Techmeme
July 24, 2024, 7:50 AM

Top News

Mark Zuckerberg / Meta:
Mark Zuckerberg argues that “open source AI” is the path forward, closed models are vulnerable to vendor lock-in and state-backed espionage, and more  —  In the early days of high-performance computing, the major tech companies of the day each invested heavily in developing their own closed source versions of Unix.
Bloomberg:
Meta debuts Llama 3.1 405B, the “first frontier-level open source AI model”, as well as new Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models, and says it's working on Llama 4  —  The Meta CEO defends both his open source strategy and a massive investment in artificial intelligence.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $84.7B, net income up 29% YoY to $23.6B, Search revenue of $48.5B, up from $42.6B YoY, headcount down 1% to 179,582  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - July 23, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Politico:
Some in Silicon Valley hope Kamala Harris could provide a chance for a reset, after years of bipartisan criticism in Washington DC toward Big Tech companies  —  Would she bring continuity with Joe Biden's policies?  A more centrist vibe?  A sharper progressive bite?
Eva Roytburg / Fortune:
Elon Musk says “I am not donating $45M a month to Trump”, and that he created America PAC to support Trump, without revealing precisely how much he is donating  —  Elon Musk is not spending $45 million a month to elect former President Donald Trump, though he has created …
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
The Information:
Sources: Apple is working on a foldable, clamshell-design iPhone that could debut as soon as 2026, and reached out to Asian component suppliers in recent months  —  Apple is working on a foldable iPhone that could be released as early as 2026 and in recent months reached out to suppliers …
Bloomberg:
Sources: the Google-Wiz deal failed, in part, due to antitrust fears and CrowdStrike's outage, which increased the potential value of cloud security companies  —  - $23 billion offer for Wiz collapsed weeks after HubSpot deal  — Regulatory concerns have cratered high-profile tech purchases
Bloomberg:
US spot ether ETFs hit $1B+ in trading volume across nine funds, a strong debut but far from the $4.6B traded during the spot bitcoin ETFs debut in January 2024  —  - Trading volume still trailed amount posted by Bitcoin ETFs  — Debuts for two of the funds rank among some of the best ever
Keith Broni / Emojipedia:
X reverts its water pistol emoji back to a firearm on the web, after Twitter originally switched the pistol emoji from a realistic-looking handgun in 2018  —  X (fka Twitter) has quietly redesigned its 🔫 Water Pistol emoji to display as a firearm.  This diverges from the cross-platform conversion …
The Information:
Internal messages: Meta staff complained about Threads' algorithm limiting political posts, after the For You page was slow to show news of Biden dropping out  —  Shortly after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election Sunday, an employee at Meta Platforms posted in the company's internal forum …
Benjamin S. Weiss / Courthouse News Service:
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says the Senate will take up the Kids Online Safety Act this week, signaling there's enough support among his colleagues  —  The Kids Online Safety Act would force tech companies to enable the highest possible privacy settings for minor users …
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
LA-based Pearl, an FDA-approved startup that uses AI to assist dentists to make diagnoses, raised a $58M Series B led by Left Lane Capital at a $400M valuation  —  - Los Angeles-based startup backed by Craft Ventures, Left Lane  — Pearl is valued at $400 million in fresh financing deal
More: TechCrunch
Jillian Ambrose / The Guardian:
Irish government data: data centers in Ireland used 21% of its electricity in 2023, up 20% YoY, more than the 18% of electricity used by all urban homes  —  Statistics raise concerns that rise in demand for data processing driven by AI could derail climate targets

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics  —  Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards.  Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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

Big Technology Podcast:
What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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.
Great Chat:
Too big to laugh: how tech lost its sense of humor
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.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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 7:50 AM ET, July 24, 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

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Ian King / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Suzanne Smalley / The Record: