Techmeme
December 30, 2024, 8:45 PM

Top News

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Letter: the US Treasury says China-backed hackers gained access to some Treasury workstations and unclassified docs; a vendor notified it of the hack on Dec. 8  —  The U.S. Treasury told lawmakers in a letter Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack earlier in December, which the department has attributed to Chinese government hackers.
Thanos Pappas / Carscoops:
VW Group had sensitive info, including GPS coordinates, of 800K+ electric vehicles exposed on an unprotected AWS database for months before it was alerted  —  The sensitive information of VW, Audi, Seat, and Skoda EV owners was left exposed on an unprotected and misconfigured cloud storage system for months
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia completes its $700M acquisition of Israel-based Run:ai, which helps orchestrate GPU clouds for AI, and plans to open source Run:ai's software  —  Nvidia has completed its acquisition of Run:ai, a software company that makes it easier for customers to orchestrate GPU clouds for AI, and said that it would open-source the software.
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Source: accounting startup Bench, which had raised $100M+ and abruptly shut down last week, will be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price  —  Bench, the VC-backed accounting startup that left thousands of customers locked out of their accounts after it suddenly shut down last week …
More: The Information, PYMNTS.com, and GeekWire
Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.toLinkedIn: Charles RolletForums: Hacker News and r/vancouver
Turner Wright / Cointelegraph:
A US judge delays the CFTC v. Gemini trial to January 21, after Trump's inauguration; CFTC alleged Gemini misled the agency in its 2017 bid to debut BTC futures  —  The civil case between the US financial regulator and Gemini Trust Company was initially scheduled to go to trial before Donald Trump's inauguration.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
The technology of passkeys is elegant, but the complexities of syncing them to password managers can contribute to platform lock-in and make them less usable  —  It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems …
New York Times:
Donald Trump's next term may widen the longstanding speech divide between the US and Europe, putting social media companies in the middle of a global tug-of-war  —  President-elect Donald J. Trump's picks for the F.C.C. and F.T.C. have vowed to remove censorship online.
Geoffrey A. Fowler / Washington Post:
Waymo robotaxis, which are now ubiquitous in parts of CA, will often not stop for pedestrians using crosswalks there, unless a pedestrian is far into the road  —  Our tech columnist captured videos of Waymo self-driving cars failing to stop for him at a crosswalk.  How does an AI learn how to break the law?

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Elizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post: