Sunday, December 11, 2022

Sources: Thoma Bravo is in advanced talks to acquire Coupa Software, which helps companies manage their spending, after outbidding Vista Equity Partners (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: Thoma Bravo is in advanced talks to acquire Coupa Software, which helps companies manage their spending, after outbidding Vista Equity Partners  —  Thoma Bravo LLC is in advanced talks to acquire Coupa Software Inc. after outbidding Vista Equity Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.



With AI image generation tools like Stable Diffusion and DreamBooth, it's easy to make damaging deepfakes using just a few images of a person from social media (Benj Edwards/Ars Technica)

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
With AI image generation tools like Stable Diffusion and DreamBooth, it's easy to make damaging deepfakes using just a few images of a person from social media  —  AI tech makes it trivial to generate harmful fake photos from a few social media pictures.  —  If you're one of the billions …



Twitter's Community Notes, the crowd-powered feature to fact check tweets previously known as Birdwatch, starts rolling out to all users globally (Igor Bonifacic/Engadget)

Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Twitter's Community Notes, the crowd-powered feature to fact check tweets previously known as Birdwatch, starts rolling out to all users globally  —  Twitter has begun rolling out Community Notes to all of its users globally, the company announced on Saturday.



The subpar performance of FAANG stocks, which account for more than 10% of the S&P 500 weighting, will be a big drag on the market in the coming years (Kit Rees/Bloomberg)

Kit Rees / Bloomberg:
The subpar performance of FAANG stocks, which account for more than 10% of the S&P 500 weighting, will be a big drag on the market in the coming years  —  For some investors, this year's rout in high-flying technology stocks is more than a bear market: It's the end of an era for a handful …



Ex-staffers say Twitter's mass firing of security staff and growing reliance on automation will help China and other authoritarian regimes in silencing critics (Adam Rawnsley/Rolling Stone)

Adam Rawnsley / Rolling Stone:
Ex-staffers say Twitter's mass firing of security staff and growing reliance on automation will help China and other authoritarian regimes in silencing critics  —  Elon's mass firing of security staff and increased reliance on automation is going to make it easier for tyrants to shout …



Uber's slow response to law enforcement requests and a complex request process are leaving drivers vulnerable to repeated attacks by riders using fake accounts (Dara Kerr/The Markup)

Dara Kerr / The Markup:
Uber's slow response to law enforcement requests and a complex request process are leaving drivers vulnerable to repeated attacks by riders using fake accounts  —  An investigation by The Markup found that Uber is slow to respond to law enforcement requests, leaving drivers vulnerable to repeated attacks



Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry anti-US views are taking root worldwide (New York Times)

New York Times : Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry ...