Techmeme
July 31, 2024, 4:30 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Mark Cuban, Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, and 100+ other VCs pledge to vote for Kamala Harris and solicit donations for her campaign  —  The group, including Democratic donors such as Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla, has been organized under an effort called VCsForKamala.
CNBC:
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian says the CrowdStrike-caused outage will cost the company $500M, after canceling 6,000+ flights, and Delta will seek damages  —  WATCH NOW  —  Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday that the massive IT outage earlier this month that stranded thousands of customers will cost it $500 million.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft says that a nine-hour outage on July 30, which disrupted multiple Microsoft 365 and Azure services worldwide, was triggered by a DDoS attack  —  Microsoft confirmed today that a nine-hour outage on Tuesday that took down and disrupted multiple Microsoft 365 and Azure services worldwide …
Karen Freifeld / Reuters:
Sources: the US plans to unveil a new rule next month to stop chipmaking equipment exports from some countries to China, exempting allies like the Netherlands  —  The Biden administration plans to unveil a new rule next month that will expand U.S. powers to stop exports of semiconductor …
Wesley Yin-Poole / IGN:
Bungie says it will lay off 220 employees, or 17% of its workforce, and integrate an additional 155 roles into its parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment  —  “Today is a difficult and painful day.”  —  Destiny developer Bungie has today announced significant cuts at the studio …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google rolls out online safety features to make removing explicit deepfakes from Search at scale easier and to prevent them from appearing high up in results  —  Google is rolling out new online safety features that make it easier to remove explicit deepfakes from Search at scale and prevent …
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Tether reports “record” net profit of $5.2B in H1 2024, net operating profit of $1.3B in Q2, and US debt holdings of $97.6B, more than countries like Germany  —  The company said its $97 billion exposure to U.S. Treasuries would put it 18th in the ranking among countries.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
District of Columbia AG Brian Schwalb sues StubHub, alleging the company uses a “bait-and-switch” technique where it advertises “deceptively low” ticket prices  —  StubHub is facing a new lawsuit that accuses the ticketing service of hiding fees from customers until the very end of the purchasing process.
Billy Steele / Engadget:
Spotify plans to expand the availability of lyrics for Spotify Free users in the “coming weeks”; paid subscribers could access unlimited lyrics since May 2024  —  The company capped access at three songs per month in May.  —  Spotify users who don't pay for a subscription …
Jason Del Rey / Fortune:
Interviews with 24 current and former Amazon staff say Jeff Bezos' Amazon Way principles remain core under Andy Jassy but are now less universally agreed upon  —  When Amazon ordered most workers back to the office three days a week in February 2023, Pamela Hayter was not happy about the end of a popular pandemic-era arrangement.
More: The VergeForums: Hacker News
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Source: TikTok was paying Microsoft ~$20M/mo. to use OpenAI's models in Azure OpenAI Service as of March, ~25% of the total revenue that service was generating  —  Microsoft has had success reselling OpenAI's artificial intelligence to its cloud customers, a core part of its plan to build a new multibillion-dollar profit machine.
Sean Lyngaas / CNN:
A ransomware attack hits blood donation nonprofit OneBlood, which has asked over 250 hospitals in the US to activate their critical blood shortage protocols  —  A cyberattack has hit a blood-donation nonprofit that serves hundreds of hospitals in the southeastern US.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
After users reported that Meta's generative AI assistant incorrectly claimed the attempted Donald Trump assassination did not happen, Meta blames hallucinations  —  Meta's AI assistant incorrectly said that the recent attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump didn't happen …
Steve Smith / SlashGear:
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra review: premium materials and build quality, and powerful Exynos processor, but too expensive, large, bulky, and only one size  —  - Premium materials and build quality - Significantly improved GPS tracking - New powerful Exynos processor - Excellent activity and sleep tracking
CNBC:
Nvidia shares jump 10%+ after Microsoft and AMD signaled no slowdown in the buildout of AI servers built around GPUs; Microsoft spent $19B on capex in Q4  —  Nvidia shares popped nearly 13% Wednesday after remarks from top customer Microsoft and rival chipmaker AMD signaled there wouldn't be a slowdown …
Andrew Liszewski / The Verge:
Nothing unveils the Phone 2A Plus, offering the same 6.7-inch display as the 2A and a new MediaTek Dimensity 7350 Pro 5G SoC, available for $399 on August 7  —  Plus is often used in smartphone naming to delineate a larger model with a bigger screen, but that's not the case here.
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Arm reports Q1 revenue up 39% YoY to $939M vs. $905.4M est., license and other revenue up 72% YoY to $472M, and royalty revenue up 17% YoY to $467M  —  Arm Holdings Plc handily beat analysts' estimates with its quarterly results but held off on boosting its annual forecast …
More: Reuters and Arm
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Qualcomm reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $9.39B, vs. $9.21B est., handset chip sales up 12% YoY to $5.9B, and forecasts Q4 revenue above estimates  —  Qualcomm Inc., the world's biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave a strong revenue forecast for the current period, indicating that demand for phones is rebounding.
More: Benzinga and CNBC
Salvador Rodriguez / Wall Street Journal:
An investigation finds 450+ illicit drug ads on Facebook and Instagram from March to June 2024, some showing pill piles or cocaine bricks; Meta removed the ads  —  Instagram and Facebook, already under federal investigation, continue to run ads for illegal drugs, including ads showing piles of pills and bricks of cocaine

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