Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times: A look at Google’s DeepMind-Brain merger; sources: Demis Hassabis ceded DeepMind’s cherished independence for greater power and influence over the future of AI  —  Start-up founder Demis Hassabis trades independence for greater influence over the future of artificial intelligence Lees verder op Tech Meme

Joyce E. Cutler / Bloomberg Law: Ex-HeadSpin CEO Manish Lachwani pleads guilty to securities and wire fraud charges for disseminating false and overstated revenue figures to potential investors  —  Manish Lachwani, who co-founded and led Silicon Valley startup HeadSpin Inc., pleaded guilty Thursday to securities and wire fraud charges, federal prosecutors said. Lees verder op Tech Meme

New York Times: Sources: Elon Musk shut off OpenAI’s access to Twitter’s data in December 2022, believing that the $2M/year licensing fee that OpenAI was paying wasn’t enough  —  The billionaire plans to compete with OpenAI, the ChatGPT developer he helped found, while calling out the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Synergy: enterprise cloud spending grew 19% YoY to $63B in Q1 2023, vs. 32% growth in Q1 2022; Amazon took 32% market share, Microsoft 23%, and Google 10%  —  As expected, companies are continuing to cut back on their cloud spend where possible, as tech budgets continue to get careful scrutiny. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kim Zetter / Wired: Sources: the US DOJ detected the SolarWinds breach in late May 2020, months before it was disclosed in December 2020, but was unaware of its significance  —  In May 2020, the US Department of Justice stumbled upon Russian hackers in its network, but did not realize the significance of what it had found for six months. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Reddit begins testing Discord-like chat channels in 25 volunteer subreddits with fewer than 100K members and plans to let moderators manage chat functionality  —  Reddit announced Thursday that it is testing Discord-like chat channels with select subreddits. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: The US sentences ex-Apple worker Dhirendra Prasad to three years and orders him to pay $19M+ for stealing ~$17M from Apple via parts supplier kickbacks and more  —  A former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years in prison and must pay back over $19 million in restitution … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Synergy: enterprise cloud spending in Q1 grew 19% YoY to $63B, down from a 32% growth in Q1 2022; Amazon, Microsoft, and Google accounted for 63% of spending  —  As expected, companies are continuing to cut back on their cloud spend where possible, as tech budgets continue to get careful scrutiny. Lees verder op Tech Meme