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| Hi Insiders, Welcome to today's Inside Tech! Top stories include BlackCat's ransom attack on Reddit, Intel's newly-announced projects in Israel and Germany, and Meta's decision to lower the Quest headset age from 13 to 10. Scroll down for some "Quick Hits" and our "Question of the Week," and let us know of any topics you'd like covered in future issues. Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | The BlackCat ransomware group is threatening to release confidential stolen data from Reddit unless the company pays a $4.5M ransom and reverses its API price hikes. BlackCat, also known as Alphv, claims to have obtained 80 gigabytes of compressed data during a February breach of Reddit's system. More: - The February phishing attack granted hackers access to Reddit's internal documents, codes, dashboards, and business systems. Personal user data was not publicly exposed.
- The demands come after widespread protests against the API price hikes, which are expected to cause popular third-party apps such as Apollo and Narwhal to shut down.
- Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has defended the proposed changes, saying the platform was not designed to support third-party apps.
- Meanwhile, some advertisers temporarily paused their campaigns on the site during the protests.
Zoom out: |     | |
| 2 | | What happened: Intel plans to spend billions on new factories in Germany and Israel, marking the largest foreign investments in both countries by an outside company. What the numbers say: Intel plans to invest €30B ($33B) in Germany for constructing advanced chip fabs, including two semiconductor facilities in Magdeburg. The German government will contribute subsidies of €10B ($10.91B) toward the project. In Israel, Intel intends to invest $25B in a new chipmaking fab, which will begin operations in 2027 and continue until at least 2035. As part of the agreement, Intel will pay a 7.5% tax rate in Israel, up from the current 5%. What brands should care: TSMC, the world's biggest contract chipmaker, is also expanding into Europe and in talks with the German government for subsidies to cover up to half of the estimated €10B cost of a plant in Dresden. Why it matters: Intel is expanding its presence through other projects, including a semiconductor plant in Poland, an R&D hub in France, and investments in the U.S., Ireland, Italy, and Spain. The expenses are expected to significantly boost Intel's current valuation of buildings and land, which stood at $44.8B last year. 
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| 3 | | Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is lowering the minimum age for its Quest headsets from 13 to 10. Meta said it plans to require parental approval for setting up an account and downloading apps. More: - Meta plans to offer "age-appropriate" app store experiences and recommendations based on parents providing their child's age.
- Accounts for users under 13 will default to private and hide their active status on apps, with parents having the option to adjust these settings
- The company said it will not display ads to children and will give parents the option to control the use of their child's data for personalizing the experience.
- Horizon Worlds, the social platform for Quest headsets, will remain restricted to users 13 and older.
Zoom out: - Meanwhile, concerns remain about safety and privacy issues, as virtual reality apps can expose young users to harassment and abuse.
- Regulators have taken action against Meta in the past due to concerns over children's privacy.
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| 4 | | Google is selling its Google Domains business to Squarespace, transferring approximately 10 million domains to the website builder. Squarespace is acquiring the business assets for approximately $180M. More: - As part of the purchase, around 10 million customer domain names will be transferred to Squarespace.
- The deal is expected to close in Q3 2023, though the actual transfer will occur in 2024 or later.
- Squarespace also plans to leverage Google's infrastructure for a smooth transfer of domains.
- While Squarespace will provide billing and support for current Google Workspace customers, they may eventually be required to migrate to Squarespace's billing system.
- Existing customers will have their renewal prices maintained for the next year, and Squarespace will offer incentives for website building.
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| 4 | | Samsung has expanded its self-repair program to a handful of European countries, following its launch in the U.S. last year. The program equips users with tools and parts to repair supported devices, such as Galaxy S20, S21, and S22 smartphones, and Galaxy Book Pro regular and Galaxy Book Pro 360 laptops. More: - The program will be available in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the U.K.
- In those countries, ASWO and 2Service will handle sales and distribution of the repair kits.
- Galaxy device owners will be able to replace various components, such as screens, back panels, and charging connectors.
- Laptop parts available for repair include case fronts, displays, batteries, and more, though these are limited to Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the U.K.
- The cost of repair kits varies, with tools available for under €30 ($32.70) and individual parts priced accordingly.
Zoom out: - Newer models like the Galaxy S23 series are not yet included but could be added in the future.
- In Europe, the self-repair program is not supported by iFixit as it is in the U.S.
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| 6 | | Meta unveiled Voicebox, an AI model that generates synthetic voices from text prompts. The model was trained on a diverse dataset of more than 50,000 hours of unfiltered speech from audiobooks, including in different languages. More: - The system can generate conversational-like speech audio clips and performs almost as well as models trained on real speech, claiming only a 1% error rate degradation.
- Voicebox can also edit audio clips, removing unwanted noise and replacing misspoken words.
- It relies on a new training method called Flow Matching, which outperforms existing systems in terms of intelligibility and audio similarity.
- Meta has not released the Voicebox app or its source code to the public, possibly due to concerns about potential misuse.
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| 7 | | Community Corner Last week, we asked our tech community, "How often do you prefer to have virtual meetings in a week?" Here are some highlighted responses we received: - Shelley Taylor (p/shelley-taylor), CEO of trellyz, answered, "I have an average of 25 zoom meetings a week, usually with one or two people. I have worked remotely for years, and my whole company works remotely. I love having these meetings with customers and partners. And I have 1 meeting a day with team members who are working in other countries. We try to meet up in person a couple of times a year in fun places to make sure we drink good wine together or hang out in nice restaurants in the events after each day of work - usually 4 - 5 days in great places. It seems to work well!"
- Brad Holliday (p/hollidbr), Director of Human Resources at SkillPath, answered, "1:1's are the obvious choice for reviewing individual performance and discussions of difficult or sensitive subject matter, but over the years I have become a big fan of leveraging small group meetings wherever I'm able. That said, there is no replacement for an all-staff call or meeting periodically to celebrate achieving a major milestone or to ensure we are communicating with the team that which is needed to ensure we are keeping everyone plugged-in and marching to the same beat."
Join the conversations at Inside.com, and we may shout out your name and business, or contact you for more! ⭐️ | | | |
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INSIDE TECH LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia | |
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