Techmeme
August 6, 2024, 1:25 PM

Top News

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google unveils the $100 Google TV Streamer, with better performance than Chromecast with Google TV, Thread and Matter support, and more, shipping September 24  —  Google isn't waiting for its upcoming hardware event to announce the Chromecast's successor.  Alongside the new, sleeker Nest Thermostat …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google says the Chromecast with Google TV 4K and HD will remain on sale until stock runs out, as the company stops making the Chromecast, first launched in 2013  —  The first Chromecast was announced in July of 2013 with the goal of letting people stream content from phones to televisions.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Google unveils Gemini-based features for Google Home, coming later in 2024: descriptive captions for Nest camera videos, a smarter Assistant for Nest, and more  —  Amazon has already announced its plans for a smarter Alexa to power your home.  Now, it's Google's turn to promise that it can produce a better …
Leah Nylen / Bloomberg:
US v. Google: a federal judge rules that Google illegally monopolized the search market, including through deals to be the default option on phones and browsers  —  Google's payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday …
More: CNN, Ars Technica, BBC, Platformer, Reuters, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, ZDNET, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Total Telecom, Washington Post, Tortoise, MarTech, CNBC, PocketGamer.biz, Spyglass, Digital Content Next, Politico, Tom's Guide, Proactive, Benzinga, Washington Post, The Mirror, GSMArena.com, WinBuzzer, The Stack, One Man & His Blog, IPWatchdog.com, Silicon Republic, PaymentExpert.com, Search Engine Roundtable, TipRanks Financial, Tech.co, Yahoo Finance, Interesting Engineering, Bloomberg, Office of Attorney General …, The Information, Patently Apple, and Philip Elmer‑DeWitt
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
US v. Google: a judge rules Google has a monopoly in “general search text advertising” and used exclusive agreements to raise prices without any competition  —  A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.
Jason Del Rey / Fortune:
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
John Schulman / @johnschulman2:
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman departs to join Anthropic and focus on AI alignment, and says “I'm not leaving due to lack of support for alignment research”  —  I shared the following note with my OpenAI colleagues today: I've made the difficult decision to leave OpenAI. This choice stems from my desire to deepen my focus on AI alignment, and to start a new chapter of my career where I can return to hands-on technical work. I've decided
The Information:
OpenAI President Greg Brockman says he's taking a sabbatical through the end of 2024; a source says OpenAI product leader Peter Deng, who joined in 2023, left  —  Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and one of 11 cofounders of the artificial intelligence firm, is taking an extended leave of absence.
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Behind the YouTube influencers, WhatsApp and Telegram groups, and services like FewFeed fueling Facebook's problem of creators profiting from viral “AI slop”  —  Gyan Abhishek is standing in front of a giant touch screen, like Jim Cramer on Mad Money or an ESPN talking head analyzing a football play.
Sara Fischer / Axios:
X sues the World Federation of Advertisers, GARM, and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, and Unilever over what Linda Yaccarino calls an “illegal boycott”  —  Members include major tech companies, advertisers, agencies, ad tech firms and advertising coalitions.
Wes Davis / The Verge:
A look at some of Apple's pre-prompt Apple Intelligence instructions, like “Do not hallucinate” and “Do not make up factual information” for the Rewrite tool  —  Apple's latest developer betas launched last week with a handful of the generative AI features that were announced …
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Uber reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to $10.7B, Gross Bookings up 19% YoY to $40B, vs. $39.7B est., Mobility Gross Bookings up 23% YoY to $20.6B, and 7.4M drivers  —  - Results driven by better-than-expected growth in ridehailing  — Autonomous rides grew six-fold from year ago through partners
Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware:
Samsung starts mass production of the world's thinnest LPDDR5X DRAM, claiming it is 9% thinner than most LPDDR5X and improves devices' heat resistance by 21.2%  —  The new package frees additional space.  —  Samsung has started mass production of the world's thinnest LPDDR5X DRAM packages featuring 12 GB and 16 GB capacities.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Google releases patches for 46 Android security vulnerabilities, including a kernel zero-day the company says “may be under limited, targeted exploitation”  —  Android security updates this month patch 46 vulnerabilities, including a high-severity remote code execution (RCE) exploited in targeted attacks.
Doug Bock Clark / ProPublica:
A researcher finds another flaw in Georgia's voter registration cancellation portal, which has had bugs that made submitting requests for any Georgian trivial  —  The flaw would have allowed anyone to submit a voter registration cancellation request for any Georgian using their name …
Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Red Ventures sells CNET, an early pioneer of online tech coverage, to Ziff Davis, which owns Mashable, PC Mag, Lifehacker, and others, a source says for $100M+  —  Ziff Davis is acquiring CNET for more than $100 million.  Its chief executive thinks more acquisitions are on the horizon.
Reuters:
ByteDance debuts AI text-to-video app Jimeng AI on iOS in China, after its July 31 Android release; China's Kuaishou released Kling AI in beta globally in July  —  ByteDance has expanded its offering of a software that can generate videos based on text prompts, joining a growing number …
Bloomberg:
The US awards South Korea's SK Hynix an initial $450M in grants and $500M in loans under the CHIPS Act to build an advanced chip packaging facility in Indiana  —  - Firm to get $450 million Chips Act grant, $500 million loan  — Indiana facility focused on advanced packaging, research

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