Techmeme
July 24, 2024, 12:40 AM

Top News

Mark Zuckerberg / Meta:
Mark Zuckerberg argues that “open source AI” is the path forward, closed models are vulnerable to vendor lock-in and state-backed espionage, and more  —  In the early days of high-performance computing, the major tech companies of the day each invested heavily in developing their own closed source versions of Unix.
Bloomberg:
Meta debuts Llama 3.1 405B, the “first frontier-level open source AI model”, as well as new Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models, and says it's working on Llama 4  —  The Meta CEO defends both his open source strategy and a massive investment in artificial intelligence.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Alphabet:
Alphabet Q2: revenue of $84.7B, up 14% YoY, net income of $23.6B, up 29% YoY, Search revenue of $48.5B, up from $42.6B YoY, and headcount down 1% to 179,582  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - July 23, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google Cloud Q2 revenue grew 29% YoY to $10.35B, vs. $10.2B est.; Cloud exceeded $10B in quarterly revenues and $1B in operating profit for the first time  —  Google parent company Alphabet reported earnings after the bell Tuesday.  —  Here's how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
The Information:
Sources: Apple is working on a foldable, clamshell-design iPhone that could debut as soon as 2026, and reached out to Asian component suppliers in recent months  —  Apple is working on a foldable iPhone that could be released as early as 2026 and in recent months reached out to suppliers …
Eva Roytburg / Fortune:
Elon Musk says “I am not donating $45M a month to Trump”, and that he created America PAC to support Trump, without revealing precisely how much he is donating  —  Elon Musk is not spending $45 million a month to elect former President Donald Trump, though he has created …
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
dYdX says v3, an older version of its DeFi crypto exchange that is reportedly for sale and averages ~$1.5B/week in derivatives trading, “has been compromised”  —  News of the problem emerged just as Bloomberg reported dYdX v3 is for sale.  —  Decentralized crypto-exchange giant dYdX …
Keith Broni / Emojipedia:
X reverts its water pistol emoji back to a firearm on the web, after Twitter originally switched the pistol emoji from a realistic-looking handgun in 2018  —  X (fka Twitter) has quietly redesigned its 🔫 Water Pistol emoji to display as a firearm.  This diverges from the cross-platform conversion …
Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
The US FTC seeks info from Mastercard, Accenture, and six other companies related to their “surveillance pricing products” that use personal data, AI, and more  —  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Tuesday that it has launched an inquiry into how companies surveil consumers …
The Information:
Internal messages: Meta staff complained about Threads' algorithm limiting political posts, after the For You page was slow to show news of Biden dropping out  —  Shortly after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election Sunday, an employee at Meta Platforms posted in the company's internal forum …
Benjamin S. Weiss / Courthouse News Service:
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says the Senate will take up the Kids Online Safety Act this week, signaling there's enough support among his colleagues  —  The Kids Online Safety Act would force tech companies to enable the highest possible privacy settings for minor users …
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, around a $17-$18 price point, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board”  —  The saga of Spotify HiFi has many twists and turns.  First announced over three years ago, the music service's higher …
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
US spot ether ETFs hit over $1B in trading volume across nine funds, a strong debut, but far from the $4.6B traded during the spot bitcoin ETFs debut in January  —  - Trading volume still trailed amount posted by Bitcoin ETFs  — Debuts for two of the funds rank among some of the best ever
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India scraps “angel tax” for all classes of investors, a major victory to the country's startup ecosystem that had lobbied for years against the measure  —  India's federal government has removed the controversial “angel tax” for all classes of investors, delivering a major victory …
Reuters:
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Meta plans to roll out its AI assistant to the Quest in August, limited to US and Canada users in experimental mode, after debuting on the Ray-Ban smart glasses  —  The experimental version of the AI assistant will make its way to Quest headsets in August.  —  Meta's AI-powered assistant …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Adobe rolls out new Illustrator features like Generative Shape Fill, powered by its latest Firefly Vector model now in beta, and new and updated Photoshop tools  —  Adobe is introducing some new tools and generative AI features to its Illustrator and Photoshop design software that aim to help speed up creative workflows.
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: OpenAI has reassigned Aleksander Madry, the head of its Preparedness AI safety team, to a role within its research organization focusing on reasoning  —  OpenAI has reassigned the executive in charge of ensuring that its artificial intelligence won't harm society to a different role within …

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Chris Morris / Fortune:
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