Techmeme
July 16, 2024, 12:10 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
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.
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 …
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.
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
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
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 …
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:
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
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.

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Featured Podcasts

Access:
A top iPhone app developer reacts to Apple's new Siri
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
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Hard Fork:
'Hard Fork' Live, Part 1: Satya Nadella and Cindy Cohn
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The Upstarts Podcast:
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Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI's Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
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.
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More News

Earlier Picks

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