Techmeme
July 25, 2024, 2:00 AM

Top News

Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian:
Insurer Parametrix estimates that the global outage sparked by CrowdStrike's faulty update will cost US Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, $5.4B  —  Banking and healthcare firms, major airlines expected to suffer most losses, according to insurer Parametrix
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Reddit appears to be blocking search engines that don't rely on Google's indexing; Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others are not showing recent results from Reddit  —  DuckDuckGo, Bing, Mojeek, and other search engines are not returning full Reddit results any more.
Olivia Carville / Bloomberg:
Meta removes ~63K Instagram accounts used by sextortion scammers in Nigeria, along with ~7,200 Facebook assets, including accounts linked to the Yahoo Boys  —  - Purge includes thousands of Groups offering sextortion ‘tips’  — One network of 20 criminals was running 2,500 fake accounts
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
Around 500 World of Warcraft workers vote to unionize with the CWA, bringing the number of unionized US gaming employees at Microsoft to around 1,750  —  World of Warcraft workers have voted to unionize the popular video-game franchise, expanding organized labor's new foothold at Microsoft Corp. by around 500 employees.
Zac Bowden / Windows Central:
Microsoft unveils Bing generative search, which shows AI-generated answers with the sources used to create them, currently available to a small subset of users  —  Bing will soon prioritize AI-generated answers alongside traditional search results.  —  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
Mistral announces Mistral Large 2, the new generation of its flagship model, with 123B parameters; commercial usage requires a separate license  —  The AI race is picking up pace like never before.  Following Meta's move just yesterday to launch its new open source Llama 3.1 …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple launches Apple Maps on the web in beta, available in English and compatible with Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, and Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs  —  Apple is bringing Apple Maps to the web for the first time.  In a press release today, the company announced that you can now access Apple Maps …
Dana Hull / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk's poll asking if Tesla should invest $5B in xAI ends with 67.9% voting yes, after Musk said on Tesla's earnings call that he supported the idea  —  - CEO takes poll on whether EV maker should back his startup  — The two companies have intermingled on procurement, recruiting
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Privacy-focused developer Proton debuts a self-custody bitcoin wallet, its first cryptocurrency product, initially available to early access users  —  When you think about it, Proton has always been a crypto company — cryptography, not cryptocurrency.  But the Switzerland-based company …
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
AMD delays its Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 launch, originally set for July, to August due to an unspecified quality issue, and pulls back all units shipped to replace them  —  AMD hits the brakes on its Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 processors.  —  AMD announced today that it has delayed its Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 launch due …
Michael Peel / Financial Times:
Researchers suggest that using “synthetic” data, created by AI systems to train LLMs, could lead to the rapid degradation of AI models and a collapse over time  —  Research suggests use of computer-made ‘synthetic data’ to train top AI models could lead to nonsensical results in future
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
AltStore PAL now offers third-party iOS apps in the EU, starting with two torrenting apps, a social discovery app for dating, and a PC emulator  —  The first batch of third-party apps are making their way onto AltStore PAL, just over three months after the alternative iOS app marketplace first launched in the EU.
New York Times:
Analysis: since the start of Ukraine war in 2022, Russia obtained ~$4B worth of US restricted chips from 6K+ companies, including from shell firms in Hong Kong  —  Defying sanctions, Russia has obtained nearly $4 billion in restricted chips since the war began in Ukraine.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
ServiceNow President CJ Desai leaves the company after an internal probe found he violated company policy related to a US contract and an ex-Army CIO's hiring  —  - Company hired former Army CIO Iyer after $432 million contract  — Iyer, who headed public sector business, also resigned
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Lakera, which helps enterprises protect generative AI apps from LLM vulnerabilities, raised a $20M Series A led by Atomico, bringing its total funding to $30M  —  Lakera, a Swiss startup that's building technology to protect generative AI applications from malicious prompts and other threats …
Bloomberg:
IBM reports Q2 revenue up 2% YoY to $15.8B, vs. $15.6B est., and says bookings for AI consulting and software have exceeded $2B since mid-2023, vs. $1B in Q1  —  International Business Machines Corp. reported a jump in bookings for its artificial intelligence business as customers work to implement the latest technology.
Reuters:
SK Hynix Q2: revenue up 125% YoY to ~$11.86B, operating profit of ~$3.96B, its highest quarterly profit in six years, and sees further rising chip demand in H2  —  South Korea's SK Hynix (000660.KS) posted on Thursday its highest quarterly profit since 2018 as the Nvidia (NVDA.O) …
Politico:

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