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Techmeme
July 3, 2024, 9:50 PM
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Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 175M+ MAUs, up from 150M in April, ahead of its one-year anniversary on July 5; source: Meta may turn on ads in Threads in 2025  —  A year and a half ago, Threads was but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye.  —  Now, the rival to Elon Musk's X has reached …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Q&A with Adam Mosseri on Threads' first year, not leaning into political content, driving engagement, focusing on real-time content, the fediverse, and more  —  A year ago this week, Meta introduced Threads to the world.  —  The text-based social network, which launched as a kind …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Twilio says threat actors identified the phone numbers of users of its 2FA app Authy; last week, hackers claimed to have stolen 33M phone numbers from Twilio  —  Last week, a hacker claimed to have stolen 33 million phone numbers from U.S. messaging giant Twilio.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Amazon plans to discontinue Astro for Business, its robot security guard for SMBs announced in November 2023, on September 25 to focus on its Astro home robot  —  Astro is leaving its job to spend more time with family.  —  Amazon informed customers and employees Wednesday morning that it plans …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI updates its ChatGPT macOS app to encrypt locally stored conversations, after a user discovered that the app was storing chats in plain text  —  Until Friday, OpenAI's recently launched ChatGPT macOS app had a potentially worrying security issue: it wasn't hard to find your chats stored …
Andrea Hsu / NPR:
A federal court in Texas temporarily blocks the US government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4  —  A federal court in Texas has partially blocked the government's ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4.
Rocky Swift / Reuters:
Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, after scrapping over 1,000 regulations governing their use  —  Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone …
Juby Babu / Reuters:
Information management company OpenText plans to cut about 1,200 jobs, or ~1.7% of its workforce, and expects to reduce its annual expenses by CA$150M in 2025  —  OpenText Corp (OTEX.TO) said on Wednesday it would cut about 1,200 jobs, around 1.7% of its workforce, as part of its new business optimization plan.
Associated Press:
Microsoft agrees to pay $14.4M to settle with the California Civil Rights Department over allegations it discriminated against workers who took protected leave  —  Microsoft Corp. has agreed to pay $14.4 million to settle allegations that the global software giant retaliated and discriminated …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Noplace, a Gen Z-focused social media app backed by Alexis Ohanian's 776 and others, tops the US iOS App Store; it raised a $15M Series A1 at a $75M valuation  —  Aiming to bring the “social” back to “social media,” a new app called noplace has surged to the top of the App Store as it launched out of invite-only mode Wednesday.
Amy Thomson / Bloomberg:
UK-listed Keywords Studios, which provides game development, audio, and art services to Epic and others, agrees to private equity firm EQT's ~£2.1B takeover bid  —  - Investors get £24.50 per share in cash in private equity deal  — Keywords works for titles including Fortnite, Call of Duty
Emma Farge / Reuters:
WIPO: between 2014 and 2023, 54K generative AI patents were filed, 25% of which were filed in 2023; China leads with 38K+ patents, followed by the US with 6,276  —  China is far ahead of other countries in generative AI inventions like chatbots, filing six times more patents than its closest rival …
Julia Love / Bloomberg:
Alphabet winds down agriculture startup Mineral, which became an independent subsidiary in 2023, and licenses some of its tech to berry producer Driscoll's  —  The company no longer has a place for all of its moonshot startups  —  Alphabet Inc. is licensing some technology …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:50 PM ET, July 3, 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

Sara Fischer / Axios:
PBS and one of its local affiliates sue the Trump administration, saying his executive order to cut federal funding violated PBS' First Amendment rights

The Bookseller:
Boundless, which bought crowdfunding publisher Unbound in March, tells authors that royalties accrued before March won't be paid until Boundless is cash stable

Max Tani / Semafor:
The California State Senate launches an inquiry into whether Paramount's proposed $15M settlement with Trump violated bribery and unfair competition laws

More News

Rand Fishkin / SparkToro:
Datos: 58.5% of Google searches in the US and 59.7% in the EU result in no clicks; for 1,000 searches, 360 clicks go to the open web in the US and 374 in the EU
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Netflix starts phasing out its cheapest $11.99/month ad-free tier for existing subscribers as planned, pushing its $6.99, $15.49, and $22.99 tiers
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Proton launches Docs in Proton Drive, a privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs, after acquiring secure note-taking app Standard Notes in April 2024
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Koo, an Indian rival to X that had raised $60M+ from Tiger Global, Accel, and others, shuts down after last-resort acquisition talks with Dailyhunt collapsed

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Sources: later in July, the EU will suggest scrapping the €150 threshold below which goods are exempt from customs duties, targeting Temu, AliExpress, and Shein
Wall Street Journal:
The owners of about a third of US nuclear power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet AI demand
Cynthia Brumfield / CSO:
SCOTUS' Chevron ruling could weaken US federal cybersecurity regulations, as FCC data breach reporting requirements and other rules are likely to be challenged
Paula Arend Laier / Reuters:
Brazil's data regulator suspends the validity of Meta's privacy policy for using personal data to train AI models in the country and sets a daily ~$8,800 fine
Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk:
Blockchain platform Polkadot faces criticism from users after spending $87M in H1 2024, doubling its H2 2023 spend, including $36M+ on marketing and outreach
Financial Times:
Google says its greenhouse gas emissions have surged 48% in the past five years due to the expansion of the data centers that underpin its AI efforts
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Figma disables its recently launched generative AI app design tool Make Design, after a user showed it copied Apple's Weather when asked to design a weather app
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