Techmeme
August 27, 2024, 11:15 AM

Top News

New York Times:
French prosecutors: Pavel Durov's arrest is part of a probe “against person unnamed” into CSAM, drug sales, and more on the app and not working with authorities  —  A case was opened last month to investigate child pornography, drug sales, fraud and other criminal activities on the platform.
New York Times:
A profile of Pavel Durov, a devout techno-optimist who trolled authorities online, started social network VKontakte in 2006, and left Russia in 2014 for Dubai  —  Pavel Durov's anti-establishment streak helped him create one of the world's biggest online platforms, which emphasizes free speech.
Politico:
Telegram is avidly used within political and media circles in France, including by President Emmanuel Macron, who has used the messaging app for nearly a decade  —  PARIS — Open the Telegram chat of anyone in the French political orbit and you'll notice lawmakers, cabinet members and presidential advisers online or recently connected.
Victor Goury-Laffont / Politico:
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: OpenAI showed a breakthrough called Strawberry to US natsec officials this summer; one of its top uses is to make training data for a new frontier model  —  In case you were wondering why Sam Altman cryptically posted a picture of strawberries earlier this month …
Siobhan Hughes / Wall Street Journal:
In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets Meta wasn't more outspoken about Biden administration pressure to restrict some COVID-19 content  —  Meta CEO also says he won't repeat 2020 efforts to fund local elections, which Republicans criticized as ‘Zuckerbucks’
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority:
Android 14 downgrade OTA release notes confirm Google has delayed the Android 15 roll out to Pixel devices from September to October; a source says mid-October  —  - The Android Beta Exit update screen has been updated to mention that the Android 15 update will be available in October.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
nOps, which helps companies optimize AWS spend, raised a $30M Series A led by Headlight Partners and says its customer base grew 450% over the past 18 months  —  Companies don't necessarily have to produce breakthrough technology to gain market traction.  Undercutting rivals on price …
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
A US federal judge orders Missouri's AG to halt his probe into Media Matters' November 2023 X ads report, after a similar order against Texas' AG in April 2024  —  Judge: Missouri AG's actions chill speech about extremist content on Musk's X.  —  A federal judge ordered Missouri's attorney general …
Caroline O'Donovan / Washington Post:
Docs: Amazon plans to launch its delayed overhaul of Alexa in October for as much as $10/month, with AI-generated news summaries, a chatbot for kids, and more  —  The revamp of the voice assistant, which documents say will include a daily AI-generated news summary, would come just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic becomes the first major AI vendor to publish a changelog for system prompts of top models, including Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5  —  Generative AI models aren't actually human-like.  They have no intelligence or personality — they're simply statistical systems predicting …

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Apple:
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