Techmeme
January 31, 2024, 10:50 AM

Top News

Washington Post:
A live blog of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on kids' online safety, including testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Linda Yaccarino, and Evan Spiegel  —  The chief executives of five major tech companies are testifying Wednesday about allegations that they failed to protect children …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Ahead of a US Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg calls for requiring Apple and Google to verify ages via app stores; Linda Yaccarino and Evan Spiegel support KOSA  —  Heads of Meta and X are among five social media chief executives to face Congress grilling  —  The chief executives of five …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
UMG plans to stop licensing content to TikTok after their deal expires on January 31, saying they didn't reach terms over issues like artist compensation and AI  —  UMG said that its agreement with TikTok is set to expire on Jan. 31.  “The companies have not agreed to terms for a new agreement …
Eri Sugiura / Financial Times:
UK prosecutors say the Met Police seized 61K bitcoin, worth £1.4B+, in 2018, as part of a trial over an alleged ~£5B investment fraud in China between 2014-2017  —  One of the world's largest seizures revealed during trial of woman accused of laundering cryptocurrency for her former employer
Sheila Chiang / CNBC:
Samsung reports Q4 revenue down 3.8% YoY to ~$51B, vs. ~$52.1B est., operating profit down ~35% YoY to ~$2.1B, vs. ~$2.6B est., and rising 2024 memory demand  —  - Samsung on Wednesday reported a 34.57% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter from a year ago, in line with its guidance issued earlier this month.
Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to $86B, net income up 52% to $20.7B, Google Cloud revenue up 26% to $9.2B, and headcount down 4%+; GOOG drops 5%+  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - January 30, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $62B, net income up 33% YoY to $21.9B, Office Commercial revenue up 15% YoY, and LinkedIn revenue up 9% YoY  —  REDMOND, Wash. — January 30, 2024 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
A look at the four major categories of apps that could emerge at the intersection of crypto and AI, and the prospects and challenges of each category  —  Special thanks to the Worldcoin and Modulus Labs teams, Xinyuan Sun, Martin Koeppelmann and Illia Polosukhin for feedback and discussion.
Tom Henderson / Insider Gaming:
A look at Ubisoft's problems, as insiders fear further layoffs: a wild goose chase of popular fads, like NFTs, constant delays, low player numbers, and more  —  As industry-wide layoffs continue to plague headlines, Ubisoft, the sixth-largest video game company by employees, is at a crossroads.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review: a $200 price cut to $999, 16GB of VRAM, and impressive 4K performance, but not a big performance boost over the RTX 4070  —  Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super is the third and potentially final of Nvidia's refreshed 40-series GPUs.  The RTX 4070 Super got …
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology.  It's past time we call it what it is.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Bipartisan Senators unveil the DEFIANCE Act, which would let people sue over deepfake porn and other AI “intimate” images, after the viral Taylor Swift images  —  US lawmakers have proposed letting people sue over faked pornographic images of themselves, following the spread …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Sen. Brian Schatz on Congress' dysfunction in the tech space, regulating tech firms, the EU's DMA, AI, deepfakes, social media laws for kids, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii.  He's been in the Senate for a little more than a decade now, and he's seen a lot in that time.
More: BloombergThreads: @aaronrosspowellX: @senbrianschatz and @ksandler1
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Figure, which is building a humanoid robot, is in talks to raise as much as $500M in a round led by Microsoft and OpenAI at a $1.9B pre-money valuation  —  - Figure AI is building a humanoid robot to perform hard jobs  — Microsoft weighs leading round that could raise $500 million
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters:
AMD reports Q4 revenue down 10% YoY to $6.2B, net income up 3,076% to $667M, Data Center revenue up 38% to $2.3B, Q1 revenue forecast below est.; AMD drops 5%+  —  Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) forecast first-quarter revenue below market estimates on Tuesday …
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Sources: Google splits up its 30-strong Responsible Innovation team, after leader and founder Jen Gennai suddenly left; RESIN conducted 500+ reviews in 2023  —  A crucial team at Google that reviewed new AI products for compliance with its rules for responsible AI development faces …
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Block begins layoffs under a previously disclosed plan to cut staff by up to 10%, by imposing an “absolute cap” of a 12,000 headcount, which was 13,000 in Q3'23  —  The company plans to drastically reduce its headcount throughout 2024 through a series of layoffs and reorganizing measures.

Sponsor Posts

Termina:
AI Powered Diligence at Scale  —  VCs and founders deploy Termina AI Scans on >12% of all known series A+ deals to uncover hidden risks and opportunities.  Explore how you too can invest and build better companies with AI.
Zoho:
Top live chat software in 2025  —  When it comes to customer communication, every second counts for businesses because it leads to either a treasure trove or an empty cave.  To help with this …
SBS Comms:
Expect Better: SBS Comms  —  The media landscape is changing fast, so don't be slow — out with the old, in with the new.  SBS helps tech companies like GitHub, Cloudflare, Flexport, Ramp and more modernize comms and secure impactful results.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
Arm Upends The Entire Semiconductor Industry
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Andy Price (Artisanal): Executive Hiring Advice from the Founder of Tech's Top Recruiting Firm
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
The FCC is a weapon in Trump's war on free speech
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Generative Now:
Mike Krieger: Product Building Lessons from Co-Founding Instagram to Leading Product at Anthropic
A podcast from Lightspeed dedicated to highlighting the stories, strategies and insights behind today's most exciting AI companies.
Subscribe to Generative Now.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
BuzzFeed wants to build a... social network?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Invest Like the Best:
Marc Andreessen - The Battle For Tech Supremacy
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:50 AM ET, January 31, 2024.

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.

More News

MK Manoylov / The Block:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Earlier Picks

Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Ashley Capoot / CNBC: