Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web
Bloomberg:
Source: Vietnamese internet company VNG postpones its US IPO, planned for September 2023, after mixed performances by Arm, Instacart, and Klaviyo — Vietnam-based internet startup VNG Ltd. has decided to postpone its plans for a US initial public offering, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Iain Martin / Forbes:
Tether spent ~$420M on 10K Nvidia H100 GPUs in a deal that will see it get a stake in bitcoin miner Northern Data, who plans to rent the chips to AI startups — A $40,000 computer chip has become one of the hottest commodities in the tech industry. Startups are scrambling to buy up Nvidia's H100 …
Financial Times:
GGV, which invested in Alibaba, ByteDance, and other Chinese companies, splits its Asia and US units; in July, the US sought details about its holdings in China — Move follows similar decision by rival Sequoia Capital and Biden order to limit American investment in Chinese tech
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
Binance, Binance.US, and Changpeng Zhao file to dismiss an SEC lawsuit, claiming the regulator hadn't “plausibly alleged” various securities-related violations — The motions to dismiss leans on major questions doctrine claims, among other arguments. — Register Now
Jay Peters / The Verge:
X plans to deprecate Circles on October 31, 2023; users will not be able to create new posts nor add people to their Circle but will be able to remove people — X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Apple releases emergency updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to patch three new zero-day vulnerabilities, for a total of 16 zero-days fixed in 2023 — Apple released emergency security updates to patch three new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks targeting iPhone and Mac users …
Kyle Bradshaw / 9to5Google:
Google expands Studio Bot, its AI chatbot for Android Studio launched in May 2023 for US users, to 170+ regions; users in the EU and the UK are still barred — Google is making one of its AI tools for developers, Studio Bot, available to people in over 170 regions around the world …
Chris Miller / Financial Times:
SMIC used DUV lithography, not EUV, for its 7nm chip, which isn't a breakthrough but does show progress and reaffirms China's commitment to domestic production — The advances in domestic chipmaking suggest western controls will be far from watertight — What is the significance of Huawei's new smartphone chip?
Ella Creamer / The Guardian:
Amazon limits authors to self-publishing three books per day on its website, after an influx of suspected AI-generated material listed for sale in recent months — The company announced the new limitations after an influx of suspected AI-generated material was listed for sale but said that ‘very few’ publishers will be affected
Lara O'Reilly / Insider:
TikTok is testing a Google integration in different markets; researcher: TikTok's search feature includes an in-app option to search the same query on Google — - TikTok is testing a search partnership with Google. — An option to search on Google.com now appears on some searches within the TikTok app.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Mesh, which helps its customers transfer and manage digital assets like crypto, raised a $22M Series A led by Money Forward, bringing its total funding to $32M — Mesh (formerly Front Finance), a startup developing a service to help customers transfer and manage digital assets like crypto …
Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Bastian Lehmann's TipTop launches an app that scans for past purchases in users' Gmail and Amazon accounts and offers to buy their used products at a fair value — Billed as a “reverse Postmates,” TipTop has launched its first app, TipTop Cash, with the promise to help shoppers resell products like used iPhones.
Alex Barinka / Bloomberg:
Snap says Snapchat+ now has 5M+ subscribers, up from 3M in April 2023; the $3.99 per month tier launched in June 2022, after an industry slowdown in ad revenue — Snap Inc. has gained more than 5 million subscribers for its paid service, an offering that gives users early access to new features …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Microsoft announces the Surface Hub 3, offering 50" or 85" 4K PixelSense displays with anti-glare, smart rotation, and portrait mode, available later in 2023 — Microsoft has revealed the Surface Hub 3, the latest version of the company's all-in-one collaborative touchscreen device.
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
Nnete Matima and Joël Carter, two Black ex-TikTok staff, file a civil rights complaint alleging ByteDance fired them because they spoke up about discrimination — TikTok's parent company was accused of racism and retaliation by Black former employees in a complaint …
This NYT article (no paywall) is a summary of how tech is moving quickly to bring ChatGPT-like functionality to people's content, through email and cloud-based documents. It's remarkable how quickly this is happening, and not surprising because ChatGPT is such a compelling app, and it's doubly-so when applied to our own writing. But so far there's one glaring omission, these bots don't know where my blog is. Who is going to fill that gap, not with an experiment, but with something up to par at least with the way Bard understands Gmail, which is still pretty simple, but I imagine it's only going to get better, quickly.
We need a Node.js package that lets you add the contents of a file to the ChatGPT database, along with a URL where the content of that file can be found on the web. It has to be that simple. Based on what Google announced yesterday, and what Facebook is likely to announce this week, it's clear that the big tech companies are only going to allow you to access your data if it's stored in their silos. We need something just as powerful and easy that works with content on the open web.