Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors
Techmeme
August 2, 2024, 3:55 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

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.
The Information:
Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products  —  Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, the companies said.
More: Channel NewsAsia and Fortune
X: @hkarthik, @dylan522p, @amir, and @bryce.  Forums: Slashdot
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:
A look at Musk-backed America PAC's “Register to Vote” online campaign, which collects users' personal data in swing states, but does not help them register  —  If a voter in Michigan performs a search on Google, a somewhat shocking ad might pop up.
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Crypto lender Genesis and related companies complete their bankruptcy restructuring and begin distributing ~$4B in digital assets and cash to creditors  —  - Bitcoin creditors will receive 51% recovery on in-kind basis  — Genesis distributions come soon after Mt Gox repaid billions
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 …
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
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.
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.

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.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Google Sheets Magic Lookup for Zoho CRM  —  Our App Spotlight brings you hand-picked apps to enhance the power of your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all apps, integrations …
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.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
 Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
 The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
 Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
 How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
 Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
 The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Add your podcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:55 PM ET, August 2, 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.

From Mediagazer

CNN:
Sources: Pete Hegseth pushed for two F-15 crew members rescued from Iran to join a 60 Minutes story; Bari Weiss lobbied Hegseth to give CBS exclusive access

Jack Dunn / Variety:
Leaked report: Paramount leaving California “would result in losses of 2,750 and 5,550 job-years”, and economic losses between $1.01B-$2.03B for the state

Sarah Rumpf / Mediaite:
Jimmy Kimmel's interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico crosses 8M views on YouTube, with interview clips going viral on Instagram and Facebook

More News

Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
Trump says Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt and told Trump he wouldn't endorse a Democrat because he “respected” Trump's reaction that day
Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
UK shelves promised £800M for Edinburgh University exascale supercomputer and £500M for AI Research Resource, saying former government never allocated the funds
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
A profile of, and interview with, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner, who is building a reputation in Washington, DC, as a trusted expert on AI
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%

Earlier Picks

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
Bill Donahue / Billboard:
Court filings: AI startups Suno and Udio respond to copyright lawsuits from major music labels, saying using proprietary music to train AI models is fair use
David Shepardson / Reuters:
A US appeals court blocks the FCC's reinstatement of net neutrality rules, saying broadband providers are likely to succeed in a legal challenge
Bill Peters / MarketWatch:
Coinbase reports Q2 revenue up 105% YoY to $1.45B, vs. $1.39B est., a $36.2M net income, and forecasts subscription and services Q3 revenue below expectations
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple Q3 revenue: iPhone down 1% YoY to $39.30B, Mac up 2% YoY to $7.01B, iPad up 24% YoY to $7.16B, and Wearables, Home, and Accessories down 2% YoY to $8.10B
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Intel plans to cut 15%+ of its workforce, the majority by the end of 2024, as part of a $10B cost reduction plan and to suspend its dividend starting in Q4 2024
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter