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“Enhanced Features of App Store: Win-Back Subscriptions and Advanced Search Suggestions Introduced by Apple”

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Win-back subscriptionsApple will let developers reach out to customers who have subscribed to the app to win them back with new offers. Developers can configure which customers they want to reach out to, and based on that, Apple surfaces win-back offers in the App Store. “Eligible customers can discover win-back offers across the App Store, including on your product page and in editorial selections on the Today, Games and Apps tabs, as well as within your app,” according to Apple. Image Credits: AppleImproved search suggestionsApple said that it is adding Focus State to the App Store later this year for improved search. It gave examples of content creator apps offering subscriptions, apps with large catalogs of content (maybe apps that offer sachet subscriptions to different content), and digital content that spans across different apps managed by one developer.

Acquisition Alert: VerSe from India Purchases Magzter, a Competitor to Apple News+

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VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of Indian news aggregator app Dailyhunt, has acquired the popular digital newsstand firm Magzter, the two said Thursday. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup has fully acquired Magzter, a New York-headquartered firm that counted Singapore Press Holdings among its backers. Magzter has amassed over 1 million paying subscribers in India and boasts a global active user base of 87 million, Bedi said. The firm, which offers an all-you-can-consume model with annual subscription fees ranging from $20 to $30, will find a distribution and technology partner in VerSe Innovation, he added. The Indian firm plans to launch Dailyhunt Premium this year that will include an ad-free experience as well as Magzter’s catalog.

“Fueling Optimism: Unveiling the Past and Potential of Tomorrow in ‘A Brief History of the Future'”

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Cynicism is a quality taken almost for granted in tech journalism, and certainly we are as guilty as the next publication. “A Brief History of the Future,” hosted by Ari Wallach, also has the compelling quality of, as a PBS production, being completely free. But now we’re at a point that if we continually do that, we’re going to we’re going to lose the thread. And everyone seems to be relieved to be able to talk about the promise of the future rather than the threat of it. In case you’re wondering what moneyed special interest is trying to placate you with this beneficent presentation of a kindlier, wiser future… don’t worry, I asked.

Catch Change Healthcare Hackers: US Grants $10M in Assistance

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The State Department blamed the prolific ransomware group for targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, including healthcare services. Last month, an affiliate group of the ALPHV/BlackCat gang took credit for a cyberattack and weeks-long outage at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare, which processes around one-in-three U.S. patient medical records. The affiliate group went public after accusing the main ALPHV/BlackCat gang of swindling the contract hackers out of $22 million in ransom that Change Healthcare allegedly paid to prevent the mass leak of patient records. Change Healthcare has said since that it ejected the hackers from its network and restored much of its systems. U.S. health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of Change Healthcare, has not yet confirmed if any patient data was stolen.

Meta cuts price of EU ad-free subscription while undergoing privacy examination.

Meta Announces Subscription Services For Facebook And Instagram
“[W]e await feedback from the Irish Data Protection Commission [DPC], our lead data protection regulator in the EU,” he added. While Meta’s compliance with the GDPR is led by the Irish DPC, under the regulation’s one-stop-shop. This structure does not mean the Irish authority gets final say on Meta’s compliance with EU privacy rules, though. In the case of Meta, this has frequently led to objections from other data protection authorities which have landed stiffer enforcements than the DPC originally proposed. So who gets the final say on the GDPR compliance of Meta’s consent mechanism is complex too.

Setapp by MacPaw Among First Companies to Embrace Apple’s Controversial DMA Policies

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The move is notable given the pushback Apple has received on its compliance with the new EU regulation so far. Though others have fought against Apple’s DMA rules, MacPaw has chosen to opt in — a one-way conversion that offers no ability, at present, to return to Apple’s existing rules. The current version of Setapp offers dozens of apps for $9.99 per month and up, depending on the platform and number of devices. While the service is being likened to an alternative app store, to be clear, it will involve a subscription for all-you-can access to its apps, which is not Apple’s App Store model. As for developers looking for additional distribution, however, another channel for reaching iOS users could be beneficial if MacPaw’s terms are agreeable.

“Expediting SMB Insurance: Coverdash Unites Top Carriers for Instant Coverage”

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“More big partners kept coming and closing with us, pushing to get on our roadmap,” Betesh told TechCrunch. Coverdash offers small businesses, e-commerce merchants and freelancers the ability to buy business insurance in areas like business owner’s policies, cyber and worker’s compensation. Businesses then answer a few questions, select a policy and get coverage in minutes. That comes with some requirements, like having liability insurance for board directors and company officers and other management, Betesh explained. “It all kind of fell into place really quickly, and in over two weeks, we had offers from multiple firms.

SambaNova introduces an all-inclusive collection of generative artificial intelligence models

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SambaNova, an AI chip startup that’s raised over $1.1 billion in VC money to date, is gunning for OpenAI — and rivals — with a new generative AI product geared toward enterprise customers. SambaNova today announced Samba-1, an AI-powered system designed for tasks like text rewriting, coding, language translation and more. The company’s calling the architecture a “composition of experts” — a jargony name for a bundle of generative open source AI models, 56 in total. But is Samba-1 really superior to the many, many other AI systems for business tasks out there, least of which OpenAI’s models? Rather, it’s a set-it-and-forget it package — a full-stack solution with everything included, including AI chips, to build AI applications.

“Inside the World of LLM Building in China: Insights from an Alibaba Employee”

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Chinese tech companies are gathering all sorts of resources and talent to narrow their gap with OpenAI, and experiences for researchers on both sides of the Pacific Ocean can be surprisingly similar. The parallel glimpse into their typical day reveals striking similarities, with wake-up times at 9 a.m. and bedtime around 1 a.m. Both start the day with meetings, followed by a period of coding, model training and brainstorming with colleagues. Besides building its own LLM in-house, Alibaba has been aggressively investing in startups such as Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, Baichuan and 01.AI. Facing competition, Alibaba has been trying to carve out a niche, and its multilingual move could become a selling point.

Uncovering the Intriguing World of Chinese Government Hacking: Inside the Revolutionary Spyware Leak

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Over the weekend, someone posted a cache of files and documents apparently stolen from the Chinese government hacking contractor, I-Soon. This leak gives cybersecurity researchers and rival governments an unprecedented chance to look behind the curtain of Chinese government hacking operations facilitated by private contractors. Since then, observers of Chinese hacking operations have feverishly poured over the files. Also, an IP address found in the I-Soon leak hosted a phishing site that the digital rights organization Citizen Lab saw used against Tibetans in a hacking campaign in 2019. Cary highlighted the documents and chats that show how much — or how little — I-Soon employees are paid.