Techmeme: An interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on his background and the founding of Salesforce, his vision for AI, Agentforce, data and disruption, and more (Ben Thompson/Stratechery)

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October 26, 2024, 10:45 PM

Top News

Erin Woo / The Information:

Sources: Google plans to preview an AI product codenamed Jarvis, which takes over a user's web browser to complete tasks like booking a flight, in December — Google is developing artificial intelligence that takes over a person's web browser to complete tasks such as gathering research …

More: 9to5Google, The Verge, BNN Bloomberg, and Reuters

Mastodon: @Kierkegaanks@beige.party. Bluesky: @glinden.bsky.social and @toddindeed.bsky.social

X: @sundeep and @amir

Forums: Hacker News, r/singularity, and r/Bard

Alex Heath / The Verge:

Sources: Google is aiming to release its Gemini 2.0 model in December; the model isn't showing the performance gains the Demis Hassabis-led team had hoped for — The AI race is heating up just in time for winter. — As my colleagues Kylie Robison and Tom Warren reported …

More: 9to5Google, Chrome Unboxed, Moneycontrol, Forbes, The Decoder, Livemint, Android Headlines, Notebookcheck, Android Authority, Android Police, NewsBytes, Wccftech, and Business Standard

Bluesky: @almagroschool.bsky.social. Forums: r/singularity and r/Bard

Associated Press:

Engineers, developers, and researchers say OpenAI's transcription tool Whisper hallucinates chunks of text or even entire sentences, including racial commentary — Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near “human level robustness and accuracy.”

More: TechCrunch. Mastodon: @mhoye@mastodon.social, @urlyman@mastodon.social, @jonny@neuromatch.social, @Tribo@mastodon.social, and @purserj@aus.social. Bluesky: @mhwilliams.bsky.social

X: @dancow, @silvermanjacob, @brentweinberg, and @akwyz

LinkedIn: Sean Manion, Kobi Leins, and Sean Murray

Forums: r/technology, r/Health, r/medicine, r/BetterOffline, and r/news

Christopher Yasiejko / Bloomberg Law:

A US federal jury awards Apple $250, finding that Masimo's smartwatches infringed Apple Watch design patents; Apple sought statutory minimum damages — Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corp. (D. Del., 22-cv-1377) — Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corp. (D. Del., 22-cv-1378) — Search by Law Firm Search by Topic Search by Company

More: Reuters, Engadget, 9to5Mac, ip fray, AppleInsider, TechCrunch, Tom's Guide, NewsBytes, Daring Fireball, The Verge, and The Mac Observer

Threads: @eshumarneedi. X: @florian4gamers, @thejoshmeister, and @dylanmcd8

Forums: Hacker News, r/gadgets, and r/AppleWatch

Om Malik / Crazy Stupid Tech:

An interview with Humane co-founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri on dealing with the reaction to the AI Pin, plans to license its CosmOS, and more — It's Saturday in South Park. Kids are squealing. A man shadowboxes behind me. Sitting across from me on a not-so-clean bench …

X: @om and @om

David Morris / Bloomberg:

Chinese self-driving company WeRide's shares closed up 6.8% at $16.55, giving it a market cap of ~$4.5B, after raising $440.5M in a US IPO and private placement — The Guangzhou-based company's ADS pared initial gains to close at $16.55 on Friday in New York, above the IPO price of $15.50 apiece.

More: WeRide Inc., Nikkei Asia, Seeking Alpha, Reuters, The Robot Report, Benzinga, Self Drive News, Tech Startups, PYMNTS.com, Cautious Optimism, and Gulf News. X: @leixing77

Ned Beauman / Financial Times:

A look at Factorio, a strategy video game that is a cult hit among tech workers with ~4M copies sold over eight years, as it releases its first expansion pack — Tech workers cannot resist the cult video game that asks players to single-handedly restage the industrial revolution

More: Gamereactor UK, Comic Book, PC Gamer, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Bluesky: @durumcrustulum.com. X: @justincormack and @nedbeauman

Forums: Hacker News and r/neoliberal

Keith Bradsher / New York Times:

China, the leading producer of rare minerals, has made it harder in recent weeks for foreign companies, particularly chip makers, to buy such materials in China — Already the dominant producer of rare minerals, Beijing is using export restrictions and its power over state-owned companies to further control access.

X: @martijnrasser and @alantonelson

David Shepardson / Reuters:

Delta sues CrowdStrike, saying the July 19 outage caused mass flight cancellations, disrupted travel plans of 1.3M customers, and cost the carrier over $500M — Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) on Friday sued cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O) in a Georgia state court after a global outage …

More: Wall Street Journal, One America News Network, CNBC, Simple Flying, Techreport, The Hill, PCMag, TweakTown, Bloomberg, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Associated Press, and The Verge

Forums: r/technology and Slashdot

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Estimated Vision Pro 2024 sales are only slightly less than the reported peak production capacity, implying sales are almost in line with Apple's expectations — Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, reporting for The Information (paywalled, alas — here's Techmeme's roundup of summaries and regurgitations) …

Mastodon: @davemark@mastodon.social

Ben Thompson / Stratechery:

An interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on his background and the founding of Salesforce, his vision for AI, Agentforce, data and disruption, and more — This week's Stratechery Interview is with Salesforce Founder and CEO Marc Benioff. Salesforce is one of the most important companies in tech history.

More: GeekWire, Forbes, Platformonomics, Fortune, and Benzinga

X: @benioff, @benioff, @benioff, @benioff, @justincormack, and @0xkarmatic. LinkedIn: Brendan Keeler

Bloomberg:

The ramifications of a potential US crackdown against Tether, a noticeable player in the market for US debt, will extend beyond the digital asset industry — Of all the legal actions taken against cryptocurrency companies by US regulators and prosecutors over the past year …

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About This Page

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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

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

Fox News says Maria Bartiromo is no longer with Fox; Bartiromo's Mornings with Maria will be retitled Morning with Fox Business and employ a rotation of anchors

Andrew Marchand / The Athletic:

An Athletic probe finds journalist Dianna Russini violated standards due to her relationship with an NFL coach but finds scant evidence it impacted coverage

Katharine Q. Seelye / New York Times:

Feminist icon and Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria Steinem died at age 92 in her NYC home; she co-founded New York magazine in 1968 and authored 11 books

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More News

Connor Hart / Wall Street Journal:

Alibaba agrees to a $443.5M settlement in a US shareholder lawsuit alleging that Alibaba hurt investors by making misstatements about its exclusivity practices

More: Benzinga and Reuters

Financial Times:

Analysis: X is on track to fall well short of its goal of $100M in 2024 political ad revenue, raising just $15M to date, mainly from GOP and Trump campaigns

Bluesky: @paleofuture.bsky.social, @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social, @majuuj.bsky.social, and @justmytwocents.bsky.social

Bloomberg:

Accel registers with the US SEC as an investment adviser to tap private markets, joining Sequoia, a16z, Bessemer, and other VC firms that made a similar move

X: @mcbridesg, @madhavchanchani, and @business

Emily Mullin / Wired:

Brain-computer interface company Science Corporation says its retinal implant, which has a 2mm chip, let some blind people read, play cards, and recognize faces

More: TweakTown and The Verge. X: @emilylmullin

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:

Nooks, whose AI tools can analyze sales calls and summarize customer interactions, raised a $43M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins at a $285M valuation

More: Nooks and Pulse 2.0

X: @mamoonha and @lm_braswell. LinkedIn: Nooks

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

The US Copyright Office denies a request from video game preservationists to let libraries, archives, and museums lend games via remote access for study

Kevin Mclaughlin / The Information:

Source: Perplexity CEO told staff in 2023 that it had acquisition offers from X, OpenAI, and Notion, in the $150M to $200M range; Microsoft was also interested

More: PYMNTS.com and TechCrunch

X: @amir and @amir. LinkedIn: Alexander Lichanow

Christopher Beam / The Atlantic:

A profile of Mike Solana, a Peter Thiel protégé whose Pirate Wires newsletter and podcast became popular among “anti-woke” tech figures since the “techlash”

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @mitchhorowitz, @jcbeam, @giladedelman, @shaunmmaguire, and @adriennelaf