantic:  A look at the costs of a smartphone-based childhood, as Gen Z struggles with poor mental health and lags behind previous generations on many important metrics
2:20 AM  •
Blake Brittain / Reuters:  Filing: Microsoft agrees to settle a patent lawsuit by Caltech, which settled lawsuits with Apple and Broadcom over some of the same Wi-Fi patents in 2023
2:10 AM  •
Wall Street Journal:  The fate of TSMC plants in Japan and the US highlights two different approaches toward high-tech investment; TSMC says the two projects should not be compared
1:45 AM  •
The Information:  ByteDance investors, reassessing what the company's value would be without TikTok, estimate that TikTok lost several billion dollars in 2023 on revenue of ~$20B
1:30 AM  •
Trishla Ostwal / Adweek:  Media executives and experts say Google's SGE could cut organic search traffic to publishers by 20% to 60%; Google says “it's premature to estimate” the impact

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