Network Support Blog

Bloomberg: MakerDAO passed a proposal letting the DeFi lender invest up to $6B in short-term US Treasuries, double the current limit; the MKR token is up almost 3x in 2023  —  - MakerDAO can now invest up to $6 billion in Treasuary Bills  — The project's MKR is 2023's best-performing major token http://www.techmeme.com/230929/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230929p14

Emma Roth / The Verge: Google lets publishers use a robots.txt flag to opt out of the company using their data to train its AI models, while remaining accessible through Google Search  —  Google just announced it's giving website publishers a way to opt out of having their data used to train the company's AI models … http://www.techmeme.com/230928/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230928p36

Wall Street Journal: France's competition authority raided a “graphics cards sector” company this week as part of a cloud-computing inquiry; sources say the target was Nvidia  —  France's competition authority has expressed concerns that established companies in the sector could exclude smaller ones http://www.techmeme.com/230928/p35?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230928p35

Kevin Roose / New York Times: Hands-on with ChatGPT's image recognition and voice features: image recognition isn't perfect and refuses to discuss faces, voice is fluid and natural, and more  —  The image-recognition feature could have many uses, and the voice feature is even more intriguing. http://www.techmeme.com/230927/p55?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230927p55

The Information: Sources: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device, and Masayoshi Son has been involved in some aspects of the conversation  —  Jony Ive, the renowned designer of the iPhone, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing building a new AI hardware device … http://www.techmeme.com/230926/p32?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230926p32

CNBC: Memos: Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith is stepping down on December 4 and retiring on January 2, set to be replaced by Amazon SVP of Devices and Services Dave Limp  —  KEY POINTS  — Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will replace CEO Bob Smith with outgoing Amazon exec Dave Limp, CNBC has learned. http://www.techmeme.com/230925/p16?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230925p16

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: A look at the role of pro gaming in Tencent's long-term strategy as China hosts the Hangzhou Asian Games, the first event where esports are eligible for medals  —  - Hundreds of pro players will compete at Hangzhou Asian Games  — Tencent places esports at the heart of its online media empire http://www.techmeme.com/230924/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230924p2

Reuters: Sources: India plans to delay its import license requirement for laptops and tablets by a year and propose a simpler import registration process from November  —  India will defer an import licence requirement for laptops and tablets, two government officials said, a policy U-turn after industry … http://www.techmeme.com/230923/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230923p6

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Microsoft adds AI-powered features to its SwiftKey keyboard app for iOS and Android, including Snapchat camera lenses, stickers, an AI-powered editor, and more  —  Along with AI advances in Windows 11 and Bing, Microsoft also this week announced it's bringing new AI-powered features … http://www.techmeme.com/230922/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230922p15

Jay Peters / The Verge: X plans to deprecate Circles on October 31, 2023; users will not be able to create new posts nor add people to their Circle but will be able to remove people  —  X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. http://www.techmeme.com/230921/p43?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230921p43

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: With blistering public attacks against a lesser-known accelerator and investors, Y Combinator appears curiously on the defensive lately  —  Y Combinator has been on the defense as of late.  —  This past weekend, leaders from the popular accelerator were vocal on X (formerly known as Twitter) … http://www.techmeme.com/230920/p40?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230920p40

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: The Linux Foundation launches the Unified Acceleration Foundation to create an open standard for accelerator programming, an evolution of the oneAPI initiative  —  At the Open Source Summit Europe in Bilbao, Spain, the Linux Foundation today announced the launch of the Unified Acceleration (UXL) Foundation. http://www.techmeme.com/230919/p50?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230919p50

Catherine Thorbecke / CNN: Filing: CEO of Block's Square unit Alyssa Henry plans to step down on October 2 after nine years at the company; Jack Dorsey will become the “Square Head”  —  Alyssa Henry, the CEO of Square - a unit of Jack Dorsey's fintech company, Block - will leave her post at the company next month. http://www.techmeme.com/230918/p33?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230918p33

Rod McGuirk / Associated Press: Australia says Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and others must submit a voluntary code of conduct by June 30, 2024, to improve safety standards or face regulation  —  Australia's government said Monday the online dating industry must improve safety standards or be forced to make changes through legislation … http://www.techmeme.com/230918/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230918p1

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review: Q&A with DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman on maintaining AI optimism, how “interactive” AI will follow the generative AI wave, AI regulation, and more  —  DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman wants to build a chatbot that does a whole lot more than chat. http://www.techmeme.com/230917/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230917p5

Wall Street Journal: How Spotify and other streaming services have transformed the sound of music: songs are shorter, albums are longer, and artists collaborate more across genres  —  To succeed on Spotify and other services, songs are getting shorter, albums are getting longer, and artists are collaborating across genres. http://www.techmeme.com/230917/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230917p4

Constance Grady / Vox: Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk biography is a book of rigorous and dogged reportage, but lacks analysis and often ignores the moments at which Musk's flaws scale  —  In Walter Isaacson's buzzy new biography, Elon Musk emerges as a callous, chaos-loving man without empathy. http://www.techmeme.com/230917/p3?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230917p3

Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal: A profile of Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, whose OpenAI-or-bust strategy rankled some staff who found their AI projects pushed aside and their resources curtailed  —  Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott spearheaded the tech titan's unlikely partnership with OpenAI  —  In the tech industry's artificial-intelligence race, http://www.techmeme.com/230916/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230916p6

David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: A look at SBF's ~250 pages of reflections and self-justifications while under house arrest, which signal how he may defend himself at his October criminal trial  —  The FTX founder wrote hundreds of pages of reflections and self-justifications while under house arrest, shedding light … http://www.techmeme.com/230916/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230916p5

David Shepardson / Reuters: A US judge declines to order Jonathan Kanter's recusal from the DOJ's ad antitrust lawsuit against Google, after the company cited his past work for its critics  —  U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday declined to order a Justice Department official to stay out of the government's … http://www.techmeme.com/230915/p16?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230915p16

Rest of World: How some Chinese data labeling companies hired by Baidu, Alibaba, and JD.com to train AI are exploiting vocational school students via data labeling internships  —  As part of China's digital underclass, vocational school students work as data annotators - for low pay and little future prospects. http://www.techmeme.com/230915/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230915p15

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: X changes its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature to show contributors other note proposals and see other viewpoints before they submit a rating  —  X (formerly Twitter) this week changed how its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature works. http://www.techmeme.com/230915/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230915p14

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 10% YoY to $4.89B, vs. $4.87B est., Digital Media revenue up 11% YoY to $3.59B, and Digital Experience revenue up 10% YoY to $1.23B  —  Adobe Inc. provided a sales outlook that met analysts' expectations, but disappointed investors who expected demand … http://www.techmeme.com/230914/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230914p36

Dan Primack / Axios: Arm prices its 95.5M shares at $51 a piece, raising $4.87B in 2023's largest IPO so far and giving the company a fully diluted valuation of ~$54.5B  —  Arm, the British chip design giant controlled by SoftBank, has raised nearly $5 billion in its initial public offering. http://www.techmeme.com/230913/p44?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230913p44

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Mumbai-based Kale Logistics, which offers cloud-based tools to assist airports, seaports, and others with logistics, raised a $30M Series B led by Creaegis  —  Kale Logistics Solutions, an Indian startup offering a vertical SaaS platform to assist logistics needs, has raised $30 million … http://www.techmeme.com/230913/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230913p1

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: Court filing: the US DOJ claims Elon Musk repeatedly made decisions that likely ran afoul of a 2022 FTC order restricting Twitter's data security practices  —  The Justice Department makes the accusation in its response to a motion from X asking that the consent decree be dismissed http://www.techmeme.com/230912/p57?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230912p57

Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post: Tests show Threads' new search function blocks words like “sex”, “gore”, and “vaccines”; Meta admits “covid” is a blocked term but declines to disclose others  —  Public health experts expressed anger with the platform's moderation policies … http://www.techmeme.com/230911/p25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230911p25

Associated Press: Research: ChatGPT uses an estimated 500ml of water for every five to 50 prompts; Microsoft disclosed the company's water use spiked 34% YoY in 2022, Google 20%  —  The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.  But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed … http://www.techmeme.com/230910/p3?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230910p3

Ernesto Van der Sar / TorrentFreak: The Delhi High Court approves an injunction for preemptive blocks of pirate websites that covers “future content”, as requested by Netflix, Disney, and others  —  Like many other countries around the world, India's copyright law allows rightsholders to limit access to pirate sites. http://www.techmeme.com/230909/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230909p5

Peter Kiefer / The Ankler: Sources: Apple spent $5M on the film rights for Michael Lewis' book about Sam Bankman-Fried; at least eight Hollywood projects on SBF are in the works so far  —  Apple paid $5M for Michael Lewis' book, a Nanette Burstein doc is underway, and a who'll-finish-first race is afoot as the crypto con projects pile up http://www.techmeme.com/230908/p23?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230908p23

Sarah Wynn / The Block: The FBI says North Korea-linked Lazarus Group was responsible for the theft of $41M in crypto from online casino and betting site Stake around September 4, 2023  —  - The FBI said North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group was responsible for a $41 million theft this week from crypto-based sports betting platform Stake.com. http://www.techmeme.com/230907/p40?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230907p40

Joe Warminsky / The Record: Apple releases macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS updates to address two zero-day flaws that Citizen Lab says were used to deliver NSO Group's Pegasus spyware  —  Apple released software updates on Thursday to address two zero-day vulnerabilities that researchers said were used … http://www.techmeme.com/230907/p39?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230907p39

CNBC: Tencent is launching its Hunyuan AI model for business use on Sept. 7 and integrating the model with its existing video conferencing and social media products  —  - Chinese tech giant Tencent is launching its artificial intelligence model “Hunyuan” for business use at an annual summit on Thursday. http://www.techmeme.com/230906/p43?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230906p43

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Harmonya, which offers software to help retail and consumer packaged goods companies decipher their product data, raised a $20M Series A led by Bright Pixel  —  Like other companies, retailers and consumer packaged goods companies have a lot of data accumulated about their products and consumers. http://www.techmeme.com/230905/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230905p36

Matt Poskitt / GamesIndustry.biz: Q&A with Bethesda Head of Publishing Pete Hines on releasing Starfield, working with Microsoft, Game Pass, triple-A games in 2023, debugging Starfield, and more  —  Head of publishing on why the developer prioritises player freedom over less buggy games, and facing expectations around its sci-fi epic http://www.techmeme.com/230904/p9?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230904p9

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: A look at the iPhone's upcoming Lightning to USB-C transition; sources say the revamped iPad Pro's Magic Keyboard coming in 2024 will have an aluminum top case  —  Also: The company confirms the date of its Sept. 12 iPhone 15 event and aims to overhaul device production with 3D printers. http://www.techmeme.com/230903/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230903p6

Insider: As Instagram and other social media feeds get swamped with influencers' professionally created content, average users move to private posting and closed groups  —  Group chats and messaging apps killed it … Tati Bruening, a 22-year-old content creator and photographer, just wants to share memes and post about cooking green beans. http://www.techmeme.com/230903/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230903p5

Vittoria Elliott / Wired: A Media Matters for America report on PragerU Kids: Meta isn't consistently enforcing transparency rules for ads around “social issues, elections, or politics”  —  A nonprofit watchdog group has found that the right-wing group PragerU has pushed out more than 100 political ads … http://www.techmeme.com/230902/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230902p4

Bloomberg: Sources: cloud data management startup Rubrik, valued at ~$4B in 2021, is planning an IPO in 2023, raising $500M to $700M; PitchBook: Rubrik has raised $1B+  —  - Offering could raise between $500 million and $700 million  — The company held a meeting with research analysts this week http://www.techmeme.com/230901/p18?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230901p18

Mark Wilding / The Verge: Investigation: in July, IBM signed a £54.7M deal to develop a UK biometrics platform, including for facial recognition, despite a 2020 pledge to stop such work  —  IBM has returned to the facial recognition market — just three years after announcing it was abandoning work on the technology due … http://www.techmeme.com/230831/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230831p36