Techmeme
February 29, 2024, 10:20 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 …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Brave debuts its AI-powered assistant Leo, which can create real-time summaries of webpages or videos, generate long-form written content, and more, on Android  —  Brave is launching its AI-powered assistant, Leo, to all Android users.  The assistant allows users to ask questions …
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.
Bloomberg:
Meta plans to deprecate the Facebook News tab in the US and Australia in early April 2024 and stop signing deals for traditional 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.
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 …
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 …

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