Techmeme
August 2, 2024, 3:25 PM

Top News

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and some employees, are joining Google; Google has signed a non-exclusive agreement to use its tech  —  In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed startup.
New York Times:
The US DOJ sues TikTok, saying it collected children's data without parents' permission, knowingly let users under the age of 13 create accounts, and more  —  The Justice Department said that TikTok illegally collected children's data and knowingly allowed users under the age of 13 to create accounts.
Brian Schwartz / CNBC:
Pei Li / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple in recent months has demanded Tencent and ByteDance close loopholes used by their in-app creators to funnel users to external payment systems  —  - iPhone maker wants to close loopholes in mini-games payments  — Handling in-app purchases is a lucrative business for Apple
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
Stability AI announces Stable Fast 3D, a generative AI model for rapid 3D asset generation, says it can generate a 3D asset from a single image in 0.5 seconds  —  Not all that long ago, it used to be hard, really hard to generate 3D images.  It was a process that involved complex wireframes, complicated software and beefy hardware.
Asa Hiken / Ad Age:
Google pulled an Olympics TV ad where a father uses Gemini to help his daughter write a personal letter to an athlete, after criticisms that the ad is tone-deaf  —  ‘Dear Sydney’ had been criticized for appearing tone-deaf to AI concerns  —  Google has pulled an ad from its Olympics' TV rotation …
Josh Sisco / Politico:
Sources: the US DOJ is investigating Nvidia's acquisition of Run:ai, a Tel Aviv-based startup that enables virtualization of GPUs, on antitrust grounds  —  The investigation adds to the global pressure by regulators to prevent control of artificial intelligence by just a handful of the world's largest technology companies.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Infoblox and Eclypsium: since 2018, Russian hackers hijacked 35K+ registered domains using Sitting Ducks attacks that involve exploiting DNS configuration flaws  —  Threat actors have hijacked more than 35,000 registered domains in so-called Sitting Ducks attacks that allow claiming …
Nathan Edwards / The Verge:
Surface Pro 11 review: OLED display is vibrant, Flex Keyboard is magic, hardware is solid, but it's costly, not all x86 apps run well, AI features are skippable  —  Microsoft's latest 2-in-1 is all in on Arm, and it's the closest the company's come to merging the power of a laptop with the battery life and flexibility of a tablet.
Forums: r/gadgets
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Nintendo reports Q1 revenue down 46.5% YoY to ~$1.65B, vs. ~$1.92B est., net profit down 55.3% YoY to ~$536M, and Switch sales down 46% YoY to 2.1M units  —  Nintendo on Friday reported revenue and profit that plunged in the company's fiscal first quarter, as sales of the ageing Switch console decline.
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel extends the warranty for its boxed Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors by an additional two years, due to customers experiencing instability issues  —  Trying to build goodwill.  —  Intel told us today that it will extend the warranty on its boxed Intel Core 13th- and 14th-Gen processors by two additional years.
Apple Inc.:
Apple reports Q3 revenue up 5% YoY to $85.8B, net income up 8% to $21.4B, Americas net sales up 6% to $37.7B, and Europe net sales up 8% to $21.9B  —  June quarter records for Revenue and EPS Services revenue reaches new all-time high  —  Apple® today announced financial results …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
The Canadian Press:
Study: a year after Meta blocked news content in Canada due to the Online News Act, Canadians' total engagement with news content on social media is down 43%  —  Canadian news struggling after Meta ban: study  —  MONTREAL - A new study is painting a grim portrait of how local Canadian news outlets …
Tuvan Gumrukcu / Reuters:
Turkey blocks Instagram for failing to comply with “laws and rules”; a Turkish official said Instagram blocked condolence posts about Ismail Haniyeh's killing  —  Turkey has blocked access to social media platform Instagram, the infotech regulator said on Friday …

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More News

Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Bill Donahue / Billboard:
Bill Peters / MarketWatch:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Alex Heath / The Verge: