Techmeme
August 1, 2024, 12:40 PM

Top News

Meta:
Meta reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $39B, net income up 73% to $13.5B, and family daily active people up 7% to 3.27B on average for June 2024; META jumps 5%+  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google unveils AI features for Chrome on desktop, including support for Google Lens and searching history via natural language queries, rolling out in the US  —  Google Thursday said that it is introducing new Gemini-powered features for Chrome's desktop version, including Lens for desktop …
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.1 beta hands-on: meaningful Siri language understanding improvements and Siri text input is nice, but few other notable features  —  In iOS 18's latest developer preview, Siri gets a glow-up.  Like, the whole phone actually glows around the edges when you invoke Siri.
Kate Conger / New York Times:
Don Lemon sues Elon Musk and X, arguing Musk refused to pay him after a $1.5M/year exclusive X content deal fell apart; Lemon did not sign a formal contract  —  The former CNN reporter said in a lawsuit that X had refused to pay him after a testy interview with its billionaire owner.
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
WBD, Disney, and Fox plan to launch their joint sports streaming venture Venu for $42.99 per month initially, with a seven-day free trial, expected in fall 2024  —  Streaming sports on a stand-alone basis won't be cheap. … The service is expected to debut in the fall in conjunction with the start of the next NFL season.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI tells US lawmakers that it is “dedicated” to “rigorous safety protocols at every stage of our process” and is working with the US AI Safety Institute  —  OpenAI, responding to questions from US lawmakers, said it's dedicated to making sure its powerful AI tools …
Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:
Telegram rolls out a Mini App Store to help users find apps, a new in-app browser that supports multiple tabs, and says mini apps have 500M+ out of 950M MAUs  —  Telegram is refining the in-app expereince, adding a new way to interact with the browser and a Mini App Store for native applications.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity need to pay to scrape Reddit's data, and blocking them has been “a real pain in the ass”  —  After striking deals with Google and OpenAI, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is calling on Microsoft and others to pay if they want to continue scraping the site's data.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord on Xbox gets the ability to watch friends' Discord streams whether they're sharing from a PC, a phone, or an Xbox, rolling out over the coming weeks  —  Microsoft and Discord are greatly improving the integration of the communication platform into Xbox consoles.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Protect AI, which develops software to help enterprises secure AI models and applications, raised $60M led by Evolution Equity Partners at a $400M valuation  —  The funding round, led by Evolution Equity Partners, values the startup at $400 million.  New investors in the deal include 01 Advisors …
More: GeekWire
Bloomberg:
Investigation: 2020 to 2023 data shows how thousands of middlemen game the H-1B program and companies farm out IT workers to exploit the US visa lottery system  —  Each year in April, the US government conducts a lottery that shapes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people — and America's future as an economic power.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
The EU's AI Act takes effect, triggering staggered compliance deadlines for various AI developers and apps; most provisions will be fully applicable by mid-2026  —  It's official: The European Union's risk-based regulation for applications of artificial intelligence has come into force from Thursday, August 1, 2024.
Tales Azzoni / Associated Press:
The Premier League, Bundesliga, DAZN, Sky, UEFA, CONMEBOL, and others write to X CEO Linda Yaccarino demanding more action against illegal soccer content on X  —  Some of Europe's main broadcasters and top soccer leagues have sent a letter to the CEO of social media platform X, Linda Yaccarino …
Reuters:
UAE-based G42 is working with the US and Emirati government “to comply with the highest global standards” in AI, after US lawmakers questioned its China ties  —  UAE-based artificial intelligence company G42 is actively working with U.S. partners and the Emirati government to comply …
More: Politico
Jonathan Kemper / The Decoder:
Google unveils updates to its Gemma family of open models, including Gemma 2 2B, which it claims surpasses GPT-3.5 and Mixtral 8x7B on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena  —  Google has unveiled updates to its Gemma 2 family of open-source language models, focusing on improved performance, safety, and transparency.
Bloomberg:
A look at Baidu's driverless taxi experiment in Wuhan, which became China's biggest proving ground for Baidu's taxis partly due to a relaxed regulatory approach  —  Wuhan's experiment with driverless taxis could help China lead the world on the emerging technology.  It also risks putting thousands of people out of work.

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Anna Washenko / Engadget:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Wesley Yin-Poole / IGN:
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk: