Network Support Blog

Apple: Apple's 14" MacBook Pro with M3 starts at $1,599, the 14" MacBook Pro with M3 Pro starts at $1,999, and the 16" MacBook Pro with M3 Pro starts at $2,499  —  14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 now starts at $1,599  —  14- and 16-inch models with M3 Pro and M3 Max are available in a gorgeous new space black finish http://www.techmeme.com/231030/p31?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231030p31

David Pierce / The Verge: Hands-on with Apple's Journal, an incredibly basic journaling app, with an interesting Moments page that uses the Suggestions API to prompt users to add entries  —  The Apple Journal app is so simple that, at first, it felt like I was missing something.  The whole app is just one screen … http://www.techmeme.com/231029/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231029p4

Telegraph: Sources: the UK government is working with OpenAI to develop Gov.uk Chat, an AI chatbot to help people pay taxes and access pensions  —  Move raises fears that taxpayers may be directed away from understaffed phone lines  —  Rishi Sunak is planning to launch an AI chatbot to help … http://www.techmeme.com/231028/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231028p6

Reed Albergotti / Semafor: Q&A with Discord's head of trust and safety John Redgrave on the content moderation challenges in the age of generative AI, exploring E2EE on Discord, and more  —  Discord, the online messaging platform that started as a haven for gamers, became better known earlier this year as the site … http://www.techmeme.com/231028/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231028p5

Wall Street Journal: Google invests $500M upfront in Anthropic and agrees to add $1.5B more over time, after investing $550M in the generative AI startup earlier in 2023  —  Google move follows Amazon investment as tech giants place bigger bets on startups racing to develop artificial intelligence http://www.techmeme.com/231027/p20?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231027p20

Amazon: Amazon reports Q3 revenue up 13% YoY to $143.1B, net income up 244% to $9.9B, operating income up 343% to $11.2B, and subscription revenue up 14% to $10.2B  —  Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2023. http://www.techmeme.com/231026/p29?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231026p29

The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has hit “just under” 100M monthly users since it was released in early July  —  The rumors of Threads' early demise have been exaggerated.  —  Meta's competitor to Elon Musk's X has hit “just under” 100 million monthly users since it was released in early July … http://www.techmeme.com/231025/p43?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231025p43

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: Kaiko: in 2023, 3,400+ crypto tokens or trading pairs have been delisted from exchanges or been inactive for a long time, 15% more than for all of 2022  —  - More than 3,400 tokens are being dropped from exchanges  — Amount is the most ever going back to 2016 data, Kaiko says http://www.techmeme.com/231024/p46?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231024p46

Karissa Bell / Engadget: Meta is “listening to feedback” after some users noticed the company is cross-posting Threads posts to users' Facebook feeds without offering an opt-out option  —  The company said it's “listening to feedback” about the feature.  —  Meta is starting to ramp up its growth-hacking tactics … http://www.techmeme.com/231023/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231023p36

Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review: A look at Nightshade and Glaze, UChicago researchers' tools that help artists “mask” or even “poison” their work to break AI models later trained on the data  —  The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. http://www.techmeme.com/231023/p35?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231023p35

Richard Sandomir / New York Times: Martin Goetz, who received the first US software patent, died on October 10 at 93; Goetz was awarded a patent for data-sorting software for mainframes in 1968  —  “I knew at some point in time the patent office would recognize” computer software, he said.  It happened in 1968, helping to ignite the software market. http://www.techmeme.com/231022/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231022p2

Steve Lohr / New York Times: A look at the Allen Institute for AI's plan to build “open” generative AI model OLMo; the nonprofit research center is led by former Apple ML leader Ali Farhadi  —  The nonprofit Allen Institute for AI, led by a respected computer scientist who sold his company to Apple, is trying to democratize cutting-edge research. http://www.techmeme.com/231021/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231021p5

Casey Newton / Platformer: A look at Discord's new Warning System, which limits users' behavior based on their violation instead of relying on strikes, and avoids permanent bans  —  Most platforms ban their trolls forever.  Discord wants to rehabilitate them  —  Today, let's talk about how the traditional platform justice system … http://www.techmeme.com/231021/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231021p4

Wall Street Journal: Q&A with Chris Cox on Meta's plans to incorporate generative AI into its apps, making AI chatbots with personality, like a Snoop Dogg dungeon master, and more  —  Chief Product Officer Chris Cox on the ways artificial intelligence can improve group chats and why Meta is creating AI chatbots with personalities http://www.techmeme.com/231020/p18?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231020p18

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Product Hunt's CEO says layoffs announced on October 10 were for “strategic” not “financial or company performance reasons”, and impacted ~60% of the team  —  Product Hunt, the product discovery site for smaller startups, apps, tech tools, and developers' side projects, is cleaning house. http://www.techmeme.com/231019/p38?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231019p38

Financial Times: The US House's China committee asks about Sequoia's investments since 2010 in AI, quantum, and chip companies based, or with “significant operations”, in China  —  Scrutiny of California VC firm comes amid mounting tension between Washington and Beijing http://www.techmeme.com/231018/p41?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231018p41

Katie Honan / The City: NYC Mayor Eric Adams is using AI to make robocalls in languages he doesn't speak, raising ethical issues over making voters think he is fluent in many languages  —  New York City law requires public documents and announcements be made available in a wide range of languages … http://www.techmeme.com/231017/p49?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231017p49

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: Comcast resists a call from an ad industry group to reverse course on its February branding of its Xfinity network as “10G”  —  Comcast renamed its whole network “Xfinity 10G” despite cable's slower speeds.  —  An advertising industry group urged Comcast to stop its “10G” … http://www.techmeme.com/231016/p25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231016p25

Thomas Claburn / The Register: Researchers find that a modest amount of fine-tuning can bypass safety efforts aiming to prevent LLMs such as OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo from spewing toxic content  —  OpenAI GPT-3.5 Turbo chatbot defenses dissolve with ‘20 cents’ of API tickling  —  The “guardrails” created to prevent large language models … http://www.techmeme.com/231015/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231015p4

New York Times: The Microsoft-Activision deal closure shows that tech giants can still grow by getting “vertical mergers” through courts and regulators relatively unscathed  —  With the completion of the blockbuster acquisition, the notion that tech giants can grow through “vertical transactions” remains intact. http://www.techmeme.com/231014/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231014p6

Tom Warren / The Verge: A look at Microsoft's deal with Ubisoft, which now gets the cloud gaming rights for Call of Duty and current Activision games outside of the EU for 15 years  —  Microsoft's giant Activision Blizzard deal is complete, and it means Ubisoft has now obtained cloud streaming rights for Call of Duty … http://www.techmeme.com/231013/p19?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231013p19

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Flexport plans to cut ~20% of its global workforce as part of a new round of layoffs set to begin on October 13, and return to profitability by the end of 2024  —  - Supply chain software startup Flexport is laying off about 20% of its workforce, CNBC has learned. http://www.techmeme.com/231012/p35?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231012p35

Gabe Bullard / Nieman Reports: Internal memo: NPR lost a negligible amount of traffic in the six months since leaving Twitter, after the service labeled the outlet “US state-affiliated media”  —  The numbers confirm what many of us have long suspected — that Twitter wasn't worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic http://www.techmeme.com/231011/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231011p36

Umar Shakir / The Verge: Google adds support for 1080p video in Google Meet group calls for Workspace subscribers, after rolling out the feature for one-on-one sessions in April 2023  —  The company first enabled the high-quality video feature back in April; however, it only worked during one-on-one sessions at the time. http://www.techmeme.com/231010/p29?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231010p29

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Appfigures: ChatGPT's iOS and Android apps hit $4.58M total revenue in September from the $20/month ChatGPT+ plan, up from $3.81M in August and $2.74M in July  —  There's some good news and bad news for ChatGPT's mobile efforts.  On the positive side, the AI chatbot continues to see the number … http://www.techmeme.com/231009/p16?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231009p16

Emma Fletcher / Federal Trade Commission: One in four people in the US who reported losing money to fraud from January 2021 to June 2023 said the contact started on social media, causing $2.7B in losses  —  Scammers are hiding in plain sight on social media platforms and reports to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network point to huge profits. http://www.techmeme.com/231008/p3?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231008p3

Reuters: The US adds 42 tech companies from China and seven companies from India, UK, and other countries to an export control list over their support for Russian army  —  The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday added 42 Chinese companies to a government export control list over their support … http://www.techmeme.com/231007/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231007p8

Bloomberg: A look at SoftBank-owned PayPay, which holds a two-thirds share of the QR-code payments market in Japan and could be next in the conglomerate's IPO pipeline  —  - Firm chases gross merchant value growth of over 30% this year  — PayPay seen to be next in SoftBank's arsenal of possible IPOs http://www.techmeme.com/231007/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231007p7

Anissa Gardizy / The Information: Source: Microsoft plans to unveil its first chip designed for data centers that train and run LLMs at its annual Ignite developer and IT conference in November  —  Microsoft next month plans to unveil the company's first chip designed for artificial intelligence at its annual developers' conference … http://www.techmeme.com/231006/p17?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231006p17

Fortune: Q&A with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati about joining OpenAI, copyright challenges, AI regulation, competition, safety challenges, DALL-E 3, the future of AI, and more  —  Murati talks with Fortune about the ultra-high stakes in the generative AI revolution.  —  Mere moments before Mira Murati … http://www.techmeme.com/231005/p24?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231005p24

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media: Some 4chan users are running a coordinated campaign to flood the internet with racist images created using Bing's text-to-image generator powered by DALL-E 3  —  4chan users are coordinating a posting campaign where they use Bing's AI text-to-image generator to create racist images that they can then post across the internet. http://www.techmeme.com/231005/p23?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231005p23

Natalie Korach / The Wrap: X starts removing preview headlines from posts with article links, showing only the lead image and domain name; Elon Musk mentioned the change in August 2023  —  The platform formerly known as Twitter now only displays outside sites' featured images on its iPhone app http://www.techmeme.com/231004/p38?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231004p38

Kalhan Rosenblatt / NBC News: MrBeast asks whether social media platforms are “ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes” after a deepfake scam TikTok ad, since deleted, used his likeness  —  MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, called the rise of AI deepfakes “a serious problem” in response to a fake ad circulating online. http://www.techmeme.com/231003/p35?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231003p35

Billy Perrigo / TIME: Sources: at Foxconn's Sriperumbudur factory, key to Apple's pivot to India, issues persist, like disciplinary wage docking and poorer conditions for contractors  —  Set back from a dusty highway in South India, three newly completed factory buildings rise up behind a black spiked iron fence. http://www.techmeme.com/231002/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231002p14

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with AMD CEO Lisa Su on competing with Nvidia's H100, PyTorch, AI regulation, the US CHIPS Act, diversifying from TSMC, the global supply chain, and more  —  At this year's Code Conference, the CEO of one of the world's largest computer chip companies discusses competing with Nvidia's leading GPU … http://www.techmeme.com/231001/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231001p5

Katrina Manson / Bloomberg: US DoD Chief Digital and AI Officer Craig Martell says the agency wants to use AI safely and urges companies to be more transparent about their AI software  —  - Defense Department is holding symposium to discuss AI  — Official says agency wants to use the algorithms safely http://www.techmeme.com/230930/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a230930p7