Techmeme
February 29, 2024, 10:10 PM

Top News

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Source: Embracer plans to sell its subsidiary Saber Interactive to private investors in a $500M deal, making Saber a privately-owned company with ~3,500 staff  —  Saber will continue developing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic  —  Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB will sell …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft launches Copilot for Finance in public preview, helping users reconcile data in Excel, speed up the collections process in Outlook, and more  —  - Microsoft is launching a Copilot for Finance, which it said will be able to perform a handful of common role-specific actions in Excel and Outlook.
Consumer Reports:
Researchers find serious security flaws in cheap video doorbells sold by Chinese company Aiwit under various brand names on Amazon, Shein, Temu, and other sites  —  The devices are also sold by Walmart, Sears, and other retailers—and big platforms have faced few consequences for shipping flawed products
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Alibaba researchers detail EMO, or Emote Portrait Alive, an AI system that creates a realistic talking or singing video from a portrait photo and an audio file  —  Researchers at Alibaba's Institute for Intelligent Computing have developed a new artificial intelligence system called “EMO,” …
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Change Healthcare confirms that the ransomware group BlackCat is behind the ongoing attack that has caused widespread disruptions to pharmacies across the US  —  - Change Healthcare on Thursday confirmed that the ransomware group Blackcat is behind the ongoing cybersecurity attack that's been impacting its systems since last week.
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Microsoft outlines its new DirectSR API, which lets game developers integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and others  —  Microsoft has outlined a new Windows API designed to offer a seamless way for game developers to integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
JFrog finds ~100 malicious PyTorch and Tensorflow Keras models on Hugging Face, some of which can execute code on users' machines to give attackers a backdoor  —  At least 100 instances of malicious AI ML models were found on the Hugging Face platform, some of which can execute code on the victim's machine …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google adds Photomath, which solves math problems after users take photos, to its Play Store and App Store publisher accounts, after buying the app in May 2022  —  In May of 2022, Google announced that it was acquiring a math solver app called Photomath.  The deal closed last year …
Larry Dignan / Constellation Research:
Dell reports Q4 revenue down 11% YoY to $22.3B, vs. $22.2B est., Client revenue down 12% to $11.7B, and Infrastructure revenue down 6% to $9.3B; DELL jumps 15%+  —  Dell Technologies reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter as the company saw strong demand for AI-optimized servers.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Robotics startup Figure AI confirms raising $675M at a $2.6B valuation and is partnering with OpenAI to “develop next-generation AI models for humanoid robots”  —  - Figure AI raised $675 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI.
Davey Winder / Forbes:
Russian-speaking LockBit threatens to release Fulton County Court's Donald Trump case docs “that could affect the upcoming US election”, if a ransom isn't paid  —  The LockBit ransomware group is threatening to release Fulton County Court documents related to Donald Trump's case unless …
Bloomberg:
Meta says it plans to deprecate the Facebook News tab in the US and Australia in early April 2024 and won't sign new deals for news content in those countries  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is winding down its news feature in the US and Australia, part of a broader shift away from the category for the social media giant.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
HPE reports Q1 revenue down 14% YoY to $6.76B, vs. $7.1B est., Server revenue down 23% YoY to $3.4B, and reduces its FY 2024 outlook for sales growth and profit  —  Revenue will increase as much as 2%, excluding currency fluctuations, in the fiscal year ending in October.
Greg Bensinger / Reuters:
Email: GM told Cruise employees that the company's internal share price had been estimated at $11.80 by a third party, down from $24.27 just one quarter ago  —  General Motors' (GM.N) Cruise saw its internal share price cut by more than half from a quarter ago as the fallout …
Stephanie Kirchgaessner / The Guardian:
A US judge orders the NSO Group to hand over its code for Pegasus and other spyware products to WhatsApp, as part of the company's ongoing litigation  —  Israeli company NSO Group is accused in lawsuit by Meta's messaging app of spying on 1,400 users over a two-week period
Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post:
The US launches a probe into possible security risks of Chinese-manufactured vehicles, saying modern cars are like smartphones and could be used for espionage  —  The Biden administration says software and digital connections in modern cars could be used to spy on Americans or sabotage the vehicles
Paul Vieira / Wall Street Journal:
Canada's antitrust watchdog expands its four-year probe into Google's online ad practices, with a focus on whether the company engages in predatory pricing  —  The Competition Burea is investigating whether the search giant engages in predatory pricing  —  OTTAWA—Canada's antitrust watchdog …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Stack Overflow launches OverflowAPI to give AI companies access to its knowledge base, starting with Google, which will use the data for Gemini for Google Cloud  —  Developer Q&A site Stack Overflow is launching a new program today that will give AI companies access to its knowledge base through a new API, aptly named OverflowAPI.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
The 90-day recognition cliff: Why praise programs fade, and what keeps them alive  —  Recognition programs often start with enthusiasm.  Employees participate, managers share shoutouts, and teams have a new way to celebrate achievements.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next
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.
Sources:
Factory CEO on why AGI is already here
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Invest Like the Best:
Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Lenny's Podcast:
The grief, loneliness, and burnout sweeping through the tech industry right now | Molly Graham
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Doomers at Dreamforce
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:10 PM ET, February 29, 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

Earlier Picks

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
Reuters:
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Alex Koller / CNBC: