~techmeme | Bookmarks (1049)

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.

John Timmer / Ars Technica: Harvard spinout QuEra, a quantum computing startup, plans to release an error-corrected quantum computer with 10,000 physical and 100 logical qubits by 2026  —  Company builds on recent demonstration of error-tracking in similar hardware.  —  On Tuesday, the quantum computing startup Quera laid …

Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI, Inflection, and Cohere held back-channel talks on AI safety with Chinese state-backed groups in Geneva in July 2023 and October 2023  —  OpenAI, Inflection and Cohere held back-channel talks with Chinese state-backed groups in Geneva  —  US artificial intelligence companies OpenAI …

Nico Grant / New York Times: Sources: several hundred employees from Google's core engineering division received notices that their roles were eliminated and lost corporate access  —  The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.

Louise Matsakis / Semafor: Google lays off hundreds of people working on Assistant and says the restructuring would help improve Assistant as it explores integrating newer AI technology  —  Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and eliminating a similar number …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams working on the Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest; Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving Google  —  Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware.

Maxwell Strachan / VICE: A survey of 9,388 software engineers in December 2023 finds ~90% believe getting a job now is harder than pre-pandemic, 60%+ believe AI will lead to less hiring  —  9,388 engineers polled by Motherboard and Blind said AI will lead to less hiring.  Only 6% were confident they'd get another job with the same pay.

Todd Spangler / Variety: Netflix says its ad tier has 23M+ MAUs globally, up from 15M+ in November 2023, and 85% of customers on the ad tier are streaming for over 2 hours per day  —  Netflix is seeing strong growth of its advertising-based plan, having recently eclipsed 23 million global monthly active users, president of advertising Amy Reinhard said.

Bloomberg: Sources: OpenAI is in talks with CNN and Fox Corp. to license their text, video, and image content; Time “is in discussions with OpenAI” about a content deal  —  - Startup has said it's in discussions with dozens of publishers  — Negotiations come as OpenAI faces New York Times lawsuit

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: The US ITC files its opposition to Apple's motion for the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 sales ban to remain paused for the duration of the company's appeal  —  The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) today formally opposed Apple's motion for the Apple Watch sales ban to remain paused for the duration of Apple's appeal.

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: US SEC Chair Gary Gensler concedes that losing in court after rejecting Grayscale's spot bitcoin ETF left the agency with little choice but to approve such ETFs  —  The SEC chair said a court forced his hand and that the agency's decision to greenlight a spot bitcoin ETF doesn't signal support of that or any other digital asset.

Reuters: The US SEC approves spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Grayscale, ARK 21Shares, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Fidelity, VanEck, Invesco, Valkyrie, Hashdex, and Franklin  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved 11 spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, including those of Grayscale …

Politico: Sources: Amazon won't offer concessions to the European Commission to garner approval for its $1.4B takeover of iRobot; the EU's final deadline is February 14  —  Amazon won't offer concessions to the European Commission in a bid to garner approval for its planned $1.4 billion takeover …

Sarah Wynn / The Block: The US SEC is working with the FBI to investigate the false X post on January 9 about approving spot bitcoin ETFs; the agency approved 11 of them on January 10  —  - The SEC spokesperson said the agency will provide updates as appropriate and said any agency action on exchange rule filings will be posted on the agency's...

Rohan Goswami / CNBC: The US DOJ says SAP will pay $220M+ to settle investigations into worldwide “recidivist” foreign bribery practices, and enter a three-year deferred prosecution  —  - SAP, the $192 billion German enterprise tech company, will pay more than $230 million to settle investigations into worldwide …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: X quietly removes the ability for paying subscribers to set an NFT as a profile picture, a feature Twitter launched in January 2022 for Twitter Blue subscribers  —  On Tuesday, Elon Musk's X wrote about a grand vision for the company in 2024, which includes launching peer-to-peer payments and more AI-powered tools.