Techmeme: Sources: Perplexity is looking to raise ~$500M to double its valuation to $8B or more; Perplexity's annualized revenue is ~$50M, up from ~$10M in March 2024 (Wall Street Journal)

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October 21, 2024, 9:30 AM

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Chris Welch / The Verge:

Hands-on with Apple's hearing health features for AirPods Pro 2, set for iOS 18.1: hearing aids work well, hearing protection in all modes, and a hearing test — The AirPods Pro 2 will soon offer more robust hearing protection and a new hearing aid feature. But it's the hearing test that has really hooked me.

More: MacRumors, Wall Street Journal, 9to5Mac, Livemint, TechCrunch, CNET, CNET, TechRadar, Wired, Tom's Guide, CNBC, BGR, MobileSyrup, CNET on YouTube, Tom's Guide, Forbes, Women's Health, New York Times, Slate, and WinBuzzer

Threads: @chriswelch. X: @lutherlowe and @gma. Forums: r/apple

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Microsoft unveils 10 new AI agents for its enterprise-focused Dynamics 365 apps covering sales, finance, and more, ahead of Salesforce's Agentforce availability — AI agents are reigniting the competition between Microsoft and Salesforce. — Microsoft announced 10 new AI agents …

João da Silva / BBC:

ByteDance says it fired an intern in its ad tech team for “maliciously interfering” with AI training, and says operations were unaffected by their actions — TikTok owner, ByteDance, says it has sacked an intern for “maliciously interfering” with the training of one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models.

More: The Guardian, PCMag, Benzinga, South China Morning Post, Cybernews.com, TechNode, NewsBytes, Tech in Asia, and The New Times

Forums: Hacker News and r/anime_titties

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:

A profile of and interview with Tim Cook on being “perfectly fine with not being first”, running Apple, Vision Pro, AI, the Design Studio, group chats, and more — The CEO of the world's most valuable company led two of the biggest product launches of his tenure this year …

More: UploadVR, 9to5Mac, WSJ. Style on YouTube, AppleInsider, Moneycontrol, TechRadar, and Livemint

Threads: @eshumarneedi and @joannastern. X: @parkerortolani. Forums: r/apple

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Perplexity is looking to raise ~$500M to double its valuation to $8B or more; Perplexity's annualized revenue is ~$50M, up from ~$10M in March 2024 — Search-based chatbot seeks to raise about $500 million in what would be its fourth funding round in a year

More: Tech Startups, The keyword, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, CNBC, WinBuzzer, Inc, TipRanks Financial, PYMNTS.com, The Information, Proactive, SiliconANGLE, Benzinga, TechCrunch, Financial Times, and Tech in Asia

X: @berber_jin1, @benfritz, and @wsj

Alexandra Marquez / NBC News:

After Elon Musk promises to give $1M to one swing state voter per day who signs his PAC's petition, PA's governor says “law enforcement could take a look” — Musk announced Saturday that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a randomly selected voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC.

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Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:

Q&A with Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on his Nobel Prize being “a watershed moment for AI”, biology, AlphaFold 3, Isomorphic Labs, drug programs, and more — Founder of the artificial intelligence R&D lab says scientific understanding can prevent mis-steps in developing the technology

More: Axios and Business Insider

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Sources: some at Apple think it is over two years behind the leaders in generative AI; a closer look at changes in Apple's HR and hardware engineering groups — Apple's new iPad mini highlights the company's secret advantage in artificial intelligence. Also: Sonos weighs a headphone reboot …

More: T3, MacRumors, TechRadar, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, BGR, Android Authority, Tom's Guide, Neowin, TrendForce News, Wccftech, On my Om, Thurrott, iPhone in Canada Blog, Digital Trends, Patently Apple, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, Forbes, PhoneArena, and Hindustan Times

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Forums: Hacker News, r/sonos, r/apple, and MacRumors Forums

Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:

IBM launches its open source Granite 3.0 models, including 2B and 8B general purpose versions and Mixture-of-Experts models, aimed at enterprise customers — Make no mistake about it, enterprise AI is big business, especially for IBM. — IBM already has a $2 billion book of business related …

More: Benzinga, Tech Monitor, IBM, CRN, IBM Blog, WinBuzzer, AI News, SiliconANGLE, Reuters, Constellation Research, and Tech in Asia

Bloomberg:

Investigation: a Russian espionage and hacking campaign targeted Georgia for years and breached its Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, central bank, and more — With an election this week, documents seen by Bloomberg expose the extent of Moscow's infiltration of the former Soviet state.

More: Radio Free Europe/Radio …. X: @rj_gallagher, @martijnrasser, @albertonardelli, and @willneal93

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:

How OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are using different approaches to improve “model behavior”, an emerging field shaping systems' responses and characteristics — Leading artificial intelligence companies that are racing to develop the cutting-edge technology are tackling a very human challenge …

More: Cryptopolitan. X: @cristinacriddle

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Seattle-based Carbon Robotics, which offers an AI-powered deweeding robot for farmers, raised a $70M Series D led by BOND, taking its total funding to $157M — Seattle startup Carbon Robotics raised $70 million in the latest vote of confidence from investors in the company's agriculture technology platform …

More: FinSMEs, Seattle Business Journal, and SiliconANGLE

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From Mediagazer

Financial Times:

Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey drops his £79M libel lawsuit against the Financial Times, after FT said 15 women were willing to testify in court against him

Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:

Sources: Nexstar has begun directing stations to fill local newscasts with segments from Nexstar's NewsNation instead of national networks' content like NBC's

William Bishop / Pew Research Center:

Survey: 64% of US adults read a print book in the past year, down from 72% in 2011; 31% read an e-book, vs. 17% in 2011, while 26% have listened to an audiobook

More News

Nicholas Fearn / Financial Times:

ABI expects there to be 8,400 global data centers by 2030, as investors capitalize on the AI boom; Statista projects the industry will be worth $624B by 2029

More: Motley Fool and Constellation Research

Bloomberg:

Tracxn: Indian health tech-related startups raised $3.7B since 2022, about half of the $7.4B raised in the sector across the Asia Pacific region

Washington Post:

A look at the Harris campaign's outreach to the tech sector, as it tries to convince companies that she'll chart her own course while avoiding policy specifics

More: Washington Examiner. X: @adamkovac, @omid, @skupor, @wendyranderson, @katrinanation, @aaschapiro, @scribe_light, and @jason_kint

Wired:

At a San Francisco protest, blind Uber and Lyft users say the companies aren't doing enough to stop drivers from turning away passengers with visual impairments

More: TechCrunch. X: @nfb_voice. Forums: r/Blind

Lisa Bonos / Washington Post:

Polymarket users have bet ~$2B on predicting the next US president; Polymarket has excluded US users since 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators

More: Polymarket, Benzinga, Gizmodo, Cointelegraph, International Business Times, Polymarket, IJR, ZeroHedge News, The Independent, and The Crypto Times

X: @biancoresearch, @nic__carter, @matthew_d_green, @nope_its_lily, and @carlquintanilla

Daysia Tolentino / NBC News:

After allegations of poor working conditions on MrBeast's Amazon Studios show Beast Games, industry insiders call for more safety oversight on creator-run sets

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @nbcwashington. Forums: r/television

Earlier Picks

Anthropic:

Anthropic evaluates four “sabotage” threat vectors for its Claude 3 Opus and Claude 3.5 Sonnet models and finds that “minimal mitigations are sufficient”

More: TechCrunch, Benzinga, Anthropic, and WinBuzzer

X: @anthropicai and @anthropicai. Forums: Hacker News

Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:

In a letter, key US lawmakers urged Japan to strengthen restrictions on sales of chipmaking equipment to China or risk facing US curbs on Japanese companies

More: Select Committee on the CCP and The Economic Times

Cate Lawrence / Tech.eu:

Kazakhstan-based Kaspi.kz agrees to acquire a majority share, or 65.4%, of Turkish e-commerce platform Hepsiburada for ~$1.13B, expected to close in Q1 2025

More: Cointurk Finance, Kaspi.kz, Türkiye Today, and Daily Sabah

X: @dgenchev, @dgenchev, @dgenchev, and @oskargoyvaerts

Steven Levy / Wired:

How Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming cracked an encrypted ZIP file containing the code for a system that helped ANC members communicate safely under apartheid

More: Matt Mullenweg, John Graham-Cumming's blog, Vulacode on GitHub, and Vulacode on GitHub

X: @eastdakota and @stevenlevy. Forums: Hacker News

Shahram Mokhtari / iFixit News:

Meta Quest 3S teardown: uses Quest 2's same LCD panel and cheap Fresnel optics, replaces Quest 3's depth sensor with two IR flood illuminators, and more

More: MIXED Reality News, Mashable, Notebookcheck, iFixit on YouTube, TechEBlog, Lon.TV on YouTube, The Verge, IGN, and Gizmodo

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