10:50 PM • | Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: CISA releases an open-source Python-based utility to detect signs of malicious activity in Microsoft cloud environments |
9:45 PM • | SiliconHills: Quantum computing startup Strangeworks raised a $24M Series A led by Hitachi Ventures with participation from IBM and Raytheon Technologies |
8:50 PM • | Rohan Goswami / CNBC: Messages in Binance's public chatrooms show some employees and support volunteers helping customers bypass China's crypto ban, including evading its KYC checks |
8:25 PM • | Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Warsaw-based Vue Storefront, which lets front-end developers build composable e-commerce sites, raised a $20M Series A extension led by Felix Capital |
7:10 PM • | Todd Spangler / Variety: Twitter plans to wind down its legacy verified program and remove legacy verified checkmarks starting on April 1, 2023 |
6:20 PM • | Bryan Schott / Salt Lake Tribune: Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signs two bills regulating social media apps, including requiring age verification for all users and permission from parents for minors |
5:45 PM • | Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg: US prosecutors in New York charge Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon with eight counts, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, and wire fraud |
4:20 PM • | Bloomberg: Shou Chew's answers to hostile questioning did little to calm the bipartisan fury aimed at TikTok, instead giving critics more fuel to insist the US ban the app |
4:15 PM • | The Verge: Twitter Blue rolls out globally, but the subscription service is still missing promised features like prioritized ranking in conversations and half as many ads |
4:02 PM • | Bloomberg: Montenegro says police detained Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon when he tried to fly to Dubai using falsified Costa Rican travel documents |
3:30 PM • | Steve Yegge / Sourcegraph Blog: Why LLMs aren't a dumb fad like crypto, but the biggest thing since the World Wide Web, and on the coding front, the biggest thing since IDEs and Stack Overflow |
2:35 PM • | Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Wolfram, Zapier, and others release the first third-party ChatGPT plugins |
1:35 PM • | OpenAI: OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT plugins, including two of its own, a web browser and a code interpreter, and open sources the code for a knowledgebase retrieval plugin |
12:45 PM • | Lauren Feiner / CNBC: TikTok CEO Shou Chew tells Congress that “after Project Texas is done” China-based ByteDance employees will no longer be able to access US TikTok data |
12:25 PM • | Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Snap unveils AR Enterprise Services, offering its AR Lenses and Filters to businesses, and says 250M+ people out of 375M DAUs engage with AR on Snapchat daily |
11:50 AM • | Ryan McMorrow / Financial Times: China “firmly opposes” a forced sale of TikTok, warning such a move would involve “technology export” and would “seriously damage” investor confidence in the US |
10:50 AM • | Tom Warren / The Verge: The YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips was hacked on Thursday and posted videos for crypto scams to its 15.3M subscribers, the latest crypto scam breach on YouTube |
10:06 AM • | CoinDesk: Do Kwon Arrested in Montenegro: Interior Minister |
9:51 AM • | Adi Robertson / The Verge: The FTC proposes banning difficult-to-cancel subscriptions via “click to cancel” rules requiring companies to make ending a subscription as simple as signing up |
9:25 AM • | Washington Post: A recap of TikTok CEO Shou Chew's testimony before Congress, in which he struggled to address national security concerns over ByteDance's ownership of TikTok |
8:52 AM • | Reuters: Block drops 10%+ after Hindenburg Research discloses a short position and alleges the company overstated user numbers and understated customer acquisition costs |
8:35 AM • | Khari Johnson / Wired: OIG report: US officials working on Login.gov, used by dozens of sites, rejected verifying IDs via facial recognition over algorithmic bias, breaking NIST rules |
8:12 AM • | Bloomberg: Sources: Apple plans to spend $1B per year to produce movies for release in thousands of theaters, a big increase from years past, seeking to grow TV+ awareness |
8:05 AM • | Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: Researchers warn of “industrial capture” in AI as companies entrench their power; companies' share of the biggest AI models grew from 11% in 2010 to 96% in 2021 |
7:47 AM • | Chavi Mehta / Reuters: Accenture plans to lay off 19,000 employees, or ~2.5% of its workforce, and lowers its annual forecasts, as the global economic slowdown weighs on IT spending |
7:15 AM • | Kate Park / TechCrunch: South Korea-based luxury goods resale marketplace Kream raised a ~$168M Series C led by Altos Ventures at a ~$742M valuation, up from ~$306M in October 2021 |
6:41 AM • | Giles Turner / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple considers bidding for the streaming rights to a range of English soccer games, including to show Premier League games in the UK, following Amazon |
6:10 AM • | Patrick Temple-West / Financial Times: Intel, IBM, Nvidia, and other chip companies join industrial materials businesses in lobbying against proposed clampdowns on “forever chemicals” across the US |
5:31 AM • | Cade Metz / New York Times: Chatbot startup Character.AI raised $150M led by a16z at a $1B valuation, after a $43M seed in December 2021, and plans to raise more from “strategic partners” |
4:55 AM • | Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Munich-based IntegrityNext, a service that helps companies audit their suppliers for ESG compliance, raised €100M from EQT Growth, its first outside investment |
4:35 AM • | Ellen Huet / Bloomberg: A look at Replika's decision to block sexual content in its AI companion chatbot; 60% of paying customers had a romantic element in their Replika relationship |
3:45 AM • | Nikkei Asia: Toshiba plans to support a ~$15.3B takeover offer from a coalition of ~20 companies including Japan Industrial Partners; JIP is expected to take Toshiba private |
3:30 AM • | Financial Times: Sources: Arm seeks to raise chip design prices by charging device makers based on the value of a device instead of charging chipmakers based on a chip's value |
2:40 AM • | Alex Konrad / Forbes: Canva debuts AI tools including Magic Design, which creates personalized templates from images, and Magic Presentation, which creates slideshows from prompts |
2:25 AM • | Stu Woo / Wall Street Journal: A profile of TikTok CEO Shou Chew, a Singaporean army reservist and a former Goldman Sachs banker trying to “clarify” some things before a skeptical Congress |
1:10 AM • | New York Times: A look at RightWingGPT, an experimental AI model fine-tuned by a researcher, who claims ChatGPT has a liberal bias, to answer questions with a conservative bent |
12:05 AM • | Tracy Wang / CoinDesk: Court filings: FTX plans to recover $460M in assets, including $404M in cash, of the $475M seed capital transferred from Alameda to hedge fund Modulo in 2022 |
11:35 PM • | Meta: Meta launches an updated WhatsApp app for Windows that loads faster and enables group video calls with up to eight people and audio calls with up to 32 people |
11:05 PM • | Akash Sriram / Reuters: Sam Altman says OpenAI fixed a “significant issue” in ChatGPT after a bug in an open-source library let some users see the titles of other users' chat history |
10:35 PM • | Catherine Shu / TechCrunch: Jakarta-based Kredivo, formerly FinAccel, whose services include BNPL, personal loans, credit cards, and neobanking, raised a $270M Series D led by Mizuho Bank |
8:15 PM • | Yogita Khatri / The Block: Singapore-based crypto exchange Bitget acquires a controlling stake in Cayman Islands-based crypto wallet startup BitKeep, investing $30M at a $300M valuation |
5:55 PM • | CNBC: Filing: Coinbase received an SEC notice warning the exchange of potential US securities law violations that could lead to enforcement actions; COIN drops 10%+ |
5:20 PM • | Washington Post: A poll of 1,027 US adults: 41% support a TikTok ban, 25% oppose it, and 71% are concerned that ByteDance is based in China; 17% of US daily users support a ban |
4:25 PM • | CNBC: Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul, and other celebrities agree to pay a combined $400K to settle SEC charges over promoting TRX and BTT without disclosing compensation |
3:45 PM • | Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk: The US SEC sues Tron founder Justin Sun and his companies for the alleged “unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities” TRX and BTT, fraud, and more |
2:50 PM • | Sean Endicott / Windows Central: Microsoft launches Loop, its Notion and Asana competitor, in preview, letting users collaborate in shared Microsoft 365 workspaces on the web, Android, and iOS |
1:40 PM • | Theo Wayt / The Information: Job listings site Indeed lays off ~2,200 people, or ~15% of its headcount, citing falling HR Tech revenue; Tokyo-based Recruit acquired Indeed in September 2012 |
12:25 PM • | TechCrunch: After the Russia-linked Clop ransomware gang claimed to hit 130 companies, victims are coming forward, many of which used Fortra's GoAnywhere file transfer tool |
12:15 PM • | Coco Liu / Bloomberg: Microsoft announces a toolkit for developers to measure Xbox games' energy consumption “to the nearest millisecond”, helping the company establish a baseline |
12:00 PM • | Bloomberg: Sources: Google, Meta, and Apple want Congress to limit Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, expiring at 2023's end if not reauthorized |
11:26 AM • | Chris Stokel-Walker / BuzzFeed News: Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins says Midjourney banned him after he made images of a Donald Trump arrest; the company banned the word “arrested” in its tool |
11:10 AM • | Washington Post: A look at ByteDance's and TikTok's lobbying before Shou Zi Chew's hearing, including Axios ads and private lawmaker meetings, mirroring Meta's well-worn tactics |
10:45 AM • | Sahil Patel / The Information: Sources: Meta rehires veteran manager Nick Grudin, who left to join NFT startup Dapper Labs in August 2022, to oversee relationships with media and creators |
10:25 AM • | Chris Welch / The Verge: Amazon introduces new Fire TVs and the cheaper TV lineup 2-Series, says 200M+ Fire TV devices have been sold, and expands Luna to the UK, Germany, and Canada |
10:20 AM • | Kate Beioley / Financial Times: The UK CMA says Broadcom's $69B VMware acquisition may make servers more expensive, giving five working days to address concerns and warning of an investigation |
10:11 AM • | Dina Bass / Bloomberg: GitHub announces Copilot X, a new Copilot version with chat and voice features using OpenAI's GPT-4 to help with certain coding tasks, available via a waitlist |
10:03 AM • | Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Mozilla announces Mozilla.ai, an AI-focused startup with a $30M seed from the Mozilla Foundation to create a “trustworthy”, independent open-source AI stack |
9:30 AM • | Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: Memo: Spotify has spent less than 10% of its $100M Creator Equity Fund, announced in February 2022 to promote diversity in music after the Joe Rogan controversy |
9:05 AM • | Kif Leswing / CNBC: A look at San Francisco's Misalignment Museum, which displays art about AGI, including an apology to humans after a “misaligned” future AI wiped out humanity |
7:35 AM • | Matt Levine / Bloomberg: A look at Balaji Srinivasan's weird $1M bitcoin bet, predicting one BTC will be worth $1M+ in 90 days, which is economically irrational but attracts attention |
7:10 AM • | Virginia Heffernan / Wired: Inside TSMC's facilities in Taiwan, where Fab 18 makes 1 quintillion transistors for Apple every six months, and an interview with Chairman Mark Liu |
6:45 AM • | New York Times: The US will find banning TikTok difficult due to its 150M+ US users, political ramifications for Biden including losing young voters, legal challenges, and more |
6:25 AM • | Carly Wanna / Bloomberg: Okcoin suspended trading of CityCoins' NYCCoin and MiamiCoin on the Stacks protocol last week, citing low liquidity; both coins had received mayoral support |
6:05 AM • | Wall Street Journal: Sources: TikTok sought to reassure advertisers in recent days and play down the threat of an outright US ban, hoping to keep brands from cutting their spending |
5:45 AM • | Cam Thompson / CoinDesk: Magic Eden launches a Bitcoin NFT marketplace, supporting Hiro and Xverse wallets to let users trade Ordinal NFTs, expanding on SOL, ETH, and MATIC marketplaces |
5:35 AM • | Josh Ye / Reuters: Tencent reports 2022 revenue down 1% YoY to ~$79.6B, the first annual drop and below estimates, and Q4 revenue up 1% YoY to ~$20.8B, as China's economy slowed |
5:20 AM • | Cade Metz / New York Times: The Association for Computing Machinery awards Bob Metcalfe the 2022 Turing Award for the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet |
5:00 AM • | Luke Plunkett / Kotaku: Ubisoft unveils Ghostwriter, an internal AI tool saving its scriptwriters time by creating first drafts and more realistic non-player character interactions |
4:45 AM • | Arian Khameneh / Wired: Researchers: Iran's cyber army, or Cyberi, has ramped up spear-phishing and adopted new tactics to sow distrust among its citizens as political unrest continues |
4:20 AM • | Jaron Schneider / PetaPixel: Amazon-owned digital photography site DPReview is closing on April 10; people can request to download photos or texts they've uploaded to the site until April 6 |
2:35 AM • | Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Just Eat Takeaway lays off 1,700 UK couriers and returns to a gig economy model, which CEO Jitse Groen had said “comes at the expense of society and workers” |
2:00 AM • | Reuters: Nvidia announces the H800 chip, a modified H100 chip for export to China; the cloud units of Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and others are already using the H800 |
1:01 AM • | Silicon Canals: Paris-based XXII, a computer vision startup offering SaaS tool XXIICORE for deploying and configuring video stream analysis algorithms, raised a €22M Series A |
12:05 AM • | Alex Barinka / Bloomberg: The US House Committee on Energy and Commerce posts TikTok CEO Shou Chew's prepared testimony, which says the company has spent ~$1.5B to safeguard US user data |
11:45 PM • | Tom Ivan / Video Games Chronicle: Microsoft tells the UK CMA that 10 years is long enough for Sony to develop Call of Duty alternatives and that “there is no basis” to offer a longer agreement |
11:25 PM • | Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News: Artera, formerly Well Health, which uses AI for cancer testing and personalized care, raised $90M from Coatue, J&J Innovation, Breyer, Marc Benioff, and others |
11:05 PM • | Bloomberg: The US proposes banning CHIPS Act beneficiaries from expanding production capacity in “countries of concern” by 5% for advanced chips and 10% for legacy chips |
9:00 PM • | Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk: Singapore-based tomi, a DAO aiming to build an “alternative internet” to promote free speech and access to uncensored information, raised $40M from DWF Labs |
7:55 PM • | Jonathan Greig / The Record: Data leak site BreachForums plans to shut down following the arrest of alleged operator “Pompompurin”, citing fears law enforcement has access to its backend |
7:00 PM • | Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: GP Bullhound: European tech startups raised €30.5B in debt in 2022, up from €15.9B in 2021, as the global tech slump made raising new equity more difficult |
6:05 PM • | Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Instagram plans to roll out ads in search results globally in the coming months after initial tests and debuts Reminder Ads for opt-in upcoming event reminders |
6:00 PM • | AI Snake Oil: OpenAI may have tested GPT-4 on its training data, violating the cardinal rule of ML, and GPT-4's exam performance says little about its real-world usefulness |
5:35 PM • | Ryan Smith / AnandTech: Nvidia introduces six new Ada Lovelace RTX GPUs: five for laptops and one for desktops, the RTX 4000 Small Form Factor, available later in March 2023 for $1,250 |
4:45 PM • | Jem Aswad / Variety: IFPI report: subscription audio streaming revenue grew 10.3% to $12.7B in 2022, which ended with 589M paid subscribers; total streaming grew 11.5% YoY to $17.5B |
3:55 PM • | João Carrasqueira / XDA Developers: Windows 11's Snipping Tool appears to have a bug similar to Pixel's Markup tool “aCropalypse” bug, which lets anyone reveal info edited out in some screenshots |
3:43 PM • | Stephanie Murray / The Block: A US federal judge approves a settlement in the Celsius bankruptcy case that lets the company's custody account holders opt in to receive 72.5% of their crypto |
2:45 PM • | Bill Gates / GatesNotes: The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the PC, the internet, and the mobile phone, and can reduce global inequities if risks are mitigated |
2:15 PM • | Wall Street Journal: Feroot Security finds TikTok tracking pixels on 30 US government websites across 27 states; such trackers are ubiquitous and offered by Meta, Google, and others |
2:00 PM • | Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware: Intel says Raja Koduri, who joined as Chief Architect in 2017, plans to leave to found a startup focused on generative AI for gaming, media, and entertainment |
1:30 PM • | Alexandra S. Levine / Forbes: An internal TikTok tool can access some personal data of Indian users who used the app before India's 2020 ban; an employee jokingly called the tool “NSA-To-Go” |
1:25 PM • | Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Reykjavik-based Pearl Abyss' CCP Games raised $40M in financing led by a16z to develop a triple-A blockchain game set in the Eve Online universe |
1:25 PM • | Adi Robertson / The Verge: Ahead of a March 23 US House hearing, TikTok posts a video of CEO Shou Chew rallying users to defend the app from a US ban, saying US 5M businesses use TikTok |
12:20 PM • | Aaron Holmes / The Information: An internal Microsoft document instructs Azure salespeople to say that OpenAI's licenses have “limited enterprise-grade capabilities” and fewer privacy features |
12:15 PM • | Blake Schmidt / Bloomberg: Grammarly appoints Global Head of Product Rahul Roy-Chowdhury as its CEO, starting on May 1, replacing Brad Hoover, who will stay on as a board member |
12:05 PM • | Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware: NVIDIA unveils cuLitho, a software library for computational lithography that TSMC and Synopsys have integrated into their tools and manufacturing processes |
11:45 AM • | Devindra Hardawar / Engadget: Nvidia announces DGX Cloud, offering its AI supercomputers to companies looking to scale up their AI needs, starting at $36,999 per month for a single node |
11:40 AM • | Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: Roblox rolls out AI tools, including Code Assist that lets creators use text prompts to create usable game code and Material Generator for in-game 2D surfaces |
11:05 AM • | Karl Bode / Techdirt: Instead of myopically fixating on TikTok, the US should pass a real privacy law to regulate data brokers who sell info on US citizens to anyone, including China |
10:45 AM • | Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Tel Aviv-based eToro raised $250M at a $3.5B valuation via a 2021 Advanced Investment Agreement, after calling off its SPAC plans in 2022 due to slowing growth |
10:13 AM • | James Vincent / The Verge: Hands-on with Google's Bard, coming to waitlisted US and UK users: quick, fluid, more constrained than Bing, three responses per query, disclaimers, and more |
9:55 AM • | Krystal Hu / Reuters: Unlearn.AI, which creates “digital twin” profiles of patients in clinical trials, raised $15M at a $265M valuation and adds OpenAI CTO Mira Murati to its board |
9:30 AM • | Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch: OP3N, which aims to be the “Web3 version of WhatsApp meets Amazon” and develops the blockchain chat app Superapp, raised a $28M Series A at a $100M valuation |
9:16 AM • | Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge: Adobe announces Firefly, a “family” of creative generative AI models, and releases a DALL-E-like image generator and a WordArt-like stylized text generator |
9:10 AM • | Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: Microsoft rolls out Bing Image Creator, powered by OpenAI's “very latest DALL-E models”, to Bing Chat and Edge, letting users generate images from text prompts |
8:50 AM • | Bloomberg: How Elon Musk's unilateral decision making at Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla became a headache for the Biden administration, which worries about foreign influence |
8:25 AM • | Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: Tech industry group NetChoice, funded by Google and Meta, opens a litigation center, modeled on the Chamber of Commerce, to fight state laws and local lawsuits |
7:30 AM • | Noam Scheiber / New York Times: A year after its Staten Island win, the Amazon Labor Union has endured setbacks and conflicts, including between President Chris Smalls and longtime organizers |
7:15 AM • | James Vincent / The Verge: TikTok refreshes its Community Guidelines, expanding a section to cover “synthetic and manipulated media”, or deepfakes, as US political pressure increases |
7:00 AM • | Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple lobbied to change India's labor laws in the Tamil Nadu state, where Foxconn operates its largest iPhone plant, to help expand local production |
6:25 AM • | Derek B. Johnson / SC Media: Research: 14% of new Fortune 500 board members in 2022 had cybersecurity experience, down from 17% in 2021; the SEC is finalizing new cyber risk reporting rules |
5:45 AM • | Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google rolls out the Pixel Watch's March update two weeks later than expected, adding Fall Detection and promising to fix a Clock app bug delaying alarms |
5:30 AM • | Daniel Thomas / Financial Times: London-based tech investors and founders say the government must back its pledges with policies and financial incentives or risk losing its lead to rival cities |
5:10 AM • | Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: OpenAI temporarily shut down ChatGPT after a bug in an open-source tool let some users see other users' chat history titles; some chat histories remain missing |
4:25 AM • | Sigal Samuel / Vox: A case for slowing down AI over bias and future existential risks, despite its alleged inevitability, the AI arms race with China, and safety by experimentation |
1:55 AM • | Qianer Liu / Financial Times: Sources: China is giving its most successful chip companies, like SMIC, Huawei, and Hua Hong, easier subsidy access and more control over state-backed research |
12:40 AM • | Mike Scarcella / Reuters: Filing: Google denies intentionally destroying evidence in the US DOJ's antitrust lawsuit over its search business, responding to the US' bid for sanctions |