OpenAI makes Sam Altman's return as CEO official and gives Microsoft a non-voting observer seat on the nonprofit board that controls the for-profit company
Sam Altman is officially OpenAI's CEO again. — Just before Thanksgiving, the company said it had reached a deal in principle for him to return, and now it's done.
Elon Musk scoffs at advertisers leaving X because of his controversial posts: “If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising ... go fuck yourself”
- In recent weeks, Musk has promoted and sometimes verbally endorsed what the White House called “antisemitic and racist hate” …
Q&A with Sam Altman on his firing, returning to OpenAI, improving its governance, Q*, lessons from the saga, and more; Altman declines to say why he was fired
“Clearly our governance structure had a problem,” according to Altman. … When OpenAI's board asked Sam Altman to return …
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that co-founder Ilya Sutskever won't be a board member, but that the company is “discussing how he can continue his work at OpenAI”
- Sam Altman is officially back as CEO of the AI startup — Mira Murati will retain her post as chief technology officer
Google and Canada reach an agreement in their dispute over the country's Online News Act; Google plans to pay news companies around CA$100M, or ~$74M, per year
Agreement comes 3 weeks before Online News Act rules come into force — Google and the federal government have reached …
Linda Yaccarino's former associates describe her as difficult and volatile, but hardworking, and say her self-regard made her think she could manage Elon Musk
yourself’ comment to advertisers Barron's Online : Musk Warns of Troubles at X. What Its Demise Could Mean for Tesla. Charisma Madarang / Rolling Stone : Right-Wingers Praise Elon for Torching His Rel...
The BEUC and its members follow noyb in filing a complaint against Meta's €9.99+/month subscriptions in the EU, saying the tier amounts to charging for privacy
Meta Platforms' (META.O) advertising-free subscription service, a fee-based offering rolled out in Europe this month …
Elon Musk calls his November 15 X post a mistake that “handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic”, for which he's sorry
I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what i meant.
Apple says Amkor will package some Apple silicon chips in its new Arizona facility; Amkor plans to invest $2B, employ 2,000, and start production in 2-3 years
As part of its efforts to expand its U.S. manufacturing, Apple today announced that Amkor will package some Apple silicon chips …
Spotify Wrapped 2023's new Sound Town, for similar listeners in other cities, leaves users baffled and entertained after many were designated as Burlington, VT
The music streaming service released a new feature — Sound Towns — with its yearly summary of listener preferences and linked many people to an unexpected city.
The US sanctions Sinbad, a crypto mixer allegedly used by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group, and the US, the Netherlands, and Poland seize the service
The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned the Sinbad cryptocurrency mixing service for its use as a money-laundering tool by the North Korean Lazarus hacking group.
Sources: Meta plans to launch Threads in Europe in December, the largest expansion since its July debut, offering a choice of using Threads without a profile
Expansion is expected in December, a signal of company's commitment to microblogging service — Facebook parent Meta Platforms plans …
On December 1, Google will start deleting personal Google accounts that have been inactive for at least two years; once deleted, no data can be recovered
How to revive your Google account before it's too late — Google will start to sweep away cobweb-collecting Gmail accounts this week.
At re:Invent, AWS unveils Model Evaluation on Bedrock in preview to help companies evaluate AI models before use, with human testers involved in the process
Amazon wants users to evaluate AI models better and encourage more humans to be involved in the process.
At an event, Xbox CFO Tim Stuart says Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation, Nintendo, and “every screen that can play games”
“It's a bit of a change of strategy,” Microsoft admits. — Microsoft wants to bring Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation and Nintendo.
Meta officials say the US stopped proactively sharing information on foreign influence operations, as the company releases its Q3 Adversarial Threat Report
Russia, Iran and China are likely to conduct influence operations via fake social media accounts ahead of the 2024 election, a new Meta report says.
Analysis: crypto mining used ~1,600 gigaliters of water in 2021 when bitcoin peaked at $65K, or 16K liters per transaction, around 6.2M times a credit card
Bitcoin mines aren't just energy-hungry, it turns out they're thirsty, too. The water consumption tied to a single Bitcoin transaction …
ASML CEO Peter Wennink plans to step down in April 2024 after over 10 years at the chip equipment giant, replaced by industry veteran Christophe Fouquet
Dutch chip company appoints Christophe Fouquet as successor — Peter Wennink, chief executive of chipmaking equipment manufacturer ASML …
WhatsApp begins letting users hide locked chats behind a secret code, after introducing locked chats in May 2023, rolling out globally in the coming months
WhatsApp is introducing a new way to keep your locked chats away from prying eyes. Instead of having your locked chats folder visible …
Amazon debuts Titan Image Generator, an AI model that creates images from text and adds an invisible watermark by default, in preview for AWS clients on Bedrock
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
A UK judge reverses a decision to block a full UK CMA investigation into Apple's dominance in mobile browsers and cloud gaming, saying the CMA acted lawfully
- CMA wins appeal ruling on investigation of mobile dominance — Watchdog acted lawfully when it proposed an investigation
At the NYT's DealBook event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the US is 10 years to 20 years from chip independence and reaffirms Nvidia's commitment to China
Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, who runs the semiconductor industry's most valuable company …
Local media: David Vincenzetti, who founded infamous spyware maker Hacking Team in 2003, was arrested for allegedly stabbing and attempting to murder a relative
The founder of the infamous and now-defunct spyware maker Hacking Team was arrested on Saturday after allegedly stabbing … X: @lorenzofb , @juanandres_gs , @iblametom , and @lorenzofb X: Lorenzo Franc...
Netflix plans to add Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy to its mobile app, the App Store, and Google Play on December 14, available to its users at no extra charge
Nvidia adds three Call of Duty titles to GeForce Now, the first from Activision, available in a “Call of Duty HQ” hub, as part of a deal with Microsoft
Call of Duty is finally arriving for cloud gamers, with three of the latest titles, including Warzone, launching onto GeForce Now.
Facebook, Instagram, Google, Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Microsoft, and others sign the UK's Online Fraud Charter to fight scams, fake ads, and romance fraud
Home Secretary James Cleverly hosted representatives from several leading tech companies to sign the Charter.
Researchers develop a “divergence attack” that makes ChatGPT emit sequences copied from its training data, by prompting the LLM to repeat a word numerous times
all it took was this prompt Mastodon: @aphyr@woof.group : The authors' web site for that LLM corpus-extraction attack is nicely done, too: https://not-just-memorization.github.io / ... Rachel Rawlings...
Google DeepMind uses GNoME to find 2.2M crystal structures, over 45x more than all such substances ever found, and plans to make 381K available to scientists
Study: around 2,127 Web3 games became inactive in the past five years, representing 75.5% of the 2,817 that were launched in the same period
Lim Yu Qian / CoinGecko :
A US court says FTX Trading and affiliated debtors can start selling $744M worth of Grayscale and Bitwise shares; GBTC accounts for 22.3M units worth $597M
Anna Baydakova / The Block :
TikTok launches verified artist accounts, offering various tools to deepen engagement and improve discoverability, seemingly inspired by Spotify
These accounts can be activated by any musician and come with tools to help artists reach new fans and increase engagement with existing ones.
Robinhood launches commission-free stock trading in the UK, letting select UK investors trade 6,000+ US-listed stocks, with general availability in early 2024
protected up to $2.25M https://robinhood.com/gb/en All investment involves risk, including loss of principal [video]
Rishi Sunak says Microsoft plans to spend £2.5B in the UK over three years, its largest investment there to date, to underpin AI and bring 20K GPUs to the UK
Sarah Young / Reuters :
Interviews with dozens of industry insiders and experts reveal Huawei's and SMIC's efforts to build advanced chips and maintain marketshare despite US sanctions
The inside story of how the country's flagship tech company kept its edge in the semiconductor war despite sanctions X: @jkynge and @eleanorolcott . Forums: Ars OpenForum X: James Kynge / @jkynge : Mu...
SoFi tells its crypto customers to liquidate their accounts or move holdings to Blockchain.com by December 19, as it exits crypto due to regulatory scrutiny
or possibly face a big tax bill Mark Matousek / The Information : SoFi Shutting Down Its Crypto Business Jack Kubinec / Blockworks : SoFi shutters crypto trading following Fed regulation X: Matt Walsh...
Substack rolls out video creation and editing tools to enable creators to publish video podcasts, create interactive AI-made transcripts, and customize clips
Newsletters were just the start of it — In its early days … Tom Holland / Coinmonks : 50x Crypto Coin! XCAD Network Music Ally : Substack beefs up video features for writers and podcasters (and musi...
Plex users express alarm after getting a “Week in Review” email that showed what they and their friends watched, part of Plex's opt-out Discover Together tool
Mozilla says Firefox extensions compatible with Android will be “openly available” to users on December 14, with over 400 coming at launch
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google :
The Senate Judiciary Committee says the CEOs of Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord plan to testify on online child sexual exploitation at a January 31 hearing
Salesforce reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $8.72B, vs. $8.72B est., and raises its FY 2024 forecast for operating cash flow growth; CRM jumps 6%+
Meta sues the FTC, claiming its in-house trials violate the Constitution, and asks a court to halt the agency's bid to change a $5B privacy settlement in 2020
aka rebranded Facebook — is making Federal Society inspired attacks on settled constitutional law that enables the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect consumers. Let's ostracize the Democrats wh...
Google TAG executive Kate Morgan says Google observed a “massive increase” in Chinese cyberattacks on Taiwan in the last six months from over 100 groups
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg :
Kognitos, which helps businesses automate transcription, data visualizations, and back-office processes, raised $20M led by Khosla, taking its funding to $30M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Sources: Adobe's proposal to address EU and UK regulator concerns for its $20B Figma deal may include not tying Figma into Creative Cloud and divesting Adobe XD
Bloomberg :
Interview with Atari CEO Wade Rosen on the company's emphasis on retro endeavors, its recent acquisitions, its investment in console maker Polymega, and more
Brendan Sinclair / GamesIndustry.biz : X: @larrynightdive and @uberstrategist . Forums: r/pcgaming X: Larry Kuperman / @larrynightdive : Lots of @atari, @DigitalEclipse and @NightdiveStudio love here...
Intuit Mailchimp plans to shut down TinyLetter on February 29, 2024, to focus on its core Mailchimp marketing product; Mailchimp acquired TinyLetter in 2011
but is pleased to offer me some paid options to choose from [image] @mattbc : We really need to bust up these gigantic corporations that hoover up innovation only to kill it Not content with killing o...
Nonprofit Data & Trust Alliance, comprising Amex, IBM, Pfizer, UPS, and more, announces AI data provenance standards to help find the origin and rights to data
Steve Lohr / New York Times :
San Jose-based DuploCloud, which provides tools to provision apps to public clouds like AWS, raised a $32M Series B co-led by WestBridge Capital and StepStone
How Swedish battery maker Northvolt uses AI at its Skellefteå factory to help speed up EV battery making, led by former Apple AI researcher Siddharth Khullar
Rafaela Lindeberg / Bloomberg :
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.