~techmeme | Bookmarks (1049)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Apple is shutting a 121-person San Diego team of the Data Operations Annotations group, responsible for improving Siri's accuracy, and moving staff to Austin  —  - Company will relocate key Siri data operations group to Austin  — Employees who can't transfer or find other jobs will be let go

Emilia David / The Verge: CES 2024 was all about “AI”, with many companies rebranding anything involving algorithms as AI and running the risk of overpromising to consumers  —  This year at CES was the year AI took over. … It was a little too much.  —  It may be the year of AI at CES, but many of these …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Anthropic researchers: AI models can be trained to deceive and the most commonly used AI safety techniques had little to no effect on the deceptive behaviors  —  Most humans learn the skill of deceiving other humans.  So can AI models learn the same?  Yes, the answer seems — and terrifyingly, they're exceptionally good at it.

Financial Times: SIA expects global semiconductor sales to recover and grow 13% in 2024 to $588B thanks to high-priced AI chips, but some analysts question the speed of recovery  —  Analysts see a ‘turning point’ this year for the $600bn market but question the speed of recovery

Emma Roth / The Verge: Interoperability across ecosystems was one of CES 2024's main themes, with widespread support for Qi2 wireless charging perhaps being the most significant shift  —  Last year, you couldn't mention CES without bringing up Matter.  It was a pivotal year for the smart home standard …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Google pulls Binance, Kraken, and other global crypto apps from the Play Store in India, after the country flagged them for operating illegally in December 2023  —  Google has pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India, the latest blow …

Andy Greenberg / Wired: Chainalysis analysis of ~400 crypto wallets of CSAM sellers: revenue is down since 2021, but sellers are using mixers and privacy coins to evade law enforcement  —  Crypto tracing firm Chainalysis found that sellers of child sexual abuse materials are successfully using “mixers” and …

Ian King / Bloomberg: US chipmaker Wolfspeed was the only stock in the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor index to decline in 2023, amid struggles at its new plant in New York  —  - Wolfspeed investors have soured amid struggles with new plant  — The semiconductor stock is off to a rough start this year

John Herrman / New York Magazine: A look at TikTok's e-commerce push, including subsidizing sales and shipping, and promoting sellers in user feeds, as ad sales weaken and social media stagnates  —  It was supposed to be a test.  Suddenly hundreds of people were watching.  What's going on here?

Bloomberg: The hack of the @SECGov X account highlights security gaps at the agency, which wasn't fully adhering to the federal cybersecurity standards as of last year  —  - Agency's X hack on Tuesday shines light on security gaps  — Watchdog said the agency wasn't adhering to all standards

Thomas Claburn / The Register: Security researchers at Recorded Future detail various ways criminals are frequently abusing GitHub's infrastructure to support and deliver malware  —  Microsoft says it's doing its best to crack down on crims  —  The popularity of Github has made it too big to block …

Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg: In a countersuit, Carta's ex-CTO Jerry Talton accuses CEO Henry Ward of misusing company resources and claims he was fired for expressing concerns to the board  —  - Suit is separate from scandal over Carta's use of company data  —  Financial technology startup Carta was hit with a fiery lawsuit …

Cissy Zhou / Nikkei Asia: Nearly 500 South Korean startups set up booths at CES 2024's Eureka Park, the most by one country in terms of government-subsidized participation in the zone  —  Almost 500 companies set up booths, more than any other nation  —  South Korean startups made a strong showing at the CES tech trade show in Las Vegas this year.

Bloomberg: Indian crypto exchange WazirX says deposit inflows jumped ~250% in the four days after India blocked nine offshore platforms on Dec. 28; ~70% came from Binance  —  - WazirX, Mudrex say about 70% of fresh inflows from Binance  — Local trading has been ravaged by tax introduced in 2022

Kate Irwin / Decrypt: GameStop plans to shut down its NFT marketplace on February 2, 2024, due to “continuing regulatory uncertainty”, after launching the platform in October 2022  —  The news comes four months after the storied video game retailer axed its NFT wallet, with GameStop set to exit the space entirely.

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: A joint US-China research effort finds that graphene can act as a semiconductor, but experts say graphene chips face immense manufacturing hurdles and costs  —  Amid global race for semiconductor supremacy, a joint U.S.-China research effort finds promise in the material, although the path to large-scale production is years away.

Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge: Amazon sells products with titles like “I'm sorry, I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy”, as sellers use ChatGPT to write listings  —  Fun new game just dropped!  Go to the internet platform of your choice, type “goes against OpenAI use policy,” …

Kevin Systrom / Artifact News: Kevin Systrom says news sharing app Artifact will shut down, after concluding that “the market opportunity isn't big enough to warrant continued investment”  —  To our Artifact Users and Partners:  —  We've made the decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app.

Ben Cox / Ben's Blog: An analysis of fediverse backend hosting providers finds Germany-based Hetzner hosts 51% of the network by number of active users, followed by France-based OVH  —  Spurred on by the problems at Twitter, a lot of my social media timeline has “moved out” of Twitter/"X" on to what people mostly describe as mastodon or the “fediverse”.

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Fubo raised the price of all plans by $5/month as of January 10, with the base plan starting at $80/mo, and plans to offer unlimited DVR “in the coming months”  —  As traditional cable TV bleeds subscribers and more and more folks sign up for online streaming options …

Sam Biddle / The Intercept: OpenAI quietly removed a ban on “military and warfare” use from its usage policy, as part of a major rewrite to make the policy “clearer” and “more readable”  —  OpenAI this week quietly deleted language expressly prohibiting the use of its technology …

Ryan McNeal / Android Authority: To comply with DMA, Google says it will let users in the EU choose which of its services are linked starting March 6  —  Some Google service features could become unavailable after unlinking.  —  •  —  TL;DR  — Google will allow users to unlink the Google services they use to comply with the EU's Digital Market Act.

Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal: A look at CD Projekt's three-year journey to turn around Cyberpunk 2077, which has now sold over 25M units and won a major award, after a disastrous 2020 launch  —  Roughly three years after a disastrous launch, ‘Cyberpunk 2077,’ a videogame featuring Keanu Reeves, has now sold 25 million units and won a major award

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology: Apptopia: WhatsApp's daily business users increased by 80% in the US in 2023 after a 122% jump in 2022, and daily users in the US grew by 9% in 2023  —  The leading global messaging app is having its breakout moment in the U.S. with some help from Tim Cook and a bit of planning.