Newslit Daily

Good morning, it’s Monday March 6th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

They thought loved ones were calling for help. It was an AI scam. Scammers are using voice-cloning AI to impersonate family members in distress, sometimes spoofing specific numbers to further the ruse, and victims fall for it. (Pranshu Verma / Washington Post)

Twitter can't protect you from trolls any more, insiders say. Current and former Twitter employees have revealed features intended to protect Twitter users from harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment where Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. (Marianna Spring / BBC)

The Vindication of Ask Jeeves. Charlie Warzel from The Atlantic interviews Ask Jeeves' co-creator Garrett Gruener, who says his original idea was similar to the chatbots Microsoft and Google are trying to build today. (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)

Using A.I. to Detect Breast Cancer That Doctors Miss. Hungary has become a major testing ground for A.I. software to spot cancer, as doctors debate whether the technology will replace them in medical jobs. (Adam Satariano / The New York Times)

This Algorithm Could Ruin Your Life. Algorithms are being used in welfare systems across Europe to hunt for fraud. These machines make life-changing decisions about millions of people. They claim to be accurate and fair. The results were troubling. (Matt Burgess / WIRED)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Monday December 26th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

A startup says it's begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate. That's in part because it's highly controversial, as little is known about the real-world effect of such deliberate interventions at large scales, including the potential for dangerous side-effects, uneven impacts across different regions and… (James Temple / MIT Technology Review)

How TikTok Became a Diplomatic Crisis. On March 10, two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House convened a Zoom call with 30 prominent TikTok creators. Jen Psaki, then the White House press secretary, and members of the National Security Council staff briefed… (Alex W. Palmer / The New York Times)

Twitter brings Elon Musk's genius reputation crashing down to earth. The Twitter CEO was on a live audio chat Tuesday night with software engineers when one user started quizzing him about the internal workings of the company's systems. Musk, who hours earlier said he would keep control of Twitter's software systems… (Faiz Siddiqui  / washingtonpost.com)

Apple's business under growing threat from China's Covid wave. Supply chain experts warn reversal of zero-Covid curbs and country-wide outbreak creates uncertainty for iPhone maker We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Apple Inc news every morning. Apple's business is under threat… (Patrick McGee via Financial Times)

Did a Fourth Grader Write This? Or the New Chatbot?. Don’t be surprised if you can’t always tell. Neither could two teachers, a professor, nor even the renowned children’s author Judy Blume. (Claire Cain Miller / The New York Times)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Friday December 23rd. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

ByteDance Inquiry Finds Employees Obtained User Data of 2 Journalists. ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, said on Thursday that an internal investigation found that employees had inappropriately obtained the data of U.S. TikTok users, including two reporters. Over the summer, a few employees on a… (Cecilia Kang / The New York Times)

LastPass says hackers stole customers' password vaults. Password manager giant LastPass has confirmed that cybercriminals stole its customers' encrypted password vaults, which store its customers' passwords and other secrets, in a data breach earlier this year. (Zack Whittaker via TechCrunch)

Google tells employees more of them will be at risk for low performance ratings next year. Google has released new details of its performance system overhaul and it shows employees will more easily fall into lower-rated categories. Employees' questions at a recent all-hands meeting showed a lack of trust in leadership to be forthright… (Jennifer Elias / CNBC)

Meta agrees to pay $725mn to settle Cambridge Analytica case. Proposed figure would be largest settlement achieved in a US data privacy class action and biggest paid by Facebook parent Receive free Meta Platforms updates We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Meta Platforms news every… (Cristina Criddle / Financial Times)

FTX Friends Flip on SBF. Happy holidays! Of course there will be several FTX movies, and maybe the most cinematic scene in the whole story is the meeting that Caroline Ellison, the chief executive officer of Alameda Research, FTX’s affiliated trading firm, held to tell her employees that they’d been stealing FTX customer money.… (Matt Levine via Bloomberg)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Happy Holidays and see you next week!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Thursday November 10th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Meta Lays Off More Than 11,000 Employees. Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September it had amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people. But on Wednesday, the company —… (Sheera Frenkel / The New York Times)

Binance backs out of FTX rescue, leaving the crypto exchange on the brink of collapse. Binance is backing out of its plans to acquire FTX, the company said Wednesday. Binance is backing out of its plans to acquire FTX, the company said Wednesday. The reversal comes one day after Zhao announced that Binance, the world's largest… (MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC)

Exclusive: How TikTok scrutinizes and scores the creators on its shopping platform. A career as a TikTok creator can be described as equal parts glamorous and soul-crushing. You don't need to look far for stories of those who achieved Tok-stardom, only to be met with a lifestyle full of burnout, instability and constant scrutiny… (Shoshana Wodinsky / MarketWatch)

Musk's First Email to Twitter Staff Ends Remote Work. New Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk emailed his workers for the first time late Wednesday to prepare them for “difficult times ahead.” Musk said there was “no way to sugarcoat the message” about the economic outlook and how… (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

'Hey, GitHub!' lets programmers code with just their voice. Microsoft-owned GitHub is experimenting with a new voice-based interaction system for its Copilot software. “Hey, GitHub!” will allow programmers to code with just their voice and no keyboard, just like how you'd speak to Siri, Alexa… (Tom Warren / The Verge)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Wednesday November 9th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Binance to Buy FTX in Megadeal of Crypto Exchanges. The cryptocurrency world was rocked on Tuesday as one of the largest exchanges for digital currencies, seemingly on the verge of collapse, was bailed out by a major rival in a deal that underlined the perils of the industry’s volatility. (David Yaffe-Bellany / The New York Times)

Twitter's solution for ruining verification is another checkmark. Twitter is rolling out another type of checkmark to help distinguish accounts that users actually need to know are real. Although you can pay for a blue checkmark with the new version of Twitter Blue, select accounts for governments, companies, or… (Jay Peters via The Verge)

Apple Tracks You Even With Its Own Privacy Protections on, Study Says. For all of Apple's talk about how private your iPhone is, the company vacuums up a lot of data about you. iPhones do have a privacy setting that is supposed to turn off that tracking. According to a new report by independent researchers, though… (Thomas Germain / Gizmodo)

Inside Meta's Oversight Board: 2 Years of Pushing Limits. On the morning of Thursday, June 30, 2022, two large luxury buses pulled up to a grand hotel in Menlo Park, California. Milling on the driveway were the members, staffers, and trustees of the Oversight Board. Set up two years ago by Facebook, now… (Steven Levy / WIRED)

The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright. Microsoft, its subsidiary GitHub, and its business partner OpenAI have been targeted in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the companies' creation of AI-powered coding assistant GitHub Copilot relies on “software piracy on an… (James Vincent / The Verge)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Tuesday November 8th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

IRS Seizes Another Silk Road Hacker's $3.36 Billion Bitcoin Stash. The legendary dark web market for drugs known as the Silk Road was designed to be an anarchic underworld economy that evaded all government control. Instead, years after it was torn offline, it's proven to be the IRS's gift that keeps on giving. (Andy Greenberg / WIRED)

China's Business Elite Sees the Country That Let Them Thrive Slipping Away. For decades, China's business class had an unspoken contract with the Communist Party: Let us make money and we'll turn a blind eye to how you use your power. Like most Chinese people, they bought into the party's argument that its one-party rule… (Li Yuan / The New York Times)

Musk discusses putting all of Twitter behind a paywall. If Friday brought massive layoffs to Twitter, Monday brought fresh evidence that the company will never be the same. Musk has discussed putting the entire site behind a paywall, Platformer has learned. Meanwhile, the company is scrambling to lure… (Casey Newton / Platformer)

YouTube Shorts are coming to your TV - and taking over the platform. YouTube Shorts is working. That much Todd Sherman knows for sure. Sherman, the product manager behind YouTube's endless-scrolling short-form TikTok competitor, is quick to quote the numbers: 1.5 billion users a month are watching Shorts, and… (David Pierce / The Verge)

Apple Built Its Empire With China. Now Its Foundation Is Showing Cracks.. Every September, Apple unveils its latest phones at its futuristic Silicon Valley campus. A few weeks later, tens of millions of its newest handsets, assembled by legions of seasonal workers hired by its suppliers, are shipped from Chinese… (Tripp Mickle, Chang Che, Daisuke Wakabayashi / The New York Times)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Monday November 7th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This Week. Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could be among the largest round in a recent spate of tech job cuts after the industry's rapid growth during the pandemic. (Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal)

Twitter Said to Delay Changes to Check Mark Badges Until After Midterm Election. Twitter is delaying the rollout of verification check marks to subscribers of its new $7.99 a month subscription service until after Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to an internal post viewed by The New York Times… (Ryan Mac / The New York Times)

Apple warns Covid restrictions in China are hurting iPhone production. iPhone 14 production has been temporarily reduced because of Covid-19 restrictions at its primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly plant in Zhengzhou, China. The factory, operated by Foxconn, is operating at 'significantly reduced… (Kif Leswing / CNBC)

Twitter Now Asks Some Fired Workers to Please Come Back. Twitter Inc., after laying off roughly half the company on Friday following Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition, is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return. Some of those who are being asked to return… (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

Electric cars can strengthen the US grid through V2G tech, experts say. Millions more electric vehicles on the road could make the US power grid more resilient. An innovation called vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G, lets EVs supply electricity to the grid in times of need, but it's still in early stages. Someday, EVs… (Tim Levin / Business Insider)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Friday November 4th. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

The world is missing its lofty climate targets. Time for some realism. To accept that the world's average temperature might rise by more than 1.5°C, declared the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands in 2015, would be to sign the “death warrant” of small, low-lying countries such as his. To… (The Economist)

Stripe Cutting Headcount by 14% as It Readies for 'Leaner Times'. Stripe Inc., one of the world's most valuable startups, will cut more than 1,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs ahead of any economic downturn. The payments company will cut its workforce by 14% this week, returning headcount to the almost 7,000… (Jennifer Surane / Bloomberg)

Elon Musk's first Hyperloop tunnel in California is gone. Elon Musk's first prototype Hyperloop tunnel is no more. Bloomberg reports that the roughly one-mile-long white steel tunnel running along Jack Northrop Avenue near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, has been removed and will be replaced… (Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge)

Substack targets Twitter with launch of discussions feature, Substack Chat. Another company hoping to capitalize on Twitter's upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk's takeover is the newsletter platform Substack. The company has openly targeted Twitter's user base over the past few days and has now thrown its hat into the ring… (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over. “We have observed an uptick in people deactivating their accounts and also Twitter suspending accounts,” says Christopher Bouzy, Bot Sentinel's founder. Bouzy and Bot Sentinel arrived at their numbers by looking at the proportion of… (Chris Stokel-Walker / MIT Technology Review)

Take care and see you next week!

— Jose Montes de Oca

P.S. if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Good morning, it’s Thursday November 3rd. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Musk Plans to Eliminate Half of Twitter Jobs in Cost-Cut Drive. Elon Musk plans to eliminate about 3,700 jobs at Twitter Inc., or half of the social media company's workforce, in a bid to drive down costs following his $44 billion acquisition, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Twitter's new… (Edward Ludlow & Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

OpenAI will give roughly 10 AI startups $1M each and early access to its systems. OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the… (Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch)

The 'Viral' Secure Programming Language That's Taking Over Tech. Whether you run IT for a massive organization or simply own a smartphone, you're intimately familiar with the unending stream of software updates that constantly need to be installed because of bugs and security vulnerabilities. People make… (Lily Hay Newman / WIRED)

Jony Ive on Life After Apple. I can always write an awful lot that I can't draw,” Jony Ive, the mastermind behind Apple's most revolutionary products, says as he holds up a Space Age–style coffee cup. “If I draw this, it only captures certain… (Elisa Lipsky-Karasz / Wall Street Journal)

TikTok tells European users its staff in China get access to their data. TikTok is telling its European users of the platform that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the site. The… (Dan Milmo / The Guardian)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca

Good morning, it’s Wednesday November 2nd. I am Jose Montes de Oca and you are listening to Newslit daily, expertly curated news bits on what is happening around us to supercharge your mornings

In today's edition:

Food Prices Soar, and So Do Companies' Profits. A year ago, a bag of potato chips at the grocery store cost an average of $5.05. These days, that bag costs $6.05. A dozen eggs that could have been picked up for $1.83 now average $2.90. A two-liter bottle of soda that cost $1.78 will now set you… (Isabella Simonetti / The New York Times)

NSA Watchdog Concluded One Analyst's Surveillance Project Went Too Far. An “experienced” analyst working at the National Security Agency developed a surveillance project about a decade ago that resulted in the unauthorized targeting and collection of private communications of people or organizations in… (Jason Leopold / Bloomberg)

Tumblr will now allow nudity but not explicit sex. Tumblr has made an update it hinted at in September, changing its rules to allow nudity — but not sexually explicit images — on the platform. The company updated its community guidelines earlier today, laying out a set of rules that… (Adi Robertson / The Verge)

Welcome to Geriatric Social Media. Weirdos like myself, who pay too much attention to tech platforms, are currently mulling a question: Is social media dying? The New York Times' Kevin Roose formally kicked this off in a guest post in The Morning newsletter last week, chronicling… (Charlie Warzel via The Atlantic)

YouTube's Primetime Channels bring streaming movies and TV into the YouTube app. Streaming services are coming to YouTube. The company is rolling out a new feature called Primetime Channels that will bring shows and movies from more than 30 services directly into the YouTube interface. It's a big bet for YouTube that it can be… (David Pierce / The Verge)

I hope you found it interesting and, needless to say, if you have any questions or feedback let me know by hitting reply or on Twitter.

Take care and see you tomorrow!

— Jose Montes de Oca