Techmeme
August 29, 2024, 4:45 PM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Google says Russia-linked APT29 is using exploits that are “identical or strikingly similar” to those previously made by spyware makers Intellexa and NSO Group  —  Google says it has evidence that Russian government hackers are using exploits that are “identical or strikingly similar” …
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Facebook, Instagram, Craigslist, Tumblr, the NYT, the FT, The Atlantic, Vox Media, USA Today, Condé Nast, and more block Apple's Applebot-Extended AI crawler  —  This summer, Apple gave websites more control over whether the company could train its AI models on their data.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Automattic plans to shift Tumblr's backend to WordPress in a bid to make sharing work across the platforms easier, after acquiring Tumblr for $3M in August 2019  —  Tumblr is making the move to WordPress.  After its 2019 acquisition by WordPress.com parent company Automattic in a $3 million fire sale …
Financial Times:
Sources: the EU is investigating if Telegram gave inaccurate user numbers to stay under the DSA's 45M threshold; Telegram reported 41M EU users in February 2024  —  Brussels probing possible failure by messaging platform to provide accurate data under new regulations
Gaspard Sebag / Bloomberg:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
The US says OpenAI and Anthropic agreed to give the US AI Safety Institute early access to major new AI models to test and evaluate their capabilities and risks  —  The US government announced agreements with leading artificial intelligence startups OpenAI and Anthropic to help test and evaluate their upcoming technologies for safety.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Magic, which makes AI tools for coding and to automate software development tasks, raised $320M from Eric Schmidt and others, bringing its total raised to $465M  —  Magic, an AI startup developing models to generate code and automate a range of software development tasks …
Alex Isenstadt / Politico:
In his upcoming book, Trump says Mark Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and he'd “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again  —  The Meta CEO earlier this week asserted that Biden administration tried to “pressure” the company to downplay content about Covid.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, the three most valuable tech companies, are in talks to join the funding round that would value OpenAI at over $100B  —  - Apple, Microsoft also have been in talks about participating  — Financing would value OpenAI at more than $100 billion
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Kuo: in the 2025 iPhone lineup, only the iPhone 17 Pro Max will have 12GB of DRAM, instead of 8GB, and a cooling system with vapor chambers and graphite sheets  —  Just a day after a noted leaker on Chinese microblogging site Weibo suggested the iPhone 17 lineup in 2025 could see an upgrade …
Katie Paul / Reuters:
Meta says its Llama models were downloaded almost 350M times, are used by AT&T and others, and usage via cloud providers more than doubled from May to July 2024  —  Meta's (META.O) Llama artificial intelligence models are being used by companies including Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and AT&T …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Sources: truck sharing platform Fluid Truck, which raised $80M+, has ousted its sibling co-founders, including CEO James Eberhard, after losing tens of millions  —  The startup is in the hole for millions  —  Fluid Truck, a startup that was founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry …
Ben Weiss / The Verge:
Documents and sources detail OpenSea's chaotic work environment, ever-shifting priorities, and tax probes across the globe, as the US SEC and FTC make inquiries  —  The rise and fall of NFTs made and unmade OpenSea — the largest marketplace for the crypto asset.

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More News

Katie Kilkenny / The Hollywood Reporter:
Tianyu Fang / Rest of World:

Earlier Picks

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Anna Tong / Reuters:
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: