Network Support Blog

Leslie Katz / New York Times: A profile of Alexander Reben, who will become OpenAI's first artist in residence for three months starting January 2024, amid a debate over the use of AI in art  —  Alexander Reben is taking his tech-savvy perspective to OpenAI, a company that some in the art world believe is a threat to their future. http://www.techmeme.com/231231/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231231p6

Michael Koziol / IEEE Spectrum: A look at Wi-Fi 7, slated for certification in Q1 2024, with multi-link operations that allow devices to spread a data stream across multiple frequency bands  —  Wi-Fi is one of the most aggravating success stories.  Despite how ubiquitous the technology has become in our lives … http://www.techmeme.com/231231/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231231p2

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Counterpoint: about 16M foldable phones were sold in 2023, just 1.3% of the 1.2B smartphone market, as foldables start to gain traction in the US and China  —  Samsung, Motorola and Huawei continue to invest in high-priced flip devices despite weak sales  —  Every large smartphone maker except Apple … http://www.techmeme.com/231231/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231231p1

Justin Garrison / Justin Garrison: An AWS developer claims Amazon is “silently sacking” staff by pushing them to take a different role that they would quit later, avoiding the need for severance  —  Amazon has a stock problem.  It's not only Amazon, but they have more to lose.  If you're a customer, that's going to be bad for your business too. http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p14

Nikkei Asia: Nikon, Sony, and Canon are developing camera tech that embeds digital signatures in images so that they can be distinguished from realistic AI-generated fakes  —  Digital signatures to provide way to tell real photos from  —  Sony will release a firmware for professional-grade cameras to embed digital signatures to photos. http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p13?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p13

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: A look at the rise of AI-generated virtual influencers, with some charging thousands of dollars to promote products, leading to concerns from human influencers  —  Hyper-realistic ‘virtual influencers’ are being used to promote leading brands — drawing ire from human content creators http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p10

A.O. Scott / New York Times: How some authors are embracing ChatGPT and other chatbots as the latest iteration of an ancient literary conceit, a writer's “muse”  —  What happens to literature when writers embrace A.I. as their muse?  —  The robots of literature and movies usually present either an existential danger or an erotic frisson. http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p3?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p3

Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: The UK's NHS deploys an AI stethoscope from Mayo Clinic spinoff Eko in 200 GP surgeries to detect heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and valvular heart disease  —  Rollout of stethoscope with pioneering technology could save lives and ease the strain on the NHS http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p2

Reuters: A look at Chinese startup SEIDA, which claims to be developing optical proximity correction chip design software to help China become self-reliant in chip tech  —  Last year, a veteran Silicon Valley software executive took the helm of a startup in his native China, company records show. http://www.techmeme.com/231230/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231230p1

Tanya Snyder / Politico: Lidar sensor tech is the latest flashpoint in the US-China trade war, as the US lidar industry mounts a lobbying offensive against Chinese companies like Hesai  —  The domestic lidar industry is mounting a lobbying offensive against a leading Chinese rival that's stepping up its own PR game. http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p22?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p22

The Information: Sources: BuzzFeed is close to selling most of Complex Networks to livestream shopping startup Ntwrk for ~$100M, far below what Jonah Peretti originally sought  —  After months of discussions, BuzzFeed is close to an agreement to sell most of its Complex Networks business to Ntwrk … http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p17?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p17

John Gruber / Daring Fireball: Apple blocking Beeper Mini, not a service unto itself but an unauthorized client for a proprietary platform that costs a lot to run, is not anticompetitive  —  There's a lot to catch up on since last I wrote about Beeper.  Long story short, they've been playing — and no surprise, losing — the cat-and-mouse game with Apple. http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p10

Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch: Source: Shield AI, which makes autonomous drones and other military tech, raised $300M in equity and debt at a $2.8B valuation, bringing its Series F to $500M  —  Defense tech startup Shield AI has expanded its latest funding round with another $300 million in equity and debt … http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p9?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p9

Kif Leswing / CNBC: Apple was up ~50% in 2023 but underperformed its tech peers after Apple suffered four straight quarters of declining revenue, its longest such slide since 2001  —  - In 2023, Apple suffered its longest revenue slide in 22 years, reporting four straight quarters of declining sales. http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p8

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times: Sources: for months, OpenAI has held talks with major news publishers including Gannett, News Corp, and IAC about the price and terms of licensing their content  —  Several major publishers have been in talks to license content to the creator of ChatGPT, but agreement on the price and terms has been elusive. http://www.techmeme.com/231229/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231229p7

Anna Baydakova / The Block: Immunefi: crypto users lost $1.8B in hacks and scams in 2023, down 54% YoY, as single incidents grew 90% YoY to 319; Lazarus remained the most prolific attacker  —  - Crypto users lost $1.8 billion in various hacks and scams in 2023, with Lazarus Group remaining the most prolific attacker. http://www.techmeme.com/231228/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231228p15

Annie Palmer / CNBC: Affirm's stock grew 430% in 2023, outperforming all $5B+ US tech companies and rebounding from its 90% fall in 2022, due to partnerships with Amazon and others  —  - Affirm shares have skyrocketed more than 400% this year, outperforming all U.S. tech companies worth $5 billion or more. http://www.techmeme.com/231228/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231228p8

Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Filing: Apple supplier Luxshare plans to acquire a 62.5% stake in Pegatron's Kunshan unit in China for ~$300M, as Luxshare seeks to better compete with Foxconn  —  - Pegatron to sell majority stake of Kunshan campus to Luxshare  — Apple's fostering Chinese suppliers to boost ties with Beijing http://www.techmeme.com/231228/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231228p7

Reuters: Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng says the company's ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot now has 100M+ users, after launching the chatbot to the public in August 2023  —  Baidu's (9888.HK) ChatGPT-like Ernie Bot has garnered more than 100 million users, chief technology officer of the Chinese internet company Wang Haifeng said on Thursday. http://www.techmeme.com/231228/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231228p6

Zachary Small / New York Times: Transgender people say games help them explore their identities; character creation in RPGs like Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 makes fewer gendered assumptions  —  Transgender people have turned to games, some with robust character creators, as places where they can safely express themselves. http://www.techmeme.com/231228/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231228p5

David Pan / Bloomberg: Filing: MicroStrategy acquired 14,620 BTC for $616M in cash, taking its total holdings to 189,150 BTC, worth $8B+, or almost 1% of the 19.58M BTC outstanding  —  - MicroStrategy's total Bitcoin holdings is now 189,150 coins … The Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company run … http://www.techmeme.com/231227/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231227p15

Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu / Financial Times: Opensignal: UK 5G download speeds averaged 118.2M Mbps between August 1 and October 29, down 13% YoY, the slowest in the G7 in 2023; France averaged 221.1 Mbps  —  Research by Opensignal comes despite government's emphasis on benefits of technology to economic growth http://www.techmeme.com/231227/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231227p14

Sam Nussey / Reuters: SoftBank tells T-Mobile US to issue 48.75M shares, worth ~$7.59B, to the conglomerate after the Sprint and T-Mobile merger, taking its stake from 3.75% to 7.64%  —  SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) said it would receive shares in telco T-Mobile US (TMUS.O) worth some $7.59 billion at no additional cost … http://www.techmeme.com/231227/p13?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231227p13

New York Times: The NYT sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging they used millions of its articles to train AI, the first major US media outlet to sue  —  Millions of articles from The New York Times were used to train chatbots that now compete with it, the lawsuit said. http://www.techmeme.com/231227/p12?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231227p12

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: How Apple hiring Stanford PhD Marcelo Lamego, who was the CTO of Masimo spinoff Cercacor, in 2013 to add Watch features sparked a fight that led to the US ban  —  Apple's hiring of a key engineer 10 years ago helped spark a fight that led its watch to be banned from the US. http://www.techmeme.com/231227/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231227p11

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, which is building LLMs that support Indian languages, emerges from stealth with a $41M combined seed and Series A led by Lightspeed  —  Sarvam AI has come out of stealth mode and announced it has raised $41 million as the five-month old Indian startup races to build … http://www.techmeme.com/231207/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231207p2

Krystal Hu / Reuters: NYC-based Pontera, which builds software for managing retirement accounts, raised $60M, a source says at a $550M+ valuation, taking its total funding to $160M  —  Dec 7 (Reuters) - Fintech startup Pontera has raised $60 million in fresh funding led by investment firm ICONIQ Growth … http://www.techmeme.com/231207/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231207p1

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: MIT spinoff Liquid AI, which aims to build AI systems powered by liquid neural networks, emerges from stealth with a $37.6M seed at a $303M post-money valuation  —  An MIT spinoff co-founded by robotics luminary Daniela Rus aims to build general-purpose AI systems powered by a relatively … http://www.techmeme.com/231206/p41?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231206p41

Mat Honan / MIT Technology Review: Q&A with Sundar Pichai on Gemini, the leading AI benchmarks, hallucinations, making AI helpful for all, the legal AI landscape, the future of search, and more  —  In an in-depth interview, Pichai predicts: “This will be one of the biggest things we all grapple with for the next decade.” http://www.techmeme.com/231206/p36?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231206p36

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google details the Gemini-powered AlphaCode 2, an update to the code generating AlphaCode announced in February 2022, beating ~85% of competitors in Codeforces  —  Alongside its Gemini generative AI model, Google this morning took the wraps off of AlphaCode 2, an improved version … http://www.techmeme.com/231206/p26?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231206p26

Brooks Barnes / New York Times: SAG-AFTRA members ratify the union's new three-year contract with studios after 78% voted in favor; some members remain unhappy about the deal's AI protections  —  The SAG-AFTRA vote formally ends six months of labor strife, though some members were not happy about the contract's artificial intelligence protections. http://www.techmeme.com/231206/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231206p2

Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph: Coinbase updates Wallet, available in 170+ countries, to let users send crypto on platforms where they can share a link, including email, social, and messaging  —  Recipients need to download a Coinbase Wallet to receive the funds, but the crypto exchange says they've simplified the process for less tech-savvy users. http://www.techmeme.com/231206/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231206p1

Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: Source: VC firm OpenView laid off most of its staff and does not plan to make new investments, after several partners recently left the firm  —  OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based venture capital firm that has backed enterprise software firms such as Calendly and Expensify … http://www.techmeme.com/231205/p31?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231205p31

Samantha Cole / 404 Media: Alibaba's paper on its Animate Anyone AI model goes viral after videos show the model can replace TikTok influencers after being trained on TikTokers' videos  —  A team of researchers from Chinese retail and technology giant Alibaba released a paper this week detailing a new model, which they call “Animate Anyone.” http://www.techmeme.com/231205/p25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231205p25

Globes Online: Tel Aviv-based data privacy and governance startup Mine, whose clients include Reddit and HelloFresh, raised a $30M Series B led by Battery Ventures and PayPal  —  Mine, which develops B2B and B2C solutions in the field of data privacy, and governance, has 150 customers including Reddit … http://www.techmeme.com/231205/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231205p15

Wired: An analysis of 36GB of US school network logs covering January 2022 to August 2023 finds widespread use of filters to censor the internet, including health info  —  A WIRED investigation into internet censorship in US schools found widespread use of filters to censor health, identity, and other crucial information. http://www.techmeme.com/231205/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231205p2

Alexandra Barinka / Bloomberg: Meta, IBM, and over 50 other companies and organizations form the AI Alliance, a coalition to work on open source AI, including to share tech and reduce risks  —  Meta Platforms Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are joining more than 40 companies and organizations to create … http://www.techmeme.com/231205/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231205p1

Blake Brittain / Reuters: A US appeals court throws out VLSI Technology's $2.18B win against Intel in a 2021 patent-infringement case, leading to a new trial over a second VLSI patent  —  A U.S. appeals court on Monday threw out a $2.18 billion patent-infringement award won by patent owner VLSI Technology against Intel Corp … http://www.techmeme.com/231204/p24?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231204p24

Bloomberg: A look at Osaka-based Fuso Chemical, which supplies 90%+ of the silica to polish wafers, sinking deeper into debt by refusing to raise its prices to cover capex  —  - Fuso Chemical says lifting prices would be betraying customers  — Osaka firm dominates in chip silica but struggles with capex http://www.techmeme.com/231204/p20?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231204p20

WABetaInfo: WhatsApp updates its iOS app to let users send photos and videos in their original quality files, start voice chats without ringing in large groups, and more  —  WhatsApp has just submitted a new stable update for iOS, available on the App Store: the build number is 23.24.73.  —  What's new in this update? http://www.techmeme.com/231204/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231204p10

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Spotify plans to lay off ~17% of its workforce, or ~1,500 staff, to “rightsize” its costs, after cutting 6% in June, citing slow growth and rising capital costs  —  Spotify is eliminating about 17% jobs, its third round of layoffs, as the music streaming looks to become “both productive and efficient.” http://www.techmeme.com/231204/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231204p2

Daniel Ek / Spotify: An Update on December 2023 Organizational Changes  —  Earlier today, CEO Daniel Ek shared the following note about the company's organizational changes with all Spotify employees.  —  Team,  —  Over the last two years, we've put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great … http://www.techmeme.com/231204/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231204p1

Wall Street Journal: US regulators are proposing a labeling system for AI healthcare apps, including requiring disclosure of how the tools are trained and how they perform  —  Regulators want to create a ‘nutrition label’ for AI apps in one of Washington's first attempts to impose safety requirements on the technology http://www.techmeme.com/231203/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231203p10

Paresh Dave / Wired: Documents: OpenAI signed a letter of intent in 2019 to spend $51M on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain AI, in which Sam Altman had invested $1M+  —  Documents show that OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on brain-inspired chips developed by startup Rain. http://www.techmeme.com/231203/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231203p8

Matt Levine / Bloomberg: Researchers show AI misalignment in a GPT-4-based stock trading bot that performed insider trading in a simulated environment without being instructed to do so  —  Also OpenAI's board, kangaroo grazing and bank box-checking.  —  AI MNPI  —  Here you go, insider trading robot: http://www.techmeme.com/231203/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231203p4

Maria Sherman / Associated Press: The current members of rock band Kiss reveal digital avatars of themselves, created by George Lucas' ILM, which will tour as the band retires from live touring  —  On Saturday night, Kiss closed out the final performance of their “The End of the Road” farewell tour at New York City's famed Madison Square Garden. http://www.techmeme.com/231203/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231203p1

Jay Peters / The Verge: Instagram head Adam Mosseri says Threads won't get chronological search results, which “would create a substantial safety loophole”  —  Instagram boss Adam Mosseri says letting users see search results chronologically “would create a substantial safety loophole.” http://www.techmeme.com/231202/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231202p15

Counterpoint Research: Global smartwatch shipments grew 9% YoY in Q3 2023: Apple had its best-ever Q3 performance with shipments up 7% YoY, Huawei grew 56%, and Samsung fell 19%  —  - The global smartwatch market rebounded with a 9% YoY rise in Q3 2023 shipments, continuing the upward trend from the previous quarter. http://www.techmeme.com/231202/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231202p14

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology: A look at Anthropic's governance structure: the company is a public benefit corporation with a separate, long-term benefit trust that will select most its board  —  A long-term benefit trust will eventually pick most of Anthropic's board members.  Can we trust the structure? http://www.techmeme.com/231202/p12?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231202p12

Reuters: Sources: EU lawmakers can't agree on how to regulate systems like ChatGPT, with foundation models becoming the main hurdle in talks over the proposed AI Act  —  EU lawmakers cannot agree on how to regulate systems like ChatGPT, in a threat to landmark legislation aimed at keeping artificial intelligence … http://www.techmeme.com/231202/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a231202p2