Techmeme
August 16, 2024, 8:05 AM

Top News

Morgan Meaker / Wired:
Epic launches a rival app store for iOS in the EU, offering its games, including Fortnite, and plans to start onboarding third-party devs' games from December  —  The Epic Games Store gives iPhone users in the EU an alternative to Apple's App Store for the first time.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
California lawmakers weaken the AI safety bill with amendments proposed by Anthropic and other opponents, including giving the AG less power to sue AI companies  —  California's bill to prevent AI disasters, SB 1047, has faced significant opposition from many parties in Silicon Valley.
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Chainalysis: the value of crypto hacks increased by ~84% to $1.58B in the first seven months of 2024, likely due in large part to the rise in crypto prices  —  - Number of heists rose slightly, centralized exchanges targeted  — Bitcoin made up 40% of the proceeds of this year's heists
Shawna Chen / Axios:
California announces support for adding driver's licenses or state IDs to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, rolling out “in the coming weeks”  —  - They will be authorized for use in TSA screenings, select apps and select businesses, such as Circle K. Participating airports in the state include SFO, SJC and LAX.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Google makes Imagen 3 available to all US users via ImageFX, after unveiling the text-to-image AI model in May; some users criticize its strict content filters  —  Google has quietly made its latest text-to-image AI model, Imagen 3, available to all U.S. users through its ImageFX platform …
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Primate Labs releases Geekbench AI 1.0, formerly Geekbench ML, to test AI-centric performances of CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs, available on Android, iOS, and desktop  —  Performance test comes out of beta as NPUs become standard equipment in PCs.  —  Neural processing units (NPUs) …
Jody Godoy / Reuters:
Court filing: TikTok says DOJ misstated its ties to China, made factual errors in the case, and the divestment law would strip TikTok of its free speech rights  —  TikTok told a federal appeals court on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice has misstated the social media app's ties to China …
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
Binance resumes services in India, after completing registration with India's Financial Intelligence Unit, which imposed a ~$2.2M fine on Binance in June 2024  —  The registration was provisionally approved in May, subject to the crypto exchange paying a fine of about $2.2 million.
Andrew Liszewski / The Verge:
Meta releases an app for the Quest 3, 2, and Pro to let the headsets display video from devices with an HDMI or DisplayPort output; a capture card is required  —  Meta has released a new app for the Quest 3, 2, and Pro, letting you use the headsets as a screen for consoles, laptops, or any device with video out capabilities.
Bloomberg:
Some publishers say they can't block the Googlebot crawler that covers AI Overviews without hampering their discoverability, as the crawler also covers Search  —  Publishers say blocking the company's AI bot could also prevent their sites from showing up in search
Kenrick Cai / Reuters:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Threads announces new features, like the ability to store multiple drafts and an analytics page, rolling out on the web, and plans to test a scheduling feature  —  Meta's X rival Threads announced a number of new features today, including the ability to store multiple drafts …
Hannah Lang / Reuters:
At a Crypto4Harris online event, Mark Cuban, Anthony Scaramucci, and other crypto advocates supporting Kamala Harris urged a reset in Democratic crypto policy  —  Billionaire Mark Cuban, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci and congressman Adam Schiff were among a group of cryptocurrency advocates …

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Earlier Picks

Heather Knight / New York Times:
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Danny Gallagher / Engadget: