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Techmeme
August 4, 2025, 9:40 PM
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Top News

Cloudflare:
Cloudflare says Perplexity uses stealth crawling techniques, like undeclared user agents and rotating IP addresses, to evade robots.txt rules and network blocks  —  We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine.  Although Perplexity initially crawls …
Anthony Hughes / Bloomberg:
Source: Figma considered a higher IPO price, but its CEO wanted to bring on board certain long-term institutional shareholders and signed off on $33 per share  —  Figma Inc.'s record-breaking debut gains are cooling, but they have still handed a windfall to investors including the select institutions …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Elon Musk says Vine's video archive is being brought back, and xAI's newly launched Grok Imagine, available to X Premium+ subscribers, is “AI Vine”  —  Elon Musk says he's bringing back Vine — sort of.  The X owner announced over the weekend that the company discovered …
Olivia Solon / Bloomberg:
Spotify says it is updating prices across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific; an example email had a €1/month rise  —  Spotify Technology SA shares gained in premarket trading after the company announced it's raising premium subscription prices across many markets outside the US.
Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget:
OpenAI says ChatGPT now offers “gentle reminders” to take breaks during long sessions, and it is building tools to better detect signs of emotional distress  —  OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will now remind users to take breaks if they're in a particularly long chat with AI.
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
OpenAI says it will hit 700M weekly active users for ChatGPT this week, up from 500M in March and up 4x YoY, and has 5M paying business users, up from June's 3M  —  OpenAI is set to hit 700 million weekly active users for ChatGPT this week, up from 500 million in March …
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg:
Lyft partners with Baidu to launch autonomous vehicles in Germany and the UK in 2026, pending regulatory approval; Lyft will deploy Baidu's sixth-gen robotaxis  —  Lyft Inc. said it's partnering with China's Baidu Inc. to launch autonomous vehicles in Europe starting next year …
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Google unveils Kaggle Game Arena, a benchmarking platform where AI models compete head-to-head in strategic games, starting with a chess tournament this week  —  The world's top performing artificial intelligence models, including OpenAI's o3 and 04-mini, Google LLC's Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Silicon Valley has shifted from Web 2.0 to a new “hard tech”, AI-dominated era with fewer perks and a more serious mood, as startups use San Francisco as a base  —  In a scene in HBO's “Silicon Valley” in 2014, a character who had just sold his idea to a fictional tech company …
Bloomberg:
Amazon denies it's closing its Wondery podcast studio but says it will break up its operations; source: ~110 people will lose their jobs because of the reorg  —  As podcasting becomes video-oriented, Amazon is shuffling Wondery into Audible and a new “creator services” team while cutting approximately 110 staff members
John Herrman / New York Magazine:
SEO is being supplanted by generative-engine optimization, or GEO, which focuses on AI chatbots and does not benefit from longstanding SEO tricks  —  Search-engine optimization now feels dated.  Generative-engine optimization is all about trying to trick AI chatbots.
Fred Lambert / Electrek:
Transcripts from the trial over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash: Tesla withheld crash‑snapshot data and took years to admit it existed or was relevant to the case  —  Tesla was caught withholding data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities in the wrongful death case involving Autopilot that it lost this week.
Matt Kapko / CyberScoop:
CrowdStrike's 2025 Threat Hunting Report: 320+ investigations into North Korean operatives in remote IT jobs in the US, Europe, and elsewhere in the past year  —  Threat hunters saw North Korean operatives almost daily, reflecting a 220% year-over-year increase in activity, CrowdStrike said in a new report.
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Palantir reports Q2 revenue up 48% YoY to $1B, vs. $940M expected, and boosts full-year outlook guidance to ~$4.15B, up from ~$3.90B; PLTR up 4%+ after hours  —  Palantir topped Wall Street's estimates Monday, surpassing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, and hiking its full-year guidance.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Google says Big Sleep, its vulnerability research tool “powered by Gemini”, found 20 flaws in various popular open-source software projects  —  Google's AI-powered bug hunter has just reported its first batch of security vulnerabilities.  —  Heather Adkins, Google's vice president …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:40 PM ET, August 4, 2025.

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

Michael S. Schmidt / New York Times:
Source: the FBI investigated NYT reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she wrote about Kash Patel's use of FBI staff for his girlfriend's security

Lucas Manfredi / The Wrap:
The FCC launches a review of TV Parental Guidelines, citing concerns that “gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children's programs”

Brian Stelter / CNN:
WBD shareholders vote early Thursday on the Paramount deal, likely to be OK'ed; David Ellison will be in DC later for Paramount's event honoring the White House

More News

Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Connecticut-based Amphenol plans to acquire North Carolina-based CommScope's broadband connectivity and cable unit for ~$10.5B, including debt, amid the AI boom
Monique Mulima / Bloomberg:
Bullish, a digital asset exchange and CoinDesk's owner, plans to sell 20.3M shares at $28 to $31 in a US IPO, raising up to $629.3M at an up to ~$4.2B valuation
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Families and funeral directors are using AI obituary generators to memorialize the dead, as critics worry about AI coarsening how people remember one another

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Disney is grappling with using AI in its filmmaking process while protecting its characters against it, plus legal uncertainty, fan backlash, and union concerns
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
The UK Online Safety Act's approach to keeping children safe online has become a rallying point for the right in the UK and the US over alleged censorship
George Osborne / Financial Times:
Former UK Chancellor and Coinbase Advisory Council member George Osborne says the UK missed the first crypto wave and risks missing the stablecoin-driven second
Lu Wang / Bloomberg:
Simulated markets study: without explicit instruction, AI trading bots collude to fix prices, hoard profits, and sideline human traders, a regulatory challenge
Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
How the AI data center building boom could cause a financial crisis akin to 2008, including the rising use of short-term debt financing via private credit funds
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