Tech

For more than 20 years, Kit Loffstadt has written fan fiction exploring alternate universes for “Star Wars” heroes and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” villains, sharing her stories free online. But in May, Ms. Loffstadt stopped posting her creations after she learned that a data company had copied her stories and fed them into the artificial intelligence technology underlying ChatGPT, the …

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Creator monetization platform Fanhouse agrees to sell to rival Passes, which only launched in December 2022, but some creators are apprehensive about the merger  —  The creator monetization platform Fanhouse announced yesterday that it was acquired by Passes, a similar startup that only launched in beta in December.

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Updraft patches its AIOS WordPress plugin, used by 1M+ sites, after it logged plaintext passwords; Updraft didn’t warn its users during the exposure period  —  The All-In-One Security (AIOS) WordPress security plugin, used by over a million WordPress sites, was found to be logging plaintext passwords …

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: Twitter could descend into irrelevance if the trends driving Threads’ early success, including network effects and Elon Musk’s self-inflicted wounds, persist  —  Threads, from Instagram, has many distinct qualities that make it the first credible threat to Elon Musk’s vision of what a social network should be

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Microsoft’s disclosures about Chinese hackers accessing US government email accounts were opaque about the breach’s root cause and the company’s role in it  —  Critics also decry Microsoft’s “pay-to-play” monitoring that detected intrusions.  —  On Friday, Microsoft attempted to explain …

Reuters: Sources: the CEOs of Intel and Qualcomm are planning to meet US officials in DC next week to discuss China policy, export controls, market conditions, and more  —  The chief executives of Intel Corp (INTC.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) are planning to visit Washington next week to discuss China policy …

Brendan Pierson / Reuters: A US appeals court temporarily blocks a lower court order that sharply limited US government officials’ and agencies’ contacts with social media companies  —  A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court order that had sharply limited certain Biden administration officials …

The Economic Times: Sources: Foxconn is in talks with TSMC and Japan’s TMH to build chip factories in India, days after its $19.5B venture with Vedanta ended  —  Foxconn is likely to soon finalise the details of the partnership to manufacture both advanced and legacy node chips, a source close to the development told ET.

Kaya Yurieff / The Information: Creator monetization platform Fanhouse agrees to be acquired by Passes, a rival platform that only launched in beta in December 2022 and raised a $9M seed  —  A startup that rode the pandemic-era frenzy around OnlyFans is selling to a rival.  Fanhouse, which operates a website …

Evelyn Boyd Granville, one of the first Black women to receive a doctorate in mathematics from an American university and whose groundbreaking work in computers included helping calculate orbit trajectories and lunar-landing scenarios for the space program, died June 27 at her home in Silver Spring, Md. She was 99. The death was announced by a funeral home in Washington. …