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Techmeme
August 20, 2024, 8:10 PM
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Top News

Wall Street Journal:
PitchBook: seven banks' ~$13B loans to Musk to buy Twitter have been “hung” for two years, weighing on balance sheets, the worst buyout for banks since 2008-09  —  Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, bringing in interest payments but weighing on banks' balance sheets
OpenAI:
OpenAI launches fine-tuning for GPT-4o, which lets developers customize a version of the model with their own datasets to improve domain-specific performance  —  Fine-tune custom versions of GPT-4o to increase performance and accuracy for your applications  —  Today, we're launching fine-tuning …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says Waymo is now giving 100K+ paid robotaxi rides every week in LA, San Francisco, and Phoenix, a few months after passing 50K+  —  Waymo disclosed Tuesday it's now giving more than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides every week across its three main commercial markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
CNBC:
Waymo unveils its cheaper “generation 6” self-driving tech that's integrated with Geely Zeekr vehicles, with 13 cameras and 4 lidar sensors, down from 29 and 5
Daniel Wiessner / Reuters:
A US district judge in Texas strikes down the FTC's ban on worker noncompete agreements, due to start September 4, after her temporary block of the rule in July  —  A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday barred a U.S. Federal Trade Commission rule from taking effect that would ban agreements commonly signed …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Flight tracking site FlightAware, which claims 10M+ monthly users, reports a breach dating back to January 2021 that exposed names, SSNs, addresses, and more  —  Flight tracking site FlightAware has blamed a “configuration error” for exposing a raft of personal information of its customers …
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Condé Nast makes a multiyear deal with OpenAI, letting ChatGPT and SearchGPT surface stories from The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and Wired  —  The media company joins The Atlantic, Axel Springer, Vox Media, and a host of other publishers who have partnered with OpenAI.
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A US appeals court revives a class action suit by Google Chrome users who say Google collected personal info even if Chrome was not synced with a Google account  —  A U.S. appeals court said Google (GOOGL.O) must face a revived lawsuit by Google Chrome users who said the company collected …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches a single unified Teams app that allows switching between work, personal, and education accounts on Windows and Mac  —  Microsoft is finally launching a single unified Microsoft Teams app that will allow you to switch between personal and work accounts.
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
In a letter to investors, Bolt says its finalizing a $450M Series F at a $14B valuation, but the deal terms are bewildering and hard to believe  —  The financial technology company told investors that it is raising at a $14 billion valuation.  That's hard to believe.  —  ∙ Paid
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Shein sues Temu for copyright infringement, accusing the company of stealing trade secrets and masquerading “as a legitimate e-commerce ‘marketplace’”  —  Shein, notorious for being accused of copyright infringement by small artists and big brands alike …
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Johnson sue Anthropic for misusing “hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books” to train Claude  —  Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court …
Daniel Tencer / Music Business Worldwide:
The AGs of 10 states join the US DOJ's antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster; 39 states, plus DC, are now part of the lawsuit  —  The attorneys general of 10 states have joined the US Department of Justice (DoJ)'s antitrust lawsuit seeking to break off Live Nation …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, August 20, 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.

From Mediagazer

Reuters:
Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta plans to shut down after 30+ years, following pressure from Russian authorities and the persecution of its reporters

Gavin Blair / The Hollywood Reporter:
The Association of Japanese Animations: Japan's anime industry revenue grew 15.8% YoY to a record ~$28.5B in 2025, with overseas revenue reaching ~$16B

Amy Chozick / New York Times:
Amy Chozick, who wrote a profile of Elizabeth Holmes, talks about ghosting Nathan Fielder after tentatively agreeing to be filmed for You Can See Everything

More News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia plans to let users link an Xbox account to its GeForce Now streaming service to enable automatic sign-in for supported games, starting on August 22
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Qualcomm details its mid-range Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 SoC, based on TSMC's N4P, promising 40% better GPU performance than its 7s Gen 2, shipping via Xiaomi first
Bloomberg:
Chinese-made, Tencent-backed game Black Myth: Wukong became Steam's second most popular title ever within hours of its launch, gaining 2.1M+ concurrent players

Earlier Picks

Kamil Kowalcze / Bloomberg:
TSMC breaks ground on its €10B chip fab in Dresden, Germany, its first European plant and set to create 11K European jobs; the EU approves Germany's €5B subsidy
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to make the most expensive iPhone models in India for the first time, as Foxconn rushes to produce iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max in India
Connor Jones / The Register:
Cisco Talos says eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft's macOS apps could be abused by attackers to record video and sound from a device, log user input, and more
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025
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