Techmeme Ride Home

The big DMA deadline is mere hours away. A big Twitter related lawsuit has arrived that I kind of can’t believe took this long. Nothing releases a pretty compelling cheap phone. Waymo is bringing its driverless taxi service to Los Angeles. And is Linux quietly having a moment? Links: Google rolls out changes for users, apps developers as EU tech rules loom (Reuters) Instagram now lets you edit DMs up to 15 mins after sending them (TechCrunch) M3 MacBook Pro will gain multi-display support in software update (9to5Mac) Former Twitter Executives Sue Musk Over Unpaid Severance (WSJ) The Nothing Phone 2A proves thoughtful design can come at a budget price (The Verge) Waymo can now charge for robotaxi rides in LA and on San Francisco freeways (TechCrunch) Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide (Linuxiac) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The EU Commission has fined Apple for stifling music streaming competition. New Macbook Airs with the M3 chip. Why the Apple Car was doomed from day one. Anthropic releases Claude 3 in three different flavors. And if 5G isn’t floating your boat, can I interest you in 5G Advanced? Links: Apple hit with €1.8bn fine for breaking EU law over music streaming (Financial Times) Apple launches new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chip, support for two external displays, faster Wi-Fi (9to5Mac) Apple’s Car Was Doomed by Its Lofty Ambitions to Outdo Tesla (Bloomberg) Anthropic unveils Claude 3, surpassing GPT-4 and Gemini Ultra in benchmark tests (VentureBeat) Google-backed Anthropic debuts its most powerful chatbot yet, as generative AI battle heats up (CNBC) Telcos are barely done rolling out 5G networks — and they’re already talking about ‘5.5G’ (CNBC) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI. Meta continues to get out of the news business, especially when it’s being pushed. A new AI deepfake supertool. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Links: Elon Musk sues OpenAI over AI threat (Courthouse News Service) Meta to Wind Down Its News Feature in the US and Australia (Bloomberg) Microsoft introduces Copilot AI chatbot for finance workers in Excel and Outlook (CNBC) Alibaba’s new AI system ‘EMO’ creates realistic talking and singing videos from photos (VentureBeat) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Wait. Why is Reddit losing so much money? (Business Insider) The 9-Month-Old AI Startup Challenging Silicon Valley’s Giants (WSJ) What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet (The New Yorker) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The SEC has subpoenaed OpenAI. What if the Vision Pro is selling better than even Apple thought? Beware of the repo attack affecting GitHub. Beware of the video doorbells that are ridiculously easy to take over. And is robotics the next big tech industry we need to be paying attention to? Links: SEC Investigating Whether OpenAI Investors Were Misled (WSJ) EA to lay off 5% of workforce, or about 670 employees (CNBC) Vision Pro demand higher than expected; returns down to 1% – Kuo (9to5Mac) Kuo: Apple Vision Pro on Track to Launch in More Countries Before WWDC in June (MacRumors) Apple Vision Pro return rate is about the same as the iPhone 15 Pro (Apple Insider) StarCoder 2 is a code-generating AI that runs on most GPUs (TechCrunch) GitHub besieged by millions of malicious repositories in ongoing attack (ArsTechnica) These Video Doorbells Have Terrible Security. Amazon Sells Them Anyway. (Consumer Reports) Humanoid robot startup Figure AI valued at $2.6 billion as Bezos, OpenAI, Nvidia join fu

The Apple car project is dead. Really, this time. We think. Google is working to fix Gemini. If you’re using Tumblr, your posts might soon be training OpenAI’s models. Klarna’s AI is doing the work of hundreds of humans. And another fever dream of the most recent boom years might be over. Links: Apple to Wind Down Electric Car Effort After Decadelong Odyssey (Bloomberg) Apple's Scrapped Car Project Means AI and Headset Bets Are More Urgent (Bloomberg) Google CEO calls AI tool’s controversial responses ‘completely unacceptable’ (Semafor) Tumblr and WordPress to Sell Users’ Data to Train AI Tools (404 Media) Klarna says its AI assistant does the work of 700 people after it laid off 700 people (FastCompany) Thrasio, once king of e-commerce aggregation, files for Ch.11 (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you can believe it, MOAR layoffs in gaming. Big layoffs at Sony. We might see Meta’s first AR glasses later this year. The big hack affecting US pharmacies. Hopin enters the Deadpool. And yet another startup takes at swing at the delayed gratification gimmick for social media. Sponsors: Hims.com/ride Links: Sony is laying off 900 PlayStation employees (The Verge) Microsoft’s Mistral AI Investment to Be Examined by EU Watchdog (Bloomberg) Meta aims to reveal and demo Orion, its first true AR glasses, during its fall developer conference (Business Insider) US pharmacy outage triggered by 'Blackcat' ransomware at UnitedHealth unit, sources say (Reuters) Netflix confirms it’s cutting off Apple billing for legacy subscribers (The Verge) Hopin's UK business enters liquidation as it transfers HQ to the US (Sifted) The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech (The Verge) Supreme Court Fears ‘Land Mines’ in Social Media Debate Over Free Speech (Bloomberg) Lapse, the app turnin

Mobile World Congress kicks off this week, and I bet you can guess what the big theme this year is. All the hardware that is being announced to allow you to do AI on your existing devices. Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Ring, but Apple wants you to know it could do a ring too if it wanted to. And Lenovo’s see-through laptop is cool looking, but also, looking for a use case. Links: Samsung unveils the Galaxy Ring as a way to 'simplify everyday wellness' (Engadget) Apple Ponders Whether to Develop Smart Glasses, Fitness Ring (Bloomberg) Here’s why the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro headset is so expensive (CNBC) Au Large (Mistral.ai) Nvidia launches RTX 500 and 1000 Ada Generation laptop GPUs for AI on the go (VentureBeat) Lenovo’s laptop concept is fully transparent, but the point isn’t entirely clear (TechCrunch) Peering through Lenovo’s transparent laptop into a sci-fi future (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Catching you up on the great Substack controversy and who is winning the race to be the new Twitter? Ed's new podcast is called Better Offline, which you can find wherever fine podcasts are found. And his newsletter is called: Where's Your Ed At? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have all the details of the Reddit IPO. And Sam Altman of all people makes an appearance in the S1! What that big cell phone outage yesterday was all about. Can Mark Zuckerberg be held personally liable in some of these Meta lawsuits? And given this weeks’ news, in the longreads, a long interview with Nvidia’s CEO predicting the future of computing. Sponsors: Robinhood.com/boost Links: Reddit files to list IPO on NYSE under the ticker RDDT (CNBC) Reddit is going public and inviting power users to invest (The Verge) AT&T outage caused by software update, company says (ABCNews) Meta’s Zuckerberg Seeks Out of Lawsuits Blaming Him for Instagram Addiction (Bloomberg) Bluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server (TechCrunch) OnlyFans is the most lucrative side hustle, tax service shows (Mashable) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control (Wired) Nvidia Hardware Is Eating the World (Wired) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone

The most important tech company in the world right now reported earnings yesterday, and they were historic. Stability AI is previewing Stable Diffusion 3.0. Google has to fix some if its AI image generation details. Amazon is getting aggressive about bringing sports to streaming. And has a startup we’ve never mentioned made a big AI breakthrough? Sponsors: Nutrafol.com/men and promocode RIDEHOME Links: Nvidia posts revenue up 265% on booming AI business (CNBC) Stable Diffusion 3.0 debuts new diffusion transformation architecture to reinvent text-to-image gen AI (VentureBeat) Google Pauses Gemini's Image Generation of People to Fix Historical Inaccuracies (PC Mag) Google pauses Gemini’s ability to generate AI images of people after diversity errors (The Verge) Tuned In: Amazon Said To Be Paying Record $120M To Stream NFL Playoff Game (Front Office Sports) Exclusive: Reddit in AI content licensing deal with Google (Reuters) The ‘Magic’ Breakthrough That Got Friedman and Gross to Bet $100 Millio

Signal finally rolls out usernames, but Apple goes one better security-wise, by quantum encrypting iMessage. Weirdly, Apple also launched a standalone sports scores app. Gemma is an open-source flavor of Gemini from Google. And Reddit wants to reserve some IPO shares for its users. Links: Signal Finally Rolls Out Usernames, So You Can Keep Your Phone Number Private (Wired) Apple is hardening iMessage encryption now to protect it from a threat that doesn't exist yet (Apple Insider) Apple’s iMessage Is Getting Post-Quantum Encryption (Wired) Apple Sports: New Free App Provides Real-Time Scores and Stats, Designed to Drive Apple TV Tune-In (Variety) Apple launches Apple Sports app with scores and betting odds (The Verge) Apple says iPhone 15 batteries have a longer lifespan than initially thought (9to5Mac) Apple retroactively doubles the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro’s battery lifespan (Macworld) Google Gemma: because Google doesn’t want to give away Gemini yet (The Verge) Meet 'Groq,' the AI Chip That

Perhaps the biggest law enforcement action against a ransomware gang ever. Once again, you could view other people’s cameras on your Wyze camera. How Anthropic is raising to do battle with OpenAI. Are the VCs flocking back to San Francisco? And comprehensive proof that defense tech is the new VC hotness. Links: FBI Seizes LockBit Hacking Websites in Ransomware Disruption (Bloomberg) Wyze outage led to the cameras of 13,000 customers being shown to other users (9to5Google) Reddit Signs AI Content Licensing Deal Ahead of IPO (Bloomberg) Inside the Funding Frenzy at Anthropic, One of A.I.’s Hottest Start-Ups (NYTimes) Tech Leaders Fled San Francisco During the Pandemic. Now, They’re Coming Back. (WSJ) UK, Allies Look to Arm Ukraine With AI-Enabled Swarm Drones (Bloomberg) How Silicon Valley learned to love America, drones and glory (Washington Post) Pursuing ‘American Dynamism,’ Andreessen Horowitz Ups Its Game in DC (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi

An interview with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber about the future of social media. Sponsors: FactorMeals.com/ride50 and code ride50 for 50% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Huge watershed reveal of OpenAI’s Sora, its first text-to-video model, which can create up to a minute of 1080p video. We used to have a Today In Elon segment. We’re close to needing a Today In Sam Altman one. Increasing signs the Crypto winter is ending. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Links: OpenAI introduces Sora, its text-to-video AI model (The Verge) OpenAI’s Sora Turns AI Prompts Into Photorealistic Videos (Wired) OpenAI’s newest model Sora can generate videos — and they look decent (TechCrunch) OpenAI’s Sam Altman Seeks US Blessing to Raise Billions for AI Chips (Bloomberg) Sam Altman owns OpenAI's venture capital fund (Axios) Crypto exits remain low but investors remain unfazed (TechCrunch) Crypto venture funding climbs for first time in nearly 2 years after bitcoin’s stellar run (CNBC) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: The fediverse, explained (The Verge) How an African streaming service dethroned Netflix (RestOfWorld) Learn more about your ad choices. Vis

Google’s moving fast. They’ve already launched Gemini 1.5. An EU court rules breaking encryption violates human rights. Why social media is flooded with posts of users returning their Apple Vision Pros. And more proof that the AI moment is making Nvidia one of the most powerful tech companies in the world. Links: Gemini 1.5 is Google’s next-gen AI model — and it’s already almost ready (The Verge) Google’s new Gemini model can analyze an hour-long video — but few people can use it (TechCrunch) Backdoors that let cops decrypt messages violate human rights, EU court says (Ars Technica) People are returning Vision Pro in droves … or are they? (Cult of Mac) OpenAI Develops Web Search Product in Challenge to Google (The Information) ChatGPT is getting ‘memory’ to remember who you are and what you like (The Verge) What comes after Stable Diffusion? Stable Cascade could be Stability AI’s future text-to-image generative AI model (VentureBeat) Nvidia Overtakes Alphabet, One Day After Eclipsing Amazon (B

Even Mark Zuckerberg is posting about the Apple Vision Pro. In short: he’s not impressed. Walmart might buy a smart TV maker for the ads. Y Combinator has a new list of the type of startups it wants to see. Maybe don’t give all your secrets to those AI “girlfriend” bots. And why you might have a hard time getting an Uber after your Valentine’s Day dinner tonight. Links: After trying the Vision Pro, Mark Zuckerberg says Quest 3 ‘is the better product, period’ (The Verge) Walmart in Talks to Buy TV Maker Vizio (WSJ) Walmart Eyeing Deal to Buy Vizio for More Than $2 Billion: Report (Variety) Y Combinator Seeks Startups in Robotics, Space and Defense (Bloomberg) OpenAI Researcher Andrej Karpathy Departs (The Information) Apple’s Longest-Serving Designer to Depart Company, Adding to Exodus (Bloomberg) Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show (Gizmodo) Uber, Lyft drivers to strike on Valentine’s Day over pay (Washington Post) YouTube Of Bluesky CEO Interview Learn more about you

Threads gets “today’s topics.” iMessage and Bing dodge EU DMA regulation. Why Temu bought a bunch of SuperBowl ads. Nvidia’s Chat with RTX lets you run your own ChatGPT right on your Windows machine. And why Microsoft’s forthcoming Xbox strategy shift is potentially such a big deal. Sponsors: ArcticWolf.com/techmeme Shopify.com/ride Links: In battle with X, Threads gets trending topics where politics will be allowed (TechCrunch) Apple iMessage, Microsoft Bing Dodge EU’s Big Tech Crackdown (Bloomberg) Temu Spent Millions on Six Super Bowl Ads as It Tries to Win Back US Shoppers (Bloomberg) The unsettling scourge of obituary spam (The Verge) Chat With RTX brings custom local chatbots to Nvidia AI PCs (VentureBeat) NVIDIA's New AI Chatbot Relies On Local Files, Not the Cloud (HowToGeek) Nvidia’s Chat with RTX is a promising AI chatbot that runs locally on your PC (The Verge) Microsoft prepares to take Xbox everywhere (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad

Is actual neo-ludditeism going to become a thing, as some people have predicted? Google reveals the strength of its subscription businesses. A review of Google’s Gemini. Bluesky is open and doing some interesting things. And what about the strategic position Snap suddenly finds itself in? Sponsors: ArcticWolf.com/techmeme Links: A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco (The Verge) Google One hits 100 million subscribers (The Verge) Google’s Gemini assistant is a fantastic and frustrating glimpse of the AI future (The Verge) ASML's next chip challenge: rollout of its new $350 mln 'High NA EUV' machine (Reuters) Meta turns its back on politics again, angering some news creators (Washington Post) Bluesky Opens Up (TechDirt) It’s Snap versus the world (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Altman wants to raise more money for his chip ambitions than the entire semiconductor industry. The Feds might put the breaks on Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision… again. Is Ring raising its subscription doorbell prices too much? And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Robinhood.com/boost Links: Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI (WSJ) Exclusive: Nvidia chases $30 billion custom chip market with new unit -sources (Reuters) Disney’s Epic Deal Values Fortnite Maker at $22.5 Billion, a Sharp Cut (The Information) Activision Had Planned Layoffs Before Merger, Microsoft Says (Bloomberg) Ring video doorbell customers angry at 43% price hike (BBC) Ring is raising the price of its cheapest subscription plan by 25 percent (The Verge) Arm shares surge 48% after SoftBank-controlled chip designer issues strong forecast (CNBC) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Can AI Unlock the Secrets of the Ancient World? (Bloomberg Businessweek) AI Ju

Google has released Gemini Ultra 1.0, renamed Bard as Gemini and looks to be replacing Google Assistant with Gemini. Disney has invested in a big stake of Epic Games to get at Fortnite IP. Leaked images of the Pixel Fold 2. And what if OpenAI is facing the same strategic dilemma that Mark Zuckerberg was never able to overcome? Sponsors: Robinhood.com/boost Links: Google’s AI now goes by a new name: Gemini (The Verge) Google Assistant Just Got Supercharged With AI. It Might Be the Biggest Update in Google's History. (Gizmodo) Google Prepares for a Future Where Search Isn’t King (Wired) Google Joins Effort to Help Spot Content Made With A.I. (NYTimes) Disney to take $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, work with Fortnite maker on new content (CNBC) China had "persistent" access to U.S. critical infrastructure (Axios) Exclusive: This could be the Google Pixel Fold 2 (Android Authority) OpenAI Shifts AI Battleground to Software That Operates Devices, Automates Tasks (The Information) Learn