Tech News
Tech News and Analysis from around the web

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
How researchers, including at Meta's AI lab, use AI to study EEG readings, decoding how neurons in the brain communicate and exploring the nature of cognition — Thought is ever-changing electrical patterns unconnected to individual neurons. Meta is working on a system to read your mind.

Brianna Wessling / The Robot Report:
Ocado wins AutoStore's lawsuit after the UK High Court invalidated two of AutoStore's warehouse automation patents for being publicly disclosed before filing — Yesterday, the UK High Court ruled that AutoStore's patents, which have been the subject of a patent infringement case against Ocado …

New York Times:
An investigation details how a Georgia man was wrongfully arrested based on a bad facial recognition match and other tech meant to make policing more effective — Because of a bad facial recognition match and other hidden technology, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail …

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Lyft co-founders' departures followed months of staff worries as the company's market cap fell 85% to under $3.5B in two years, while Uber fared better — New CEO says he aims to boost employee morale and overhaul customer and driver experience — Tech Live: Lyft Co-Founder on Stock-Price Tumble, Autonomous Cars


Daniel Wiessner / Reuters:
The NLRB says Activision Blizzard broke US labor law by illegally surveilling staff during a walkout and threatening to close Slack channels amid a union drive — Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) violated U.S. labor law by illegally surveilling employees during a walkout and threatening …

Juro Osawa / The Information:
Sources: ByteDance generated $80B+ in 2022 revenue, up 30%+ YoY, after growing 70% between 2020 and 2021; TikTok represented ~12% of ByteDance's total revenue — ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, generated more than $80 billion in annual revenue last year, up more than 30% …


Wall Street Journal:
How GameStop chairman Ryan Cohen abandoned his e-commerce push for the company to refocus on its ~4,400 stores, leading to GameStop's first profit in two years — Videogame retailer, the original meme stock, hits brakes on e-commerce push to refocus on its 4,400 bricks-and-mortar locations

Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Binance plans to keep the $985M+ BUSD the company moved from its industry recovery fund, launched in November 2022 amid FTX's collapse, in its corporate wallets — Founder and CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as “CZ” — In the wake of FTX's collapse in November …

Chloe Xiang / VICE:
A Belgian widow claims her husband died by suicide after talking for six weeks with an AI chatbot that presented itself as an emotional being in the app Chai — The incident raises concerns about guardrails around quickly-proliferating conversational AI models. — Chloe Xiang

Oliver Knight / CoinDesk:
Filing: the US government sold ~$216M of seized Silk Road BTC on March 14, part of James Zhong's 50K stolen BTC, and plans to sell 41,490 BTC in four tranches — The government will sell the remaining 41,490 BTC in four tranches this year. — The U.S. government sold 9,861.17 bitcoin …

Matt Binder / Mashable:
Twitter's For You code tracked metrics to categorize users as “republican”, “democrat”, “power user”, or “elon” to keep algorithm tweaks from harming any group — Musk said he had no idea it was doing that! — Twitter has just released …

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Google confirms putting a 5M-file limit per Drive account, even for paid Google One plans, in February 2023 without telling users, who thought the cap was a bug — The new file limit means you can't actually use the storage you buy from Google. — “Please delete 2 million files to continue using your Google Drive account.”

Josh Sisco / Politico:
Sources: the FTC plans to file a complaint against Amazon alleging Alexa speakers violate COPPA by collecting data about kids under 13 without parental consent — The case, if filed, would be the first in a potentially long list of enforcement actions against the tech giant.

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Q&A with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney and EVP Sax Persson on an open metaverse, walled gardens, user-generated content, a metaverse programming language, and more — At its State of Unreal event last week, Epic Games showed off not only the visual magic of 3D graphics of games in the future.

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
LeBron James, William Shatner, Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander, and other athletes and celebrities with millions of followers say they won't pay for Twitter Blue — April 1 is the dumbest day on the internet, and this year, it's not just because brands will try to prank you by selling “hot iced coffee.”