Tech Meme

Kevin Collier / NBC News: Duke University study: personal data from active-duty US service members is cheap, easy to buy, and widely advertised by brokers; data on ~50K people cost ~$10K  —  Duke University researchers were able to purchase information about thousands of U.S. military personnel often for as little as 12 cents per person. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Financial Times: German generative AI startup Aleph Alpha raised $500M+ from Schwarz Group, Bosch, and others to build data protection and security tools for sensitive sectors  —  Investment in Aleph Alpha involves equity injection, research grants and commitments to joint business development Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai says the new nanoimprint chip machines will cost “one digit less than ASML’s EUVs”, although Canon has not yet set the final pricing  —  – Nanoimprint tech a low-cost alternative to leading-edge EUV  — Canon’s Mitarai wants succession plan to be ‘total surprise’ Lees verder op Tech Meme

Wall Street Journal: As Block struggles and SQ drops 80% since 2021, Jack Dorsey becomes more hands-on, including running Square and sending his first shareholder letter in years  —  The payments company is under pressure.  The often-distant CEO says he is stepping back into the ring.  —  Jack Dorsey has been notoriously hands-off. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Richard Waters / Financial Times: Epic’s case against Google Play’s app payment restrictions goes to trial in San Francisco, after Google settled with Match on October 31 ahead of a trial  —  The maker of Fortnite is suing the search giant as it is defending a DoJ antitrust case  —  The long-running attempt by Epic Games … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Johana Bhuiyan / The Guardian: WhatsApp’s AI generates stickers of kids with guns when prompted with “Palestine”, but prompts for “Israeli” generate stickers of people who are mostly smiling  —  A WhatsApp feature that generates images in response to users’ searches returns a picture of a gun … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: Chinese memory chip startup Changxin Xinqiao raised ~$5.4B, including ~$2B from Big Fund; founded in 2021, the firm shares a GM with China’s leading DRAM maker  —  – State-backed Big Fund restarts major investments after probe  — Beijing aims to achieve breakthroughs in chip technologies Lees verder op Tech Meme

Brian Heater / TechCrunch: Q&A with Google DeepMind Head of Robotics Vincent Vanhoucke on the robotics team’s history, general purpose robots, generative AI’s role in robotics, and more  —  [A version of this piece first appeared in TechCrunch’s robotics newsletter, Actuator.  Subscribe here.] Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: A look at BlizzCon 2023, the first in-person BlizzCon since 2019, which revealed WoW expansions and more, but didn’t sell out beforehand, unlike past iterations  —  Tens of thousands of fans, a handful dressed up as their favorite characters from the video games Warcraft and Overwatch … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Nancy Scola / Politico: A profile of, and interview with, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, who is in charge of developing the Biden administration’s AI strategy  —  Bruce Reed had seen the pitfalls of letting Big Tech run roughshod over government.  He is determined not to make the same mistakes on AI. Lees verder op Tech Meme