Techmeme
July 30, 2024, 4:10 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Meta agrees to pay $1.4B to settle Texas' lawsuit accusing Meta of using facial recognition tech to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without consent  —  Meta Platforms (META.O) has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state's lawsuit accusing the Facebook parent …
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with partners such as Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and WordPress.com, after weeks of plagiarism accusations  —  Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners following weeks of plagiarism accusations.
Kate Gibson / CBS News:
The US CPSC rules that Amazon is legally responsible for recalled products sold on Amazon.com, even by third parties, and must remove them and notify purchasers  —  Amazon distributed hundreds of thousands of hazardous products sold by third-parties through the e-commerce giant's platform …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The US Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act by a vote of 91 to 3; the bills now head to the House  —  The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0) …
Akash Sriram / Reuters:
California's DMV says it has created tokens for 42M car titles on the Avalanche blockchain and aims to help residents access them by early next year  —  California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has digitized 42 million car titles using blockchain technology in a bid to detect fraud …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Qualcomm debuts the 4nm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, a feature-limited version of the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, to make 5G accessible to smartphones in the sub-$100 category  —  Qualcomm Tuesday announced the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2.  The entry-level chip aims to make 5G accessible to 2.8 billion smartphone users …
Capital Brief:
Canva acquires AI image generation service Leonardo.ai for an undisclosed amount; Leonardo.ai launched in December 2022 and has 19M+ registered users  —  Founded in December 2022, Leonardo.Ai has over 19 million users and its very own foundation AI model.  —  Canva, Australia's largest …
Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt:
The SEC charges BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji of raising $257M+ from unregistered offers and sales of BTCLT and lying to investors about personal compensation  —  The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has hit the founder of decentralized social network BitClout with fraud charges …
Jeff Stone / Bloomberg:
Microsoft calls on the US Congress to pass a comprehensive law to crack down on AI deepfakes that aim to interfere in elections or maliciously target people  —  - Law enforcement needs a clear legal framework, Brad Smith says  — Elon Musk recently shared manipulated clip of Kamala Harris
Bloomberg:
Sources including frontline health care workers say their testing of Google's AI-powered nurse handoff tool has left questions about its consistency and quality  —  After spending billions trying to transform the industry, Alphabet sees opportunity in artificial intelligence.
Rafe Uddin / Financial Times:
The UK ICO says the country's election authority failed to take “basic steps” to protect the personal data of 40M voters before a 2021 China-backed cyberattack  —  ‘Basic steps’ including updating passwords were missed before 2021 hack, finds Information Commissioner
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA is gathering information from market players to determine whether Google's partnership with Anthropic qualifies as a merger and harms UK competition  —  - CMA will review whether investment causes competition issues  — Google committed to investing $2 billion into the AI startup
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q4 revenue up 15% YoY to $64.7B, net income up 10% to $22B, Azure and other cloud services revenue up 29% YoY, and LinkedIn revenue up 10% YoY  —  REDMOND, Wash. — July 30, 2024 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024 …
Hadley Beeman / W3C:
After Google said it wouldn't deprecate third-party cookies, the W3C says they should be removed as “hidden personal data collection hurts everyone's privacy”  —  Author(s) and publish date  —  After reading Google's announcement that they no longer plan to deprecate third-party cookies …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
The US NTIA issues a report in support of “open-weight” generative AI models like Meta's Llama 3.1, but recommends the government to monitor for potential risks  —  The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday issued a report in support of “open-weight” generative AI models like Meta's Llama 3.1 …

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More News

Reuters:
Brady Dale / Axios:
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Earlier Picks

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
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Jay Peters / The Verge:
Kif Leswing / CNBC: