A timeline of the attack on open-source project XZ Utils, which began in late 2021 and led to a backdoor with RCE in Linux distros Debian, Red Hat, and others
Over a period of over two years, an attacker using the name “Jia Tan” worked as a diligent, effective contributor to the xz compression library …
TSMC expects to resume production overnight after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, Taiwan's biggest in 25 years, and says “there is no damage to our critical tools”
- Chipmakers move some staff off of unspecified operation areas — The earthquake rocked Taiwan and triggered tsunami warnings
The US Cyber Safety Review Board faults Microsoft for a “cascade of avoidable errors” that led to the 2023 Chinese hack of top US government officials' emails
The independent Cyber Safety Review Board's forthcoming report knocks the tech giant for shoddy cybersecurity practices …
Newzoo: PC and console game revenue grew 2.6% YoY to $93.5B in 2023, but average quarterly playtime hours fell 26% from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023
The PC and console market grew 2.6% in 2023, but playtime hours fell during the year, according to the second annual report on the market-by-market researcher Newzoo.
Sources: Spotify plans to raise prices by $1 to $2 per month in the UK, Australia, Pakistan, and two other markets by the end of April, and the US later in 2024
- The audio service will raise prices in a few major markets — Spotify will create new plan that doesn't include audiobooks
Google details Device Bound Session Credentials, a Chrome feature that uses a PC's TPM chip to try to stop cookie theft, available in some Chrome beta versions
‘Device Bound Session Credentials’ will tap the TPM chip in today's PCs. Google is testing it with some users running the beta version of Chrome.
Opera now lets Opera One users download and run 150 LLMs from ~50 families locally, like Meta's Llama and Google's Gemma, via the Ollama open-source framework
Web browser company Opera announced today it will now allow users to download and use Large Language Models (LLMs) locally on their computer.
The FCC plans to vote on April 25 to restore net neutrality rules and assume regulatory oversight of broadband internet that was rescinded under President Trump
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight …
Memo: AWS plans to cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization, and a few hundred in its Physical Stores Technology team
Amazon Web Services will cut several hundred jobs in its Sales, Marketing, and Global Services organization …
A look at XZ Utils attacker “Jia Tan”, a persona experts say nation-state hackers used that left little trace after working on the project since November 2021
The thwarted XZ Utils supply chain attack was years in the making. Now, clues suggest nation-state hackers were behind …
A first look at two third-party iOS app stores in the EU: the B2B-focused Mobivention and the upcoming AltStore, which takes ~12 screen interactions to install
DMA is about to unleash a brave new world of game emulators, clipboard managers, and uncertainty.
Intel says its Foundry division had $18.9B in 2023 revenue, down 31% YoY, a $7B operating loss, up 35% YoY, and expects 2024 to be the peak of its losses
- Losses have deepened at chipmaker's new foundry division — In a change, company breaks out numbers for manufacturing
POTUS' official Threads account starts using Meta's ActivityPub beta integration, turning on fediverse posting for the decentralized networking protocol
POTUS puts the ‘fed’ in ‘fediverse.’ — The official US president Threads account, currently helmed by President Joe Biden …
Anthropic researchers detail “many-shot jailbreaking”, which can evade LLMs' safety guardrails by priming them with dozens of harmful queries in a single prompt
How do you get an AI to answer a question it's not supposed to? There are many such “jailbreak” techniques …
Sources: crypto VC firm Paradigm is in talks to raise $750M to $850M for a new fund, which would be the largest since the crash; a16z raised $4.5B in May 2022
- New fund would be industry's largest since crypto downturn — Paradigm was a major investor in bankrupt exchange FTX
Microsoft and Quantinuum detail a breakthrough in quantum error correction, helping run 14,000+ experiments with no errors, an issue that has vexed the industry
Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction. Using Quantinuum's ion-trap hardware …
Stability AI releases Stable Audio 2.0, letting users create three minute sound clips from copyright-free audio samples, available for free via its website
Stable Audio 2., an audio generation model for Stability AI, now lets users upload their own audio samples which they can then transform using prompts …
On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart says Apple asked him not to interview FTC chair Lina Khan on his Apple podcast by saying “please don't talk to her”
Apple Called Out By Jon Stewart For Blocking FTC Chair Lina Khan's Interview The Daily Show on YouTube : Jon Stewart On The False Promises of AI | The Daily Show American Economic Liberties Project : ...
Apple debuts Spatial Personas in beta, letting up to five Vision Pro users participate together within compatible apps without being in the same physical space
PitchBook: VCs raised $30.4B globally in Q1 2024, a marked slowdown from 2023, which itself was the worst year since 2016, noting the end of the “megafunds” era
Data shows a ‘sustained slowdown’ has persisted in the first quarter of 2024 as a lack of exit options weighs on fundraising efforts
Amazon plans to remove Just Walk Out from most of its grocery stores and add more grocery stores with Dash Carts, which let shoppers scan items while they shop
and want you to scan all your groceries instead Gintaras Radauskas / Cybernews.com : Amazon phasing out “Just Walk Out” at its Fresh grocery stores Jak Connor / TweakTown : Amazon walks out of its ‘Ju...
Boosted by Taiwan's 2024 elections, Threads has revived its popularity in the country; Sensor Tower says Threads is Taiwan's most downloaded social app
Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review :
PitchBook and the NVCA: US VC investments in Q1 2024 hit $36.6B, the lowest Q1 since 2018, across 2,882 deals, down from $51.6B across 4,026 deals in Q1 2023
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat :
Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, and 200+ others sign a letter to AI developers and tech firms decrying “predatory” AI that steals voices, replaces artists, and more
Sara Fischer / Axios :
A profile of Faruk Fatih Özer, the convicted CEO of defunct crypto exchange Thodex, as he starts a 11,196-year prison sentence in Turkey for laundering assets
Jenna Scatena / Wired :
A draft US-EU statement outlines plans to use AI to search for replacements for so-called forever chemicals that are prevalent in chip manufacturing
The European Union and the US plan to enlist artificial intelligence in the search for replacements to so-called forever chemicals …
The US and the UK sign an agreement on how to test and assess risks from emerging AI models, marking the first bilateral arrangement on AI safety in the world
Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times :
An interview with Oren Etzioni, the former CEO of Allen Institute for AI, on his nonprofit TrueMedia.org, which offers free tools for identifying deepfakes
We are excited to announce the launch of TrueMedia.org … Glory Kaburu / Cryptopolitan : Ghost in the Machine: Deepfake Tools Altering India's Political Landscape TrueMedia.org : TrueMedia.org Launches...
Cloud data management startup Rubrik files for a NYSE IPO under the symbol RBRK, reporting a net loss of $354M on revenue of $628M for the year ended January 31
George Carlin's estate settles with the makers of Dudesy, who agree to remove their YouTube video and podcast they originally claimed used an “AI” George Carlin
Christopher Kuo / New York Times :
Replit launches Code Repair, an AI agent to automatically fix coding errors, and Teams, which allows developers to collaborate in real time on software projects
Reed Albergotti / Semafor :
X promotes Kylie McRoberts to Head of Safety, after Ella Irwin left in June 2023, when Elon Musk overruled a decision to limit the spread of an anti-trans video
David Ingram / NBC News :
PE firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice plans to buy a majority stake in IT services provider Presidio from BC Partners; sources say the deal may value Presidio at $4B+
Granth Vanaik / Reuters :
Patreon rolls out a Reddit-like community moderation feature that lets podcasters, artists, writers, and other creators assign community members as moderators
Mia Sato / The Verge :
PE firm EQT AB agrees to acquire compliance software provider Avetta from Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, sources say at a ~$3B valuation, including debt
Ryan Gould / Bloomberg :
The US NIST, which analyzed only 199 of the 3,370 CVEs the agency received in March, blames the backlog on a lack of “interagency support”
Simon Hendery / SC Media :
A rising number of Chinese tech workers face legal action from former employers, including Pinduoduo and Tencent, looking to enforce strict noncompete clauses
Cissy Zhou / Nikkei Asia :
Modal, which offers employees personalized technical and AI skills training, raised a $25M Series A co-led by Left Lane Capital and Ensemble VC
Andrew Mendez / Silicon Valley Business Journal :
Luminance, which offers generative AI tools for lawyers, raised a $40M Series B led by March Capital and says 600 organizations in 70 countries use its tools
Read AI, which uses generative AI to summarize meetings, emails, and other messages, raised a $21M Series A led by Goodwater Capital
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Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
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