Techmeme
July 16, 2024, 12:35 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Elon Musk plans to commit ~$45M per month to America PAC, a new pro-Trump super PAC; other backers include 8VC's Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins  —  Other backers of America PAC include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins
The Information:
Sources: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have told a16z staff in recent days that they plan to make large donations to PACs supporting Donald Trump's campaign  —  Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who run one of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firms, have told the firm's employees …
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
A look at Trump VP pick JD Vance's tech ties, like working at Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital and investing in Rumble; Vance advocated for repealing Section 230  —  Vance has long had connections to Silicon Valley through his former life as a venture capitalist, including to long-time Donald Trump supporter and investor Peter Thiel.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Taboola CEO Adam Singolda says the company has struck a deal with Apple to power native advertising in the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps; TBLA jumps ~5%  —  - Taboola's effort to build trust with Apple across its various teams and stakeholders was “a multiyear process,'” Singolda said.
Proof:
Investigation: Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, and others trained their AI on a dataset that contained YouTube video transcripts, including from the WSJ, MrBeast, MIT  —  Creators claim their videos were used without their knowledge  —  AI companies are generally secretive about their sources of training data …
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA opens a formal investigation into Microsoft's Inflection AI investment, and sets a September 11 deadline on whether to open an in-depth investigation  —  - CMA said it needs to look further at the firm's partnership  — Watchdog is taking closer order of Big Tech investment into AI
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: Google offered CISPE ~€455M worth of Google Cloud licenses and €14M in cash on condition that CISPE maintain its antitrust complaint against Microsoft  —  - Cloud group rejected Google package to keep their EU case  — CISPE eventually reached antitrust settlement with Microsoft
Wall Street Journal:
Nullbulge, a hacktivist group critical of AI art, leaks Disney's alleged Slack messages over “how it handles artist contracts” and AI; Disney is investigating  —  ‘Hacktivist’ group critical of AI-generated art says it has obtained swaths of data from Disney's Slack channels, some of which it has published online
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
UMG, Sony, and other record labels sue Verizon for $2.6B+ over allegations of violating copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music  —  Lawsuit: One user's IP address was identified in 4,450 infringement notices.  —  Major record labels sued Verizon on Friday …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Apple launches the first public betas of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, and watchOS 11, but without any Apple Intelligence features  —  You can now download the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11.  Apple's updated operating systems …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
OnePlus unveils the $550 OnePlus Pad 2 with a 12.1-inch 3K LCD display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, and a 6.49mm thin design, shipping August 1  —  The OnePlus Pad 2 has officially launched alongside a number of other Nord-series devices at the OnePlus Summer Launch event in Milan, Italy.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Microsoft researchers unveil SpreadsheetLLM, an encoding method designed to enable LLMs to efficiently understand and analyze complex spreadsheet data  —  Microsoft researchers have unveiled “SpreadsheetLLM,” a new AI model designed to understand and work with spreadsheets, in a significant development for the world of enterprise AI.

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Build vs Buy Embedded Analytics: The Decision That Defines Your Product Roadmap  —  Every SaaS product team eventually hits the analytics wall.  Your customers want insights inside your app.  Your roadmap has no room to spare.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Great Chat:
Go touch some grass (but don't tweet about it)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Lenny's Podcast:
An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines | Simon Willison
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Access:
The future of AI might be on your finger
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Axiom's Carina Hong: Solving Math's Hardest Problems With AI, And AI's Problems With Math
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
The Nick, Dick and Paul Show:
Iran, Oil, and the US
Nick Bilton, Dick Costolo, and Paul Kedrosky pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future rushing toward us, all with healthy dose of irreverence.
Subscribe to The Nick, Dick and Paul Show.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:35 PM ET, July 16, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

The Information:
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Kim Zetter / ZERO DAY: