Sunday, June 25, 2023

As the use of AI-generated ads in political campaigns increases lawmakers political consultants and election researchers push for creating new guardrails (New York Times)

New York Times:
As the use of AI-generated ads in political campaigns increases, lawmakers, political consultants, and election researchers push for creating new guardrails  —  Gaps in campaign rules allow politicians to spread images and messaging generated by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence technology.



Source: a group of investors led by Apollo Global Management plans to make a $1B debt investment in US chipmaker Wolfspeed which has a $6B market cap (Maria Heeter/The Information)

Maria Heeter / The Information:
Source: a group of investors led by Apollo Global Management plans to make a $1B+ debt investment in US chipmaker Wolfspeed, which has a $6B market cap  —  A group of investors led by Apollo Global Management is making a more than $1 billion debt investment in Wolfspeed …



Q&A with AWS Product VP Matt Wood on the generative AI boom the escalating AI battle between tech giants curating the best models for AWS and more (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Q&A with AWS Product VP Matt Wood on the generative AI boom, the escalating AI battle between tech giants, curating the best models for AWS, and more  —  Matt Wood, vice president of product for Amazon Web Services, is at the tip of the spear of Amazon's response in the escalating AI battle between the tech giants.



How Apple is getting Vision Pro ready to ship and a look at its Mac plans including upgrading the current lineup to M3 and early work on a 30-inch iMac (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
How Apple is getting Vision Pro ready to ship and a look at its Mac plans, including upgrading the current lineup to M3 and early work on a 30-inch+ iMac  —  After debuting the Vision Pro, Apple is working on finishing up the device's software, expanding testing and finalizing the rollout strategy.



As TikTok CEO Shou Chew announces a five-year $10B investment in Indonesia experts say competition and regulation have made TikTok vulnerable in Southeast Asia (Mercedes Ruehl/Financial Times)

Mercedes Ruehl / Financial Times:
As TikTok CEO Shou Chew announces a five-year $10B investment in Indonesia, experts say competition and regulation have made TikTok vulnerable in Southeast Asia  —  Viral app's parent ByteDance targets large Indonesian market but faces growing regulatory scrutiny around the world



A look at the underwhelming state of augmentative and alternative communication tech including a handful of iPad apps for speech and language impaired users (Julie Kim/MIT Technology Review)

Julie Kim / MIT Technology Review:
A look at the underwhelming state of augmentative and alternative communication tech, including a handful of iPad apps, for speech and language impaired users  —  For people who can't speak, there has been depressingly little innovation in technology that helps them communicate.



Saturday, June 24, 2023

The Twitter-to-Mastodon migration started in November 2022 failed because of Mastodon's exclusionary culture decentralization making the UX worse and more (Bloonface/Café Lob-On)

Bloonface / Café Lob-On:
The Twitter-to-Mastodon migration started in November 2022 failed because of Mastodon's exclusionary culture, decentralization making the UX worse, and more  —  I've been using fediverse stuff (Mastodon and, most recently, Calckey - I'm just going to use “Mastodon” as shorthand here …



Hermes wins permanent ban on 'MetaBirkin' NFT sales

Luxury brand Hermes has won a legal case in the US to permanently block artist Mason Rothschild's sale of MetaBirkin non-fungible tokens (NFTs). A US district judge agreed that the NFT violated the French luxury house's trademark rights. Rothschild's defence that the works were an absurdist statement on luxury goods and immune from the lawsuit was countered by the judge. The verdict means that Rothschild must stop marketing the NFTs and hand over remaining tokens and profits. https://ift.tt/luvQSBL

Sources: Mark Zuckerberg is using Instagram to promote an edgier image to court the "tech bros" captivated by Elon Musk's online antagonism and offline antics (Washington Post)

Washington Post:
Sources: Mark Zuckerberg is using Instagram to promote an edgier image to court the “tech bros” captivated by Elon Musk's online antagonism and offline antics  —  Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to appear more relevant among the tech elite



Sources: IBM is close to a deal to acquire cloud-based IT management startup Apptio from Vista Equity Partners for $5B; Vista acquired Apptio for $2B in 2019 (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: IBM is close to a deal to acquire cloud-based IT management startup Apptio from Vista Equity Partners for ~$5B; Vista acquired Apptio for ~$2B in 2019  —  Purchase of Apptio, owned by private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners, could be finalized over the weekend



Research: 81% of tech companies with under 5K employees allow remote work or have only remote options while just 26% with 25K employees are fully flexible (Rani Molla/Vox)

Rani Molla / Vox:
Research: 81% of tech companies with under 5K employees allow remote work or have only remote options, while just 26% with 25K+ employees are fully flexible  —  How small tech companies are using remote work to compete with the big guys.  —  It used to be that Big Tech companies like Google …



Watch: PM Modi meets Apple Google Microsoft CEOs

US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with top US and Indian tech executives, including Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella among others in Washington. Biden hailed technological cooperation between India and the US and expressed optimism about their joint partnership. Pichai announced that Google is investing $10 billion in India's digitisation fund and thanked Modi for his vision, which he said serves as a blueprint for other countries. Nadella and Modi discussed how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to enhance the lives of Indians. https://ift.tt/WfR7adF

Friday, June 23, 2023

How YouTube updating its policy for fan accounts will help users

YouTube is making it mandatory for fan channels on the platform to make it "obvious in their channel name or handle that the channel doesn't represent the original creator, artist or entity." For viewers, this is a welcoming change because it will ensure that they are not misled by the channels they interact with and follow. This update will take effect from August 21. https://ift.tt/EDq1zro

The US broadens eligibility for federal subsidies under the Chips Act to include companies providing tools chemicals and other semiconductor supplies (Yuka Hayashi/Wall Street Journal)

Yuka Hayashi / Wall Street Journal:
The US broadens eligibility for federal subsidies under the Chips Act to include companies providing tools, chemicals, and other semiconductor supplies  —  Biden administration expands eligibility for federal subsidies to semiconductor factory suppliers  —  WASHINGTON—The Biden administration …



Internal records undercut claims that Twitter censored pro-Trump content before the Capitol riot and show a reluctance to suspend Trump's account until Jan. 8 (Drew Harwell/Washington Post)

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Internal records undercut claims that Twitter censored pro-Trump content before the Capitol riot and show a reluctance to suspend Trump's account until Jan. 8  —  In the internal video call from Jan. 5, 2021, workers were told not to take tougher action against a growing wave of tweets they feared were veiled incitements to violence.



India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payments network, providing relief to Google Pay and PhonePe (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch : India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payment...