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September 15, 2024, 9:50 PM

September 15, 2024

7:25 PM •	Alexandre Tanzi / Bloomberg: Research based on the US Census Bureau's data from 2008 to 2021 suggests online dating may be partially to blame for a rise in income inequality in recent times
2:55 PM •	Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: The Port of Seattle says the Rhysida ransomware operation was behind an August 24 cyberattack and that it appears “some Port data was obtained by the actor”
9:50 AM •	Caroline O'Donovan / Washington Post: How Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are fighting an Ohio power company's proposal to increase the upfront energy costs they'll pay for their data centers
7:05 AM •	Bloomberg: Some of the largest custodial banks are interested in crypto custody but are hindered by the SEC rule SAB 121, which establishes accounting standards
2:00 AM •	The Verge: A look at the US DOJ's divestment case against TikTok, which relies on classified material that TikTok can't review, as oral arguments begin on September 16
1:15 AM •	PYMNTS.com: Nirvana, which provides insurance verification and cost estimates to healthcare providers and their patients, raised a $24.2M Series A led by Northzone

September 14, 2024

11:55 PM •	Aditya Kalra / Reuters: Regulatory reports: India's CCI accuses Samsung, Xiaomi, and other smartphone makers of collusion for exclusively launching products on Amazon and Flipkart
11:45 PM •	Zoltan Vardai / Cointelegraph: Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of USDC issuer Circle, says the company is moving its global HQ to One World Trade Center in New York City, ahead of a planned IPO
11:15 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Boston-based AceUp, which offers AI-powered business coaching and performance analytics services, raised a $22.5M Series A led by PJC
8:01 PM •	Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek: Maryland-based Aembit, a non-human identity and access management provider, raised a $25M Series A led by Acrew Capital, bringing its total raised to ~$45M
4:35 PM •	Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac: Apple's Activation Lock for iPhone components will make a huge dent in the market for stolen iPhones, though it introduces another barrier to DIY repairs
2:35 PM •	Shahram Mokhtari / iFixit News: Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold teardown: impressive repairability for a foldable, with a modular design that separates high mechanical wear parts like the USB-C port
12:40 PM •	M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: OpenAI should've stuck with the name Strawberry for o1, avoiding user confusion between models named 4o and o1, and helping humanize the tech
9:40 AM •	Bloomberg: A profile of Chase Herro, who calls himself the “dirtbag of the internet” and sources say is the dealmaker behind Trump's crypto project World Liberty Financial
6:35 AM •	Financial Times: An overview of California's AI safety bill SB 1047, which easily passed the state's legislature, as it awaits Governor Newsom's signature or veto before Sep. 30
2:30 AM •	Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: Recent announcements from Apple and Google show that AI is most useful as a feature in devices and software we already use, rather than a standalone product
12:45 AM •	Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Doctor Web: malware dubbed Android.Vo1d has infected ~1.3M TV boxes running OSes based on Android Open Source Project in almost 200 countries, forming a botnet
12:15 AM •	Aditya Kalra / Reuters: In reports dated August 9, Indian antitrust regulator CCI found that Amazon and Flipkart violated local competition laws by giving preference to select sellers
12:00 AM •	Menaka Doshi / Bloomberg: India's new M&A rule for deals exceeding ~$240M could create hurdles for startups that hope to be acquired in their early years to access funding and scale

September 13, 2024

10:05 PM •	Reuters: Sources: OpenAI's $150B valuation in a $6.5B funding round hinges on whether the company can upend its corporate structure and remove a profit cap for investors
9:30 PM •	Rachyl Jones / Semafor: Some former CrowdStrike employees say they raised concerns about executives rushing deadlines and quality checks, more than a year before the July 2024 outage
8:25 PM •	Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: Google ad trial: an ex-Facebook ad exec testifies the company signed the 2018 Jedi Blue deal with Google because it couldn't compete against Google's “monopoly”
7:35 PM •	Kali Hays / Fortune: Sources: Sam Altman told OpenAI's staff that the company plans to move away from being controlled by a nonprofit sometime in 2025
6:45 PM •	Naomi Nix / Washington Post: An EEOC analysis finds women made up 22.6% of US workers in high-tech roles in 2022, similar to the 22% in 2005, even as the number of lucrative jobs has soared
5:35 PM •	MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: MicroStrategy stock jumped 8%+ on Friday after founder Michael Saylor said it purchased another $1.1B worth of bitcoin, taking its bitcoin holdings to $14.6B
5:25 PM •	Bloomberg: Sam Bankman-Fried asks for a new trial in an appeal to the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals and directly attacks US District Judge Lewis Kaplan for alleged bias
4:20 PM •	CNBC: Trump says he has “absolutely no intention” of selling his Trump Media stock when the lockup period expires; DJT initially popped 25%+, then closed up about 12%
4:00 PM •	Daniel Carvalho / Bloomberg: Brazil lifts the block on the bank accounts of X and Starlink after withdrawing ~$3.3M from the accounts to pay for fines imposed by the Supreme Court
3:10 PM •	TechCrunch: A TuSimple shareholder letter alleges “potentially fraudulent activities” as it tries to move ~$450M to China to pivot from self-driving trucks to AI animation
2:20 PM •	Bloomberg: German prosecutors open a sexual harassment probe into SAP CTO Jürgen Müller, after SAP said he'd resign at the end of September due to “inappropriate” behavior
1:30 PM •	Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: Filing: 23andMe will pay $30M to settle a lawsuit for failing to protect the privacy of 6.9M customers whose personal info was exposed in a 2023 data breach
1:10 PM •	Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Apple files to drop its NSO suit, citing Israeli government's alleged seizure of NSO files, and saying Apple's court disclosures may aid NSO and other hackers
12:55 PM •	Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat: Google debuts DataGemma models that use real world data from Google-created Data Commons to reduce hallucinations in queries revolving around statistical data
11:40 AM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Spotify begins piloting parent-managed accounts for kids under 13 on family plans in select markets, including Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden
11:30 AM •	Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg: Sources: the European Commission is poised to conclude X does not fall under its Digital Markets Act, after a probe found X's impact on EU markets is too small
11:05 AM •	Bloomberg: Sources: CoreWeave is in talks to sell existing shares, valuing it at $23B, up from $19.1B in May 2024; shareholders, such as employees, may sell $400M to $500M
10:55 AM •	Wall Street Journal: United Airlines plans to start testing Starlink internet service in early 2025, with the first passenger flights likely equipped with free Wi-Fi later in 2025
10:40 AM •	Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Meta restarts training its AI systems on UK users' public Facebook and Instagram posts, having “incorporated regulatory feedback” to be “even more transparent”
10:10 AM •	Financial Times: Sources paint a bleak picture for startup founders in China; IT Juzi report: only 1,202 startups were founded in the country in 2023 compared to 51,302 in 2018
9:55 AM •	Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: Waymo and Uber plan to expand their two-year partnership in Phoenix to Austin and Atlanta, where Waymo robotaxis can be hailed only on Uber's app, in early 2025
9:40 AM •	Daniel Zuidijk / Bloomberg: FanDuel and Betfair's parent company, Flutter, agrees to acquire a 56% stake in Brazilian online gaming operator NSX Group for a ~$350M, set to close in Q2 2025
9:35 AM •	David Jeans / Forbes: Second Front, which helps companies deploy software in sensitive government networks, raised a $75M Series C led by Salesforce, sources say at a $750M valuation
9:25 AM •	CNBC: The White House plans to curb the “overuse and abuse” of the de minimis loophole used by Shein and Temu, which exempts packages worth $800 or less from tariffs
8:30 AM •	Steven Levy / Wired: A profile of Fei-Fei Li's World Labs, which aims to create “spatial intelligence” in AI and has raised $230M from a16z and others, reportedly at a $1B valuation
8:25 AM •	Karen Hao / The Atlantic: Sources: Microsoft has pitched its AI to ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others to find and develop oil and gas reserves while publicly committing to reduce emissions
6:37 AM •	Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Apple plans to allow alt app stores and browser engines on iPads in the EU with iPadOS 18 on September 16, after the EU added iPadOS to the DMA in April 2024
5:05 AM •	Renju Jose / Reuters: Elon Musk calls Australia's government “fascists” after it unveiled a bill to fine online platforms up to 5% of their global revenue for enabling misinformation
4:35 AM •	Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: In a provisional ruling, the CMA says Vodafone and Three's planned $19B merger could lead to higher prices, diminished service, and reduced investment in the UK
2:15 AM •	Viola Zhou / Rest of World: Q&A with Alibaba.com president Kuo Zhang on the enduring importance of the US market, navigating geopolitical tensions, competing with Shein and Temu, and more
12:20 AM •	Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: OpenAI's o1 models aren't a straightforward upgrade to GPT-4o, as they introduce some major cost and performance trade-offs in exchange for improved “reasoning”

September 12, 2024

11:50 PM •	Matt Burgess / Wired: Researchers detail GAZEploit, a now-fixed Apple Vision Pro vulnerability that let hackers determine which key a user is typing based on the user's eye movement
10:50 PM •	Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica: Across two experiments with 2,190 American conspiracy theorists, dialogues with GPT-4 Turbo reduced their belief in their chosen conspiracy by ~20% on average
9:15 PM •	Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: Every, which offers startups an all-in-one finance and human resources suite that combines banking, cards, tax, payroll, and more, raised a $22.5M Series A
8:15 PM •	Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: All 25 staff of Annapurna's gaming division resigned in September after CEO Megan Ellison pulled out of talks with President Nathan Gary to spin off the unit
7:50 PM •	Oliver Darcy / Status: Vox Media says its annual Code Conference has been put on hold, calling it a “strong franchise” but declining to share further information about its future
7:10 PM •	Sarah McBride / Bloomberg: YC plans to expand to four cohorts per year, adding spring and fall sessions in 2025; each batch will be half the size of the most recent cohort of 256 startups
6:10 PM •	Amir Efrati / The Information: Source: OpenAI's ChatGPT has 11M+ paying subscribers, including 1M for its higher-priced business plans, implying it's generating $225M+ in revenue per month
5:45 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: The White House says Adobe, Cohere, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Common Crawl made voluntary commitments to combat nonconsensual image deepfakes and CSAM
5:05 PM •	Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Adobe reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.41B, vs. $5.37B est., Digital Media revenue up 11% YoY to $4B, and Q4 revenue guidance below est.; ADBE drops 9%+
4:55 PM •	Ina Fried / Axios: Salesforce rolls out Agentforce, a suite of AI agents that handle tasks in sales, marketing, commerce, and customer service, starting at $2 per conversation
4:10 PM •	Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: At an Acquired podcast event, Mark Zuckerberg said his biggest career mistake was taking too much ownership for issues out of Meta's control
3:45 PM •	Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft plans to make changes to Windows that will help CrowdStrike, Broadcom, Sophos, Trend Micro, and other security vendors operate outside of the kernel
3:25 PM •	Vincent Manancourt / Politico: Nick Clegg says Elon Musk turned X into “a sort of one man, sort of hyper-partisan and ideological hobby horse”, contrasting Meta's content moderation with X's
3:10 PM •	The Verge: Facebook and Instagram make AI labels less prominent on content edited with AI, moving them behind a menu; the labels will still appear on AI-generated content
2:55 PM •	Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: Sources: Spotify is trying to entice video-oriented creators to distribute shows on the platform in addition to YouTube, sometimes offering them seven figures
2:25 PM •	Shakeel Hashim / Transformer: OpenAI's o1 System Card: “medium” rating for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear weapon risk, and it sometimes manipulated task data to fake alignment
1:21 PM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI claims that in a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad, o1 correctly solved 83.3% of the problems, while GPT-4o solved only 13.4%
1:16 PM •	Kylie Robison / The Verge: OpenAI releases o1, the first of its rumored reasoning-focused Strawberry models, in preview, alongside a smaller o1-mini, for ChatGPT Plus and Team subscribers
12:45 PM •	James Rundle / Wall Street Journal: Utah-based Strider, which analyzes OSINT to help protect organizations against nation-state attacks, raised a $55M Series C, bringing its total funding to $110M
12:25 PM •	Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: A hacker says he tricked ChatGPT into giving detailed instructions to make a fertilizer bomb, by getting it to “play a game” and create a sci-fi fantasy world
12:15 PM •	Kif Leswing / CNBC: How the hearing aid feature in AirPods Pro 2 could change the hearing aid industry, where most devices range from $799 into the thousands of dollars
12:10 PM •	Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google rolls out Gemini Live to free users with Android devices set to English, following its release to Gemini Advanced subscribers last month
12:05 PM •	Brian Heater / TechCrunch: The FDA approves the Hearing Aid Feature in Apple's AirPods Pro 2, calling it the “first over-the-counter hearing aid software device”
11:38 AM •	CNBC: Microsoft hires Carolina Dybeck Happe as its executive vice president and COO; Dybeck Happe was previously the CFO at GE
11:35 AM •	Richard Speed / The Register: Transport for London confirms ~5,000 customers' bank data may have been exposed in an ongoing cyber incident and pulls a lot of its IT infrastructure offline
11:30 AM •	Chris Kerr / Game Developer: Unity cancels its controversial Runtime Fee and reverts to its existing seat-based subscription model, but raises Unity Pro's and Unity Enterprise's prices
11:20 AM •	Teresa Xie / Bloomberg: eToro USA agrees to pay $1.5M and limit US user trading to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ether to settle SEC allegations that it operated as an unregistered broker
10:50 AM •	Hayden Field / CNBC: Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and power and utility companies met at the White House to discuss US AI energy infrastructure
10:45 AM •	Sarah Fielding / Engadget: The Mental Health Coalition announces Thrive, a data-sharing program to reduce content on suicide and self-harm, with Meta, Snap, and TikTok as founding members
10:25 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Meta, TikTok, and Snap pledge to participate in program to combat suicide and self-harm content
9:25 AM •	Arasu Kannagi Basil / Reuters: Mastercard agrees to acquire Recorded Future, which uses AI-based analytics to identify potential threats, from private equity firm Insight Partners for $2.65B
8:55 AM •	Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk: Coinbase launches its wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, on the Ethereum and Base networks, supported by various DeFi services for trading, lending, and as collateral
8:30 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: London-based Novatus, which helps financial companies manage their data to comply with regulations, raised $40M, sources say at a ~$150M post-money valuation
8:05 AM •	Wall Street Journal: Analysis: VC investments in AI startups have reached $64.1B so far in 2024, or ~30% of total VC dollars invested, amid questions about whether they will pay off
7:05 AM •	Wesley Yin-Poole / IGN: Memo: Microsoft lays off 650 staff from its gaming business, bringing the cuts in its gaming business to 2,550 jobs since acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023
6:15 AM •	Ian King / Bloomberg: A look at the tough options before Intel's board, including scaling back factory projects, selling off subsidiaries, or splitting Intel's core operations
5:40 AM •	Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Ireland's DPC opens an investigation into Google's GDPR compliance over using the personal information of EU and EEA users for training foundation AI models
5:25 AM •	Ryan Browne / CNBC: The UK gives data centers Critical National Infrastructure designation, enabling the government to coordinate better against hackers and unexpected cyber events
4:40 AM •	TechCrunch: WhatsApp brings Meta Verified badges to small businesses in India, starting at ~$8/month, and gives them the ability to send customized messages to customers
2:35 AM •	Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Researchers detail gaining the ability to generate counterfeit HTTPS certificates and more after buying an expired WHOIS server domain for the .mobi TLD for $20
2:25 AM •	Gian Volpicelli / Bloomberg: A 397-page EC report, released shortly before the CJEU's verdicts against Apple and Google, says the EU's competition enforcement can be “harmful to innovation”
1:40 AM •	The Economic Times: Centricity, a digital wealth management service for financial advisers and asset managers, raised a $20M seed led by Lightspeed India at a $125M valuation
1:05 AM •	Ana Paula Pereira / Cointelegraph: Tune.fm, a music streaming service with an integrated NFT marketplace that pays artists via blockchain micropayments, raised $50M from Global Emerging Markets

September 11, 2024

11:30 PM •	Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Infineon says it has developed 300mm gallium nitride wafers, which can produce 2.3x more chips than 200mm wafers and speed their adoption for AI applications
10:55 PM •	Todd Feathers / Gizmodo: Nevada is working with Google to launch a generative AI tool that will issue recommendations to human referees on whether unemployed workers should get benefits
9:50 PM •	Sarah Emerson / Forbes: Sources: Adam Neumann's Flowcarbon, which raised $70M in 2022 from a16z and others, is refunding investors after failing to launch its Goddess Nature Token
8:15 PM •	Bloomberg: AST SpaceMobile's stock is up ~1,300% since a record low in April 2024 and following deals with AT&T and Verizon in May to provide wireless service from space
7:01 PM •	Lily Hay Newman / Wired: A look at Apple's Private Cloud Compute for Apple Intelligence that Craig Federighi says allows user data to be “hermetically sealed inside of a privacy bubble”
6:05 PM •	Alex Riehl / BetaKit: Vancouver-based Spare, which helps transit agencies offer transport services based on riders' individual needs, raised a CA$42M Series B led by Inovia Capital
4:45 PM •	CRN: Altera's CEO denies a report that Intel plans to outright sell Altera, saying the plan to sell a stake in Altera and push for an IPO by 2026 “has not changed”
4:30 PM •	Kevin Breuninger / CNBC: Shares of Truth Social owner Trump Media closed down over 10% after Trump's debate with Harris, ending at their lowest level since they began publicly trading
4:02 PM •	Bloomberg: Sources: OpenAI is in talks to raise $6.5B in equity financing at a $150B valuation, plus, a source says, $5B in debt from banks as a revolving credit facility
3:55 PM •	Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Google adds Audio Overview to NotebookLM, letting users turn documents into audio discussions with two AI hosts that summarize and explain the source material
2:40 PM •	Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky rolls out support for up to 60-second videos with subtitles; a post can have one video, adult content is allowed, and users are limited to 25 videos/day
2:01 PM •	Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Adobe says generative AI features powered by its Firefly Video model will be available before the end of 2024 on the Premiere Pro beta app and on a free website
1:20 PM •	Marie Dealessandri / GamesIndustry.biz: Seoul-based Spoon Labs, which operates an audio streamer called Spoon and a short video app called Vigloo, raised ~$89.3M from PUBG publisher Krafton
11:45 AM •	Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Google partners with The Internet Archive to link to the Wayback Machine in Search, letting users view archived versions of webpages under “About this page”
11:00 AM •	Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Qualifyze, which makes audit management and compliance software for pharmaceutical companies, raised a $54M Series B, bringing its total funding to $84M
10:20 AM •	Lauren Feiner / The Verge: On Day 2 of the US DOJ's antitrust trial focused on ads, a former News Corp executive testifying as a government witness said Google held publishers “hostage”
9:00 AM •	Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg: Chainalysis: payments in Singapore using stablecoins reached a record high of almost $1B in Q2, led by transactions at merchant outlets, vs. ~$161M in H2 2023
8:10 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Mistral releases its first multimodal model, Pixtral 12B, available on GitHub and Hugging Face, and via API-serving platforms Le Chat and Le Platforme “soon”
7:40 AM •	Joel Khalili / Wired: Riot Platforms plans the world's largest bitcoin mine in Corsicana, a former Texas oil boom town, using a liquid immersion system, despite residents' protests
6:15 AM •	Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg: A surge in alleged scams poses a serious image problem for Revolut, which faces more complaints than all its UK rivals facing authorized push payment scams
5:15 AM •	Brianna Sacks / Washington Post: An analysis finds 40+ examples of Facebook removing emergency-related posts during 20+ US wildfires since June 2024; Meta says it is “investigating this issue”
4:05 AM •	Hans Peter Brondmo / Wired: The former CEO of Everyday Robots, Alphabet's AI robotics moonshot that was shut down in January 2023, reflects on its start and efforts to give AI a robot body
2:30 AM •	Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Sergey Brin says he's working at Google “pretty much every day” and that AI algorithmic improvements are “even outpacing the increased compute” put into models
2:15 AM •	David Shepardson / Reuters: CTIA: Americans used 100M+ TB of wireless data in 2023, up 36% YoY, the largest single-year increase; the number of wireless connections rose 6% YoY to 558M
1:55 AM •	Jiahui Huang / Wall Street Journal: Memo to commemorate Alibaba's 25th anniversary: Jack Ma says competition will make the company stronger and to trust “the power of market forces and innovation”
1:35 AM •	Jake Evans / ABC: Meta admits to scraping every Australian adult Facebook and Instagram user's public data to train AI, with no opt-out, which isn't required under privacy law
1:05 AM •	Wendy Davis / MediaPost: A US district judge blocks Utah from enforcing the Minor Protection in Social Media Act, set to take effect on October 1, saying the law likely violates the 1A

September 10, 2024

11:35 PM •	Taylor Swift / Taylor Swift on Instagram: Taylor Swift says she's voting for Kamala Harris, noting that Donald Trump sharing an AI-generated image of her “endorsing” him prompted her to reveal her plans
9:55 PM •	Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: Matt Shumer, who was accused of fraud over HyperWrite's 70B-parameter AI model, says he “got ahead” of himself but doesn't explain why his model underperformed

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