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Techmeme
August 1, 2024, 4:05 AM

Top News

Meta:
Meta reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $39.07B, net income up 73% to $13.47B, and family daily active people up 7% to 3.27B on average for June 2024  —  Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
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 …
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.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity need to pay to scrape Reddit's data, and blocking them has been “a real pain in the ass”  —  After striking deals with Google and OpenAI, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is calling on Microsoft and others to pay if they want to continue scraping the site's data.
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  —  - Company says phone units will be ‘flattish’ this year  — Upbeat revenue forecast had buoyed stock after earnings report
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 …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Discord on Xbox adds the ability to watch friends' Discord streams whether they're sharing from a PC, mobile phone, or Xbox, rolling out over the coming weeks  —  Microsoft and Discord are greatly improving the integration of the communication platform into Xbox consoles.
Jonathan Kemper / The Decoder:
Google unveils updates to its Gemma family of open models, including Gemma 2 2B, which it claims surpasses GPT-3.5 and Mixtral 8x7B on the LMSYS Chatbot Arena  —  Google has unveiled updates to its Gemma 2 family of open-source language models, focusing on improved performance, safety, and transparency.
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.
Anna Washenko / Engadget:
US senators unveil the bipartisan NO FAKES Act, which would make individuals and companies liable for producing, hosting, or sharing unauthorized AI deepfakes  —  OpenAI joined several entertainment industry groups in backing the NO FAKES Act.  —  Today, a group of senators introduced the NO FAKES Act …
Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk:
Tether reports a “record” $5.2B net profit in H1 2024, net operating profit of $1.3B in Q2, and $97.6B US debt holdings, more than Germany and other countries  —  The company said its $97 billion exposure to U.S. Treasuries would put it 18th in the ranking among countries.
Aaron Holmes / The Information:
Source: TikTok was paying Microsoft ~$20M/month to use OpenAI's models in Azure OpenAI Service as of March, ~25% of the total revenue the 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.
Akash Sriram / Reuters:
eBay reports Q2 revenue up 1% YoY to $2.57B, vs. $2.53B est., GMV up 1% to $18.4B, net income up 31% to $226M, and forecasts Q3 revenue below estimates  —  EBay (EBAY.O) forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, a sign that demand is slowing down for collectible items, luxury handbags and watches.
More: Bloomberg and eBay Inc.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenSecrets: the number of groups lobbying the US government on AI grew from 459 in 2023 to 556 in H1 2024; OpenAI spent $800K in H1 2024, up from $260K in 2023  —  AI lobbying at the U.S. federal level is intensifying in the midst of a continued generative AI boom and an election year that could influence future AI regulation.
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.
Bloomberg:
A look at Baidu's experiment with driverless taxis in Wuhan, which became China's biggest proving ground for Baidu's taxis due to a relaxed regulatory approach  —  Wuhan's experiment with driverless taxis could help China lead the world on the emerging technology.  It also risks putting thousands of people out of work.
Michael Hennessey / Bloomberg:
Delivery Hero plans to merge two of its European businesses, Foodora and Yemeksepeti, with its Asian business, Foodpanda, and cut fewer than 200 employees  —  - Fewer than 200 employees will be affected by the merger  — A previous deal to sell some of the Asian business fell apart

Sponsor Posts

Google:
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Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
Zoho:
AI meeting assistants: A game-changer in communication  —  We've come a long way from live video call demonstrations at world's fairs.  What was once considered a futuristic idea is now a vital part of how we collaborate …
IDrive:
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