Techmeme
August 1, 2024, 11:50 AM

Top News

Meta:
Meta reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $39B, net income up 73% to $13.5B, and family daily active people up 7% to 3.27B on average for June 2024; META jumps 5%+  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1 beta hands-on: meaningful Siri language understanding improvements and Siri text input is nice, but few other notable features  —  In iOS 18's latest developer preview, Siri gets a glow-up.  Like, the whole phone actually glows around the edges when you invoke Siri.
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
WBD, Disney, and Fox plan to launch their joint sports streaming venture Venu for $42.99 per month initially, with a seven-day free trial, expected in fall 2024  —  Streaming sports on a stand-alone basis won't be cheap. … The service is expected to debut in the fall in conjunction with the start of the next NFL season.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI tells US lawmakers that it is “dedicated” to “rigorous safety protocols at every stage of our process” and is working with the US AI Safety Institute  —  OpenAI, responding to questions from US lawmakers, said it's dedicated to making sure its powerful AI tools …
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity need to pay to scrape Reddit's data, and blocking them has been “a real pain in the ass”  —  After striking deals with Google and OpenAI, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is calling on Microsoft and others to pay if they want to continue scraping the site's data.
Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:
Telegram rolls out a Mini App Store to help users find apps, a new in-app browser that supports multiple tabs, and says mini apps have 500M+ out of 950M MAUs  —  Telegram is refining the in-app expereince, adding a new way to interact with the browser and a Mini App Store for native applications.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord on Xbox gets the ability to watch friends' Discord streams whether they're sharing from a PC, a phone, or an Xbox, rolling out over the coming weeks  —  Microsoft and Discord are greatly improving the integration of the communication platform into Xbox consoles.
Bloomberg:
Investigation: 2020 to 2023 data shows how thousands of middlemen game the H-1B program and companies that farm out IT workers exploit the US lottery system  —  Each year in April, the US government conducts a lottery that shapes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people — and America's future as an economic power.
Jonathan Kemper / The Decoder:
Google unveils updates to its Gemma family of open models, including Gemma 2 2B, which it claims surpasses GPT-3.5 and Mixtral 8x7B on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena  —  Google has unveiled updates to its Gemma 2 family of open-source language models, focusing on improved performance, safety, and transparency.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
The EU's AI Act takes effect, triggering compliance deadlines for a range of AI developers and apps; most provisions will be fully applicable by mid-2026  —  It's official: The European Union's risk-based regulation for applications of artificial intelligence has come into force from Thursday, August 1, 2024.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Protect AI, which develops software to help enterprises secure AI models and applications, raised $60M led by Evolution Equity Partners at a $400M valuation  —  The funding round, led by Evolution Equity Partners, values the startup at $400 million.  New investors in the deal include 01 Advisors …
Tales Azzoni / Associated Press:
The Premier League, Bundesliga, DAZN, Sky, UEFA, CONMEBOL, and others write to X CEO Linda Yaccarino demanding more action against illegal soccer content on X  —  Some of Europe's main broadcasters and top soccer leagues have sent a letter to the CEO of social media platform X, Linda Yaccarino …
Bloomberg:
A look at Baidu's experiment with driverless taxis in Wuhan, which became China's biggest proving ground for Baidu's taxis due to a relaxed regulatory approach  —  Wuhan's experiment with driverless taxis could help China lead the world on the emerging technology.  It also risks putting thousands of people out of work.
Jeff Wilser / Wired:
A look at Hamster Kombat, a Telegram “mini-game” with 53M channel subscribers, the most on Telegram; in June 2024, Iran said the crypto game distracted voters  —  In June, Iranian authorities claimed the crypto game was distracting voters during the presidential election.
Anna Washenko / Engadget:
US senators unveil the bipartisan NO FAKES Act, which would make individuals and companies liable for producing, hosting, or sharing unauthorized AI deepfakes  —  OpenAI joined several entertainment industry groups in backing the NO FAKES Act.  —  Today, a group of senators introduced the NO FAKES Act …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg:
Staff memo: Samsung's chip business head Jun Young-hyun warns Samsung risks getting into a “vicious cycle” if the company does not revamp its workplace culture  —  - Jun Young-hyun replaced his predecessor just a few months ago  — It's trying to catch SK Hynix in the hot AI memory chip market
More: KED Global
Bart Meijer / Reuters:
The European Commission unconditionally approves HPE's $14B takeover of networking gear maker Juniper Networks after finding no competition concerns  —  The EU Commission on Thursday said it had unconditionally approved the $14 billion takeover of networking gear maker Juniper Networks (JNPR.N) by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.N).

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Featured Podcasts

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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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Ian King / Bloomberg:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Wesley Yin-Poole / IGN:
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: