Techmeme
August 14, 2024, 8:30 AM

Top News

Julian Chokkattu / Wired:
Hands-on with the Google Pixel 9's AI camera features: Add Me, Reimagine, Autoframe, Zoom Enhance, plus improvements to Video Boost and panoramas  —  Add Me, Reimagine, Autoframe, and Zoom Enhance—these camera features allow you to alter your photos with zero technical know-how.
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Hands-on with Gemini Live: conversationally, a big step forward, but functionally, a step back in some ways, largely due to working entirely in the cloud  —  Google's Android chief told our columnist the voice assistant was designed to impersonate humans, but he doesn't want anyone getting romantic with it
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Sources: after Google's monopoly ruling, the DOJ considers options, including forcing a breakup of the company or requiring it to share more data with rivals  —  - Antitrust enforcers soliciting input from outside companies  — Judge ruled Alphabet unit monopolized online search, ads
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Apple approves Spotify updating its app to show in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the EU starting today, after Spotify's yearslong legal battle  —  Spotify will begin showing in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the European Union starting today, following a yearslong legal battle against Apple.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
xAI launches Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta with improved reasoning capabilities, available to X Premium and Premium+ users; the API will debut later in August  —  Elon Musk-owned launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta today with improved reasoning.  The new Grok AI model can now generate images …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
The US NIST publishes its first three post-quantum cryptography standards; IBM's director of research thinks quantum will hit an inflection point around 2030  —  It'll still be a while before quantum computers become powerful enough to do anything useful, but it's increasingly likely …
Andrew Romero / 9to5Google:
Google announces the $799+ Google Pixel 9, with a Tensor G4 chip, a design with flat sides, a bigger 6.3" screen, and AI features, on sale starting August 22  —  The Pixel 9 is Google's new baseline flagship device, but it packs a serious punch backed by Google's AI suite at a reasonable $799 price tag.
Damien Wilde / 9to5Google:
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Filing: Intel sold its 1.18M shares in Arm during Q2, which would have raised ~$147M for the company, based on the stock's average price in the quarter  —  Intel Corp., which is slashing jobs and expenses in a bid to turn around the business, sold its holdings in chip technology creator Arm Holdings Plc during the second quarter.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google unveils the Pixel Watch 3 in 41mm and 45mm sizes, with a 2,000-nit display and around 16% smaller bezels compared to the Watch 2, starting at $349  —  Besides being offered in a bigger size, the Google Pixel Watch 3 looks exactly like last year's wearable, with software and under …
Financial Times:
How Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta are using accounting techniques to disguise growing emissions, while working to influence pollution disclosure rules  —  Critics say a proposed rule change backed by Amazon and Meta could allow large energy users to hide their true emissions
Dara Kerr / NPR:
Meta shuts down CrowdTangle, less than three months before the US election, in favor of the Meta Content Library; Mozilla says 50K+ petitioned against the move  —  Meta has been bombarded by academics, researchers, politicians and regulators about a tool called CrowdTangle, which most people probably haven't heard of.
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
A US judge rules that a group of artists can pursue some copyright infringement claims in their lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and other companies  —  A group of visual artists can continue to pursue some claims that Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI's artificial …
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
US District Judge Reed O'Connor recuses himself from X's advertiser lawsuit over an alleged ad boycott; O'Connor held stock in Tesla and Unilever  —  A U.S. District Judge in Texas has recused himself from a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's X days after NPR drew scrutiny to the judge's investment …

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.
Cape:
Most carriers track everything.  Cape doesn't.  —  Unlimited talk, text & data, 24-hr metadata deletion, network ID rotation, SIM-attack defense, and more.  Switch today and get 29% off for life.
Zoho:
Pro tips: 5 ways to close WhatsApp leads in Zoho CRM  —  This is a guest post by Orkhan Jafarli, Growth PM at TimelinesAI.More buyers now reach out on WhatsApp before they ever fill out a form.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
What Happens If AI Fails?, Subprime Data Center Crisis, How Bad Can SpaceX Get?
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.
Hard Fork:
OpenAI Models Go Rogue + Kimi K3 Freakout + A.I. Superforecasting
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.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint', With Quinn Nelson
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Abridge's Shiv Rao: The Doctor Founder Taking On Microsoft In Healthcare AI
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.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:30 AM ET, August 14, 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

Nic Fildes / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Alice Hancock / Financial Times: