Tech Meme

Bloomberg: 3D printing companies Stratasys and Desktop Metal plan to merge in an all-stock deal valued at ~$1.8B and expect to generate $1.1B in combined revenue in 2025  —  Stratasys Ltd. agreed to acquire Desktop Metal Inc. in an all-stock deal that will create a leading 3D printer company valued at about $1.8 billion. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Applied Intuition, which sells tools for developing autonomous vehicles, plans to acquire autonomous trucking software company Embark in a ~$71M all-cash deal  —  Embark Trucks, the autonomous trucking company that recently cut 70% of its workforce, is being acquired by Applied Intuition … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Bloomberg: France’s CNIL says Microsoft agreed to change the way it tracks Bing users; CNIL fined Microsoft €60M in December 2022, and threatened fines of €60K per day  —  Microsoft Corp. has dodged further French privacy fines after the US firm made changes to the way it tracks users of its bing.com search engine. Lees verder op Tech Meme

CNBC: Sources: as part of its layoffs, Meta cut an ambitious project that would have let third-party fact-checkers like Reuters add comments at the top of articles  —  – Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Twitter have all drastically reduced the size of their teams focused on internet trust and safety … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Mengqi Sun / Wall Street Journal: Sources: the record $279M whistleblower award issued by the SEC earlier this month stemmed from a 2019 bribery case in which Ericsson paid a $1.1B settlement  —  The largest-ever award in the SEC’s cash-for-tips program was related to Ericsson’s bribery case Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: The UK CMA says Meta has offered to limit use of other businesses’ ad data for Facebook Marketplace to address the regulator’s competition concerns  —  UK’s competition watchdog on Friday said social media giant Meta Platforms Inc had offered to limit the use of other businesses’ advertising data in order to address its concerns. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Emma Roth / The Verge: German newspaper Handelsblatt: a Tesla whistleblower leaked 100GB of data on customer FSD complaints from 2015 to 2022, including 2,400 self-acceleration issues  —  A Tesla whistleblower has leaked 100GB of data to the German outlet Handelsblatt containing thousands of customer complaints … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Emily A. Vogels / Pew Research Center: A survey from March 2023: 58% of US adults have heard of ChatGPT but only 14% have tried the tool themselves; roughly four in ten say ChatGPT is somewhat useful  —  About six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) are familiar with ChatGPT, though relatively few have tried it themselves, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Akriti Sharma / Reuters: Neuralink says the company received US FDA approval to launch its first-in-human clinical study of brain implants and plans to offer more details soon  —  Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink on Thursday said it had received U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval to launch first-in-human clinical study. Lees verder op Tech Meme

WABetaInfo: A WhatsApp beta on Android suggests the company is working on adding usernames, which may let users chat without sharing their phone numbers  —  WhatsApp is rolling out a new update through the Google Play Beta Program, bringing the version up to 2.23.11.15.  —  What’s new in this update? Lees verder op Tech Meme