Tech Meme

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Payment card services company Marqeta plans to acquire NYC-based fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $223M in cash plus $52M subject to a milestone  —  Marqeta has agreed to acquire two-year-old fintech infrastructure startup Power Finance for $223 million in cash … Lees verder op Tech Meme

James Vincent / The Verge: After OpenAI opened a waitlist for a faster, paid version of ChatGPT, some users report seeing a “pro” plan for $42/month; the company hasn’t announced pricing  —  Earlier this month, OpenAI said it was exploring ways to monetize its AI chatbot ChatGPT, giving users the opportunity … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Tiernan Ray / ZDNet: Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun says ChatGPT is “not particularly innovative” in its underlying techniques and other research labs are doing similar work  —  Much ink has been spilled of late about the tremendous promise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT program for generating natural-language utterances in response to human prompts. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: How Esther Crawford, Twitter’s director of product management, became one of the most influential leaders from the old guard in Elon Musk’s “hardcore” Twitter  —  Days after Elon Musk had completed his $44bn buyout of Twitter, Esther Crawford shared a picture of herself sleeping … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: Paris-based PASQAL, which builds quantum computers using neutral atoms, raised a €100M Series B led by Temasek, bringing its total funding to €125M  —  Once the stuff of Feynman’s dreams, Pascal executives predict that their solution will deliver major commercial advantages over classical computers by 2024. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Nicole Farley / Search Engine Land: Google plans to sunset Optimize and Optimize 360, which let marketers conduct A/B testing to improve their website or app user experience, on September 30, 2023  —  Any experiments and personalizations still active will end.  —  Google Optimize and Optimize 360 will no longer be available after September 30, 2023. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: The FTC fines HomeAdvisor up to $7.2M for using deceptive tactics to sell home improvement project leads, marking the agency’s first fine related to gig work  —  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered home services marketplace HomeAdvisor up to $7.2 million for its use of deceptive … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jennifer Elias / CNBC: At a town hall, Sundar Pichai asked staff to stay motivated as Google faces competition in areas like AI and indicated there would be executive bonus cuts  —  – Google CEO Sundar Pichai and executive leaders addressed employee questions at a town hall meeting on Monday after last week’s job cuts. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard’s games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23  —  Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: The FBI says North Korea-backed hacking groups Lazarus and APT38 are behind the June 2022 theft of ~$100M in ETH, USDT, and wBTC from Harmony’s Horizon bridge  —  Lazarus Group and APT38, both associated with North Korea, are responsible for the attack in June, the agency concluded. Lees verder op Tech Meme