Techmeme
July 24, 2024, 11:25 PM

Top News

Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian:
Insurer Parametrix estimates that the global outage sparked by CrowdStrike's faulty update will cost US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, $5.4B  —  Banking and healthcare firms, major airlines expected to suffer most losses, according to insurer Parametrix
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Reddit appears to be blocking search engines that don't rely on Google's indexing; Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others are not showing recent results from Reddit  —  DuckDuckGo, Bing, Mojeek, and other search engines are not returning full Reddit results any more.
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
Around 500 World of Warcraft workers vote to unionize with the CWA, bringing the number of unionized US gaming employees at Microsoft to around 1,750  —  World of Warcraft workers have voted to unionize the popular video-game franchise, expanding organized labor's new foothold at Microsoft Corp. by around 500 employees.
Olivia Carville / Bloomberg:
Meta removes ~63K Instagram accounts used by sextortion scammers in Nigeria, along with ~7,200 Facebook assets, including accounts linked to the Yahoo Boys  —  - Purge includes thousands of Groups offering sextortion ‘tips’  — One network of 20 criminals was running 2,500 fake accounts
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft unveils Bing generative search, which shows AI-generated answers with the sources used to create them, currently available to a small subset of users  —  Bing will soon prioritize AI-generated answers alongside traditional search results.  —  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple launches Apple Maps on the web in beta, available in English and compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, and Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs  —  Apple is bringing Apple Maps to the web for the first time.  In a press release today, the company announced that you can now access Apple Maps …
Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
Mistral announces Mistral Large 2, the new generation of its flagship model, with 123B parameters; commercial usage requires a separate license  —  The AI race is picking up pace like never before.  Following Meta's move just yesterday to launch its new open source Llama 3.1 …
Dana Hull / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk's poll asking if Tesla should invest $5B in xAI ends with 67.9% voting yes, after Musk said on Tesla's earnings call that he supported the idea  —  - CEO takes poll on whether EV maker should back his startup  — The two companies have intermingled on procurement, recruiting
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Privacy-focused developer Proton debuts a self-custody bitcoin wallet, its first cryptocurrency product, initially available to early access users  —  When you think about it, Proton has always been a crypto company — cryptography, not cryptocurrency.  But the Switzerland-based company …
Michael Peel / Financial Times:
Researchers suggest that using “synthetic” data, created by AI systems to train LLMs, could lead to the rapid degradation of AI models and a collapse over time  —  Research suggests use of computer-made ‘synthetic data’ to train top AI models could lead to nonsensical results in future
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
AMD delays its Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 launch, originally set for July, to August due to an unspecified quality issue, and pulls back all units shipped to replace them  —  AMD hits the brakes on its Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 processors.  —  AMD announced today that it has delayed its Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 launch due …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
AltStore PAL now offers third-party iOS apps in the EU, starting with two torrenting apps, a social discovery app for dating, and a PC emulator  —  The first batch of third-party apps are making their way onto AltStore PAL, just over three months after the alternative iOS app marketplace first launched in the EU.
Bloomberg:
IBM reports Q2 revenue up 2% YoY to $15.8B, vs. $15.6B est., and says bookings for AI consulting and software have exceeded $2B since mid-2023, vs. $1B in Q1  —  International Business Machines Corp. reported a jump in bookings for its artificial intelligence business as customers work to implement the latest technology.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
ServiceNow President CJ Desai leaves the company after an internal probe found he violated company policy related to a US contract and an ex-Army CIO's hiring  —  - Company hired former Army CIO Iyer after $432 million contract  — Iyer, who headed public sector business, also resigned
Politico:
Some in Silicon Valley hope Kamala Harris could provide a chance for a reset, after years of bipartisan criticism in Washington, DC, toward Big Tech companies  —  Would she bring continuity with Joe Biden's policies?  A more centrist vibe?  A sharper progressive bite?

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho TouchPoint: Every handshake deserves a next step  —  Here's a scene you've probably experienced.  You spend a day at an event, talk to dozens of people, and come home with a stack of business cards.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: The Fall Of Jensen Huang & What Comes Next
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.
Machine Gods:
The 10 Biggest Losers from Jensen Huang's Fall + The METR Report That Scared Us
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $1.4B Startup Deciding What You See When You Shop Online | Sequen's Zoë Weil
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Too soon to call it a vibe shift?
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won't Forever)
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:
Zach Reitano - Building Ro and Why Healthcare Should Be 50% of GDP
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 11:25 PM ET, July 24, 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

Alex Konrad / Forbes:
Chris Welch / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Giulio Piovaccari / Reuters:
Jillian Ambrose / The Guardian:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: