Techmeme
July 30, 2024, 6:15 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Meta agrees to pay $1.4B to settle Texas' lawsuit accusing Meta of using facial recognition tech to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without consent  —  Meta Platforms (META.O) has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to Texas to resolve the state's lawsuit accusing the Facebook parent …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft Q4: Intelligent Cloud revenue up 19% YoY to $28.52B, vs. $28.68B est., including Azure and other cloud services up 29% YoY; MSFT drops ~5% after hours  —  Microsoft shares fell 7% in extended trading on Tuesday as investors looked past better-than-expected earnings and revenue …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
The US Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act by a vote of 91 to 3; the bills now head to the House  —  The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0) …
Kate Gibson / CBS News:
The US CPSC rules that Amazon is legally responsible for recalled products sold on Amazon.com, even by third parties, and must remove them and notify purchasers  —  Amazon distributed hundreds of thousands of hazardous products sold by third-parties through the e-commerce giant's platform …
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with partners such as Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and WordPress.com, after weeks of plagiarism accusations  —  Perplexity is launching a program to share ad revenue with publishing partners following weeks of plagiarism accusations.
Boone Ashworth / Wired:
Startup Friend previews a $99 AI pendant with an always-on microphone that's designed to provide the wearer with companionship, set to ship in January 2025  —  The latest attempt at an AI-powered wearable is an always-listening pendant.  But it doesn't help you be more productive, it just keeps you company.
Akash Sriram / Reuters:
California's DMV says it has created tokens for 42M car titles on the Avalanche blockchain and aims to help state residents access them via an app by early 2025  —  California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has digitized 42 million car titles using blockchain technology in a bid …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Zscaler ThreatLabz and Chainalysis say ransomware group Dark Angels received a payment worth ~$75M in early 2024, the largest known ransomware payment to date  —  A Fortune 50 company paid a record-breaking $75 million ransom payment to the Dark Angels ransomware gang, according to a report by Zscaler ThreatLabz.
Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt:
The SEC charges BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji for raising $257M+ from unregistered offers and sales of BTCLT and lying to investors about taking from proceeds  —  The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has hit the founder of decentralized social network BitClout with fraud charges …
Jeff Stone / Bloomberg:
Microsoft calls on the US Congress to pass a comprehensive law to crack down on AI deepfakes that aim to interfere in elections or maliciously target people  —  - Law enforcement needs a clear legal framework, Brad Smith says  — Elon Musk recently shared manipulated clip of Kamala Harris
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Qualcomm debuts the 4nm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2, a feature-limited version of the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, to make 5G accessible to smartphones in the sub-$100 category  —  Qualcomm Tuesday announced the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2.  The entry-level chip aims to make 5G accessible to 2.8 billion smartphone users …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI begins rolling out ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode, initially criticized for sounding like Scarlett Johansson during its demo in May, to ChatGPT Plus users  —  OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on Tuesday, giving users their first access to GPT-4o's hyper-realistic audio responses.
Rafe Uddin / Financial Times:
The UK ICO says the country's election authority failed to take “basic steps” to protect the personal data of 40M voters before a 2021 China-backed cyberattack  —  ‘Basic steps’ including updating passwords were missed before 2021 hack, finds Information Commissioner
Capital Brief:
Canva acquires AI image generation service Leonardo.ai for an undisclosed amount; Leonardo.ai launched in December 2022 and has 19M+ registered users  —  Founded in December 2022, Leonardo.Ai has over 19 million users and its very own foundation AI model.  —  Canva, Australia's largest …
Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA is gathering information from market players to determine whether Google's partnership with Anthropic qualifies as a merger and harms UK competition  —  - CMA will review whether investment causes competition issues  — Google committed to investing $2 billion into the AI startup

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