Techmeme: EU diplomats: an EU Council vote to amend a draft law that would have forced WhatsApp and Signal to scan images and links for CSAM was removed from the agenda (Clothilde Goujard/Politico)

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June 20, 2024, 2:55 PM

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Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:

Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which beats its flagship model Claude 3 Opus and outperforms GPT-4o in some tests, available for free on the web and iOS — OpenAI rival Anthropic is releasing a powerful new generative AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet. But it's more an incremental step than a monumental leap forward.

More: Anthropic, Gizmodo, SiliconANGLE, Engadget, PYMNTS.com, PCMag, CNET, Reuters, ZDNet, Fortune, Proactive, Bloomberg, Maginative, Inc.com, Amazon Web Services, Inc., Digital Trends, CryptoSlate, Axios, VentureBeat, About Amazon, Quartz, Daring Fireball, The Decoder, Fast Company, CNBC, Wired, Simon Willison's Weblog, Tech Startups, WinBuzzer, AIM, Constellation Research, and Google Cloud Blog

LinkedIn: Brayden McLean and Sam Dwyer. Forums: Hacker News

David Pierce / The Verge:

Anthropic debuts Artifacts, which lets users see, edit, and build upon content generated by Claude such as code snippets, text documents, and website designs — The AI arms race continues apace: Anthropic is launching its newest model, called Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which it says can equal …

More: Tom's Guide. X: @mikeyk, @anthropicai, and @garymarcus

Leo Schwartz / Fortune:

Source: The CFTC is investigating the Chicago-based trading firm Jump's involvement in crypto, including inquiries into its trading and investing activity — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating the Chicago-based trading firm Jump's involvement in crypto …

More: Reuters, The Block, crypto.news, Coinpedia Fintech News, CoinGape, Crypto Briefing, and Bitcoinist.com

Clothilde Goujard / Politico:

EU diplomats: an EU Council vote to amend a draft law that would have forced WhatsApp and Signal to scan images and links for CSAM was removed from the agenda — Countries clash over how to safeguard privacy when rooting out illegal pictures and grooming on private chat apps.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Sources: Poolside, co-founded by ex-GitHub CTO Jason Warner to build AI tools to speed up software development, is raising $400M+ at a $2B+ post-money valuation — Paris has quickly established itself as a major European center for AI startups, and now another deal in the works could cement that position even further.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Accel and Dealroom: out of 221 generative AI startups in Europe and Israel, 27% were created in London, 13% in Tel Aviv, 12% in Berlin, and 10% in Paris

More: Inc.com, CNBC, Dealroom.co, Fortune, VCWire, and Sifted

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Apple has held talks with Baidu, Alibaba, Baichuan AI, and others to help offer Apple Intelligence in China, as ChatGPT isn't available in the country — ChatGPT isn't available in China, prompting Apple to seek local partner for its artificial-intelligence services

More: CNBC, 9to5Mac, Quartz, Cryptopolitan, Business Insider, WinBuzzer, and MacDailyNews

Benjamin Sandofsky / Sandofsky:

A history of Lambda School: burning through $120M, why its income share agreements failed, how one developer-turned-journalist revealed the fraud, and more — Two days after his company's downfall, Austen Allred wrote: … Austen co-founded Lambda School, one of the largest educational startups of all time.

Mastodon: @slightlyoff@toot.cafe. X: @carnage4life, @carnage4life, @austen, @suryasays, @devahaz, @lizwolfereason, @fulligin, @dancow, @mikekarnj, @adampnathan, @traviscorrigan, and @sandofsky. Forums: Hacker News

Hannah Lang / Reuters:

PayPal hires one of Walmart's top tech executives Srini Venkatesan as its CTO, effective June 24, replacing Archie Deskus, who will leave the company in July — PayPal (PYPL.O) has hired one of Walmart's top tech executives Srini Venkatesan to head up the company's push into artificial intelligence …

More: PYMNTS.com and Finextra

Financial Times:

Sources: Revolut plans to sell ~$50M worth of existing shares, including those held by employees, at a $40B+ valuation, up from $33B during a 2021 fundraising — SoftBank-backed fintech is confident its value has increased over 20% since 2021 fundraising — UK fintech Revolut is targeting …

Jeff Horwitz / Wall Street Journal:

Tests show Instagram continues to recommend sexual videos to accounts with ages listed as 13; Snapchat and TikTok did not produce the same sexualized content — Findings align with undisclosed internal research at Meta, which has pledged an ‘age-appropriate’ experience for teens …

More: Engadget, The Hill, Silicon Valley Business …, The Daily Caller, Business Insider, PetaPixel, Quartz, New York Post, Benzinga, Mashable, Sherwood News, and NewsBytes

X: @jeffhorwitz. Forums: Hacker News and r/technology

Ian King / Bloomberg:

AMD says hackers accessed limited information related to assembling certain AMD products on a third-party vendor website and expects no material business impact — - Investigation showed limited information accessed by intruder — Chipmaker said the data was accessed on a third-party site

More: Security Boulevard, TechCircle, Tom's Hardware, Dataconomy, Digital Trends, Benzinga, ExtremeTech, TechSpot, PC Games Insider, iTnews, OC3D, The Cyber Express, iTech Post, Wccftech, WinBuzzer, SecurityWeek, and Bloomberg. Forums: r/AMD_Stock

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:

HeyGen, which uses AI to let users create realistic-looking avatars, raised $60M led by Benchmark at a $500M valuation, taking its total funding to $74M — HeyGen lets anyone make a photorealistic avatar that can speak in their own voice and translate their words into a range of languages.

More: The Decoder and HeyGen

LinkedIn: Jack Presnell and Dave King

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Daydream, which is building a search engine for personalized shopping using GenAI, ML, and computer vision, raised a $50M seed co-led by Forerunner and Index — For retailers, e-commerce is a bit of a puzzle at the moment. Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year …

More: SiliconANGLE, Mashable, Daydream, and Cautious Optimism

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

New Jersey-based Semperis, which offers tools to protect enterprises using Microsoft Active Directory, raised $125M and says it now has a $1B valuation — Active Directory, the Microsoft directory service for connecting users with network resources, is used by more than 90% of all Fortune 1000 companies and many more besides.

More: FinTech Global, FinSMEs, SiliconANGLE, Tech Funding News, and SecurityWeek

Karissa Bell / Engadget:

How some Meta users in the US are turning to small claims court, often successfully, to recover their Facebook or Instagram accounts; some won financial damages — People are using the courts in a last-ditch attempt to recover their accounts. — Last month, Ray Palena boarded a plane …

More: Technology & …. X: @karissabe. Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 2:55 PM ET, June 20, 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.

From Mediagazer

Laurel Rosenhall / New York Times:

California AG cancels a meeting with Paramount, accusing the company of acting in bad faith by leaking and misrepresenting earlier settlement discussions

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:

An arbitrator orders the Washington Post to reinstate Karen Attiah, who was fired for “gross misconduct” last year over posts made after Charlie Kirk's shooting

Jennifer Maas / Variety:

Memo: Disney offers longtime US-based executives across Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and corporate divisions early retirement packages amid cost-cutting efforts

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More News

Kris Holt / Engadget:

Meta rolls out the ability for users to restrict their Instagram Lives to Close Friends, with the option for three other users to join the broadcast

More: CNET, The Verge, TechCrunch, and Social Media Today

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

LA-based GrayMatter Robotics, which develops AI-powered robotic cells for the manufacturing industry, raised a $45M Series B led by Wellington Management

More: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Decrypt, FinSMEs, RoboticsTomorrow.com, and The Robot Report

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:

Gynger, which lets companies “finance, pay, and manage” their tech purchases, raised a $20M Series A led by PayPal Ventures, bringing its total raised to $31.7M

More: FinSMEs. LinkedIn: Daniel Kimerling, Billy Libby, and Darian Shirazi

TechCrunch:

Kenya ends a year-long investigation into Worldcoin with “no further police action” and says the startup must register its business, acquire licenses, and more

More: Reuters, Cryptopolitan, CryptoSlate, Bitcoin Insider, Cryptonews, Cointelegraph, and Coinspeaker

Reuters:

Tencent removes hit game Dungeon & Fighter from select Android app stores after its contracts expired; local media says the app stores include Huawei and Oppo

More: TechNode, Huawei Central, and South China Morning Post

Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post:

TikTok launches an in-app experience to celebrate Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, giving prizes to users who complete 11 weeks of tasks, following Instagram in April

More: CNET, Benzinga, TikTok, Dexerto, PhoneArena, NME, Mashable, Music Business Worldwide, and Music Ally

Maureen Tkacik / American Prospect:

A look at the many lawsuits against RealPage, the rent-fixing software company accused of artificially inflating the real estate rental prices across the US

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to, @toussaint@newsie.social, and @AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social

X: @moetkacik, @ddayen, @ddayen, @alexnpress, @moetkacik, @yulegoat, @ddayen, @musharbash_b, @rebeccajburns_, @moetkacik, @zunguzungu, and @jathansadowski. Forums: Hacker News

Washington Post:

An investigation details how Chinese gangs, Chinese officials, and Myanmar's Junta made Myanmar's Kokang region a key hub in the global online scam industry

X: @tmclaughlin3, @shibanimahtani, @washingtonpost, @silvermanjacob, @zachabuza, and @shibanimahtani. LinkedIn: Shibani Mahtani

Earlier Picks

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:

Software vendors like Salesforce are getting left behind in the AI boom, as most AI spending at this point is going toward hardware or cloud infrastructure

More: Benzinga

Murad Ahmed / Financial Times:

Q&A with Meta Oversight Board co-chair Helle-Thorning Schmidt on AI deepfakes, Meta rejecting the board's decision on former Cambodian PM Hun Sen, and more

X: @muradahmed

Lucy Adams / Tech.eu:

Paris-based C12, which is developing a carbon nanotube-based quantum computer, raised €18M led by Varsity, EIC, and Verve, after raising a ~€9M seed in 2021

More: TechCrunch, The Quantum Insider, WinBuzzer, SiliconANGLE, and Sifted

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

At Augmented World Expo, Palmer Luckey says he's building a new headset “driven by military requirements” that will also be used for “non-military stuff”

More: IGN, WinBuzzer, Dexerto, The Ghost Howls, Benzinga, MIXED Reality News, and Road to VR

X: @kylebrussell, @benz145, @mrjnowlin, @mrjnowlin, @taronium_, @palmerluckey, and @anshelsag

Adam Zewe / MIT News:

Arvind Mithal, a prolific computer scientist and longtime MIT professor who led the Computation Structures Group in MIT CSAIL, died on June 17 at age 77

More: Silicon Republic, Stories from my life, and mjtsai.com

Mastodon: @andrejbauer@mathstodon.xyz. X: @om, @kvsarmaj, @benadida, @satnam6502, @dheerajsanghi, and @sheerpriya

LinkedIn: Nanditha Rao, Margaret Martonosi, J. Nelson Amaral, Hadi Esmaeilzadeh, and Michael Taylor. Forums: Hacker News

Lara Korte / Politico:

Snap agrees to a $15M settlement with California after a three-year probe into employees' allegations of discrimination, retaliation, and sexual harassment

More: CRD, The Verge, The Hill, Engadget, Mashable, Inc.com, WinBuzzer, Benzinga, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle

X: @suhaunah, @calcivilrights, and @kimzetter