Techmeme: Perplexity says its AI search engine answered ~250M queries in the past month vs. 500M in 2023; sources: Perplexity recently raised $250M at a $3B valuation (Financial Times)

Top News

Michael Kan / PCMag:

Intel delays its Innovation event, slated for September and expected to include details about new CPUs, until 2025, citing its financial results and H2 outlook — The chipmaker is delaying one of its biggest events, which was slated for September and expected to include more details about upcoming processors.

More: AnandTech, HotHardware, TipRanks Financial, Pocket-lint, OC3D, ExtremeTech, Neowin, TechRadar, Tom's Hardware, Wccftech, TechSpot, HackerNoon, Club386, KitGuru, PC Guide, TechPowerUp, The Verge, TweakTown, VideoCardz.com, and Notebookcheck. X: @kylebrussell

Matt Burgess / Wired:

A researcher shows five proof-of-concept ways that Copilot can be manipulated by attackers, including turning it into an automatic spear-phishing machine — Attacks on Microsoft's Copilot AI allow for answers to be manipulated, data extracted, and security protections bypassed, new research shows.

More: The Register, PC Gamer, Security Boulevard, Dark Reading, Cybernews.com, and Zenity

Mastodon: @mattburgess@infosec.exchange. LinkedIn: Lana Salameh. Forums: r/technews and r/technology

Andy Greenberg / Wired:

IOActive researchers detail “Sinkclose”, a vulnerability in almost all AMD chips dating back to 2006 that allows attackers to run code in System Management Mode — Researchers warn that a bug in AMD's chips would allow attackers to root into some of the most privileged portions of a computer …

More: PCMag, Engadget, BleepingComputer, Tom's Hardware, and IOActive

Mastodon: @agreenberg@infosec.exchange. X: @a_greenberg, @notolymp1a, and @ioactive

Forums: Hacker News, r/technology, r/cybersecurity, r/Amd, r/pcmasterrace, r/hardware, r/wallstreetbets, Beehaw, and Lobsters

The Guardian:

UK PM Keir Starmer says ministers will review the Online Safety Act, after London mayor Sadiq Khan said it was “not fit for purpose” following far-right riots — Move comes after London mayor Sadiq Khan said role of misinformation in unrest showed law was unfit for purpose

More: Financial Times, Washington Post, TechCrunch, The Verge, and The Economic Times

Forums: r/ukpolitics, r/unitedkingdom, and r/technology

Financial Times:

Perplexity says its AI search engine answered ~250M queries in the past month vs. 500M in 2023; sources: Perplexity recently raised $250M at a $3B valuation — Artificial intelligence app boosts usage and sales despite controversy over its data-gathering techniques

More: Benzinga and 24/7 Wall St.

X: @mandarkagade. LinkedIn: Damian Burns

Clothilde Goujard / Politico:

The Irish Data Protection Commission says X has agreed to pause training Grok using millions of Europeans' public posts it collected between May 7 and August 1 — X will pause training its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok with some European users' posts, according to Europe's chief privacy watchdog.

More: TechCrunch, Tech Xplore, Silicon Republic, The Cyber Express, PYMNTS.com, Computerworld, MEDIANAMA, and PhoneArena

Reuters:

Sources: Cisco plans a second round of layoffs in 2024, affecting at least as many as the 4,000 laid off in February, to be announced as soon as August 14 — Cisco (CSCO.O) will cut thousands of jobs in a second round of layoffs this year as the U.S. networking equipment maker shifts focus …

More: CRN, Bloomberg, and Reuters

LinkedIn: Utkarsh Shetti and Dave Lewis

Financial Times:

Since the OpenAI board dispute, Microsoft diversified AI investments and partnerships, built its own models, and hired aggressively for its consumer AI efforts — The tech giant has worked to execute an AI strategy independent of Sam Altman's start-up following a leadership crisis last year

X: @hkanji and @rwang07

Tom's Hardware:

Intel details a microcode patch, available through BIOS updates, to address the elevated voltage issues that can damage some Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs — You need to install a BIOS update to ensure that your Raptor Lake CPU is not frying itself. — For the first time …

More: The Register, Ars Technica, AnandTech, The Verge, PCWorld, Windows 11 Forum, and TechSpot

Katie Roof / Bloomberg:

DevRev, which develops AI tools to improve the efficiency of employees on support, product, and engineering teams, raised $100M at a $1.15B valuation — - The corporate software developer raised $100 million — Nutanix co-founder Dheeraj Pandey co-founded and leads DevRev

More: Reuters

@martin_casado:

[Thread] A roundup of recent announcements from researchers, businesses, and academic institutions opposing California's AI safety bill — .@Scott_Wiener continues to falsely claim narrow opposition to SB 1047. When in reality there is massive public outcry across research, academic, public and private business and finance. Here is a mega roundup of recent announcements that fully debunk the Senator's claims 🧵

More: Semafor and The San Francisco Standard

X: @drfeifei, @tituswu100, @animaanandkumar, @anjneymidha, @danhendrycks, @martin_casado, @martin_casado, @robsaker, @aftfuture, @abcampbell, @deanwball, @psychosort, @andrewyng, @m2saxon, and @noahpinion

Bloomberg:

Sources: Guangzhou-based robotaxi company WeRide is seeking ~$100M in a US initial public offering and around $200M to $300M in a concurrent private placement — - Chinese robotaxi firm granted securities regulator nod in 2023 — Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance agreed to back listing

More: TechCrunch and Pandaily

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Stop re-entering Shopify order details in Zoho CRM — This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes AI Inc).Here's a scene that plays out in many growing Shopify stores every day: a customer places an order …

IDrive:

IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI — L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:

The A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra

The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.

Subscribe to Hard Fork.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel

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.

Sources:

Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.

Top News

Sponsor Posts

Featured Podcasts

About This Page

From Mediagazer

Upcoming Tech Events

More News

Earlier Picks