Techmeme
August 2, 2024, 5:20 PM

Top News

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and some employees, are joining Google; Google has signed a non-exclusive agreement to use its tech  —  In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed startup.
The Information:
Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products  —  Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, the companies said.
More: Financial TimesX: @hkarthik, @dylan522p, @amir, and @bryceForums: Slashdot
New York Times:
The US DOJ sues TikTok, saying it collected children's data without parents' permission, knowingly let users under the age of 13 create accounts, and more  —  The Justice Department said that TikTok illegally collected children's data and knowingly allowed users under the age of 13 to create accounts.
Brian Schwartz / CNBC:
Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
Trump says Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt and told Trump he wouldn't endorse a Democrat because he “respected” Trump's reaction that day  —  Former President Donald Trump has expressed a newfound fondness for Mark Zuckerberg after years of railing against him.
CNBC:
Intel shares fall 26% to close at $21.48 in their biggest drop since 1974, after the company reported a big earnings miss; Intel's market cap is now below $100B  —  Intel shares plunged the most in 50 years on Friday, reaching a price not seen since 2013, after the chipmaker reported …
Asa Hiken / Ad Age:
Google pulled an Olympics TV ad where a father uses Gemini to help his daughter write a personal letter to an athlete, after criticisms that the ad is tone-deaf  —  ‘Dear Sydney’ had been criticized for appearing tone-deaf to AI concerns  —  Google has pulled an ad from its Olympics' TV rotation …
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
Stability AI announces Stable Fast 3D, a generative AI model for rapid 3D asset generation, says it can generate a 3D asset from a single image in 0.5 seconds  —  Not all that long ago, it used to be hard, really hard to generate 3D images.  It was a process that involved complex wireframes, complicated software and beefy hardware.
Pei Li / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple in recent months has demanded Tencent and ByteDance close loopholes used by their in-app creators to funnel users to external payment systems  —  - iPhone maker wants to close loopholes in mini-games payments  — Handling in-app purchases is a lucrative business for Apple
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Crypto lender Genesis and related companies complete their bankruptcy restructuring and begin distributing ~$4B in digital assets and cash to creditors  —  - Bitcoin creditors will receive 51% recovery on in-kind basis  — Genesis distributions come soon after Mt Gox repaid billions
Nathan Edwards / The Verge:
Surface Pro 11 review: OLED display is vibrant, Flex Keyboard is magic, hardware is solid, but it's costly, not all x86 apps run well, AI features are skippable  —  Microsoft's latest 2-in-1 is all in on Arm, and it's the closest the company's come to merging the power of a laptop with the battery life and flexibility of a tablet.
Forums: r/gadgets
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Infoblox and Eclypsium: since 2018, Russian hackers hijacked 35K+ registered domains using Sitting Ducks attacks that involve exploiting DNS configuration flaws  —  Threat actors have hijacked more than 35,000 registered domains in so-called Sitting Ducks attacks that allow claiming …
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Nintendo reports Q1 revenue down 46.5% YoY to ~$1.65B, vs. ~$1.92B est., net profit down 55.3% YoY to ~$536M, and Switch sales down 46% YoY to 2.1M units  —  Nintendo on Friday reported revenue and profit that plunged in the company's fiscal first quarter, as sales of the ageing Switch console decline.
Akila Quinio / Financial Times:
Sources: Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500M worth of existing shares at a $45B valuation; former employees are ineligible  —  Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500mn worth of existing shares at a $45bn valuation, in a move that would cement …

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More News

Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
The Canadian Press:
Tuvan Gumrukcu / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Josh Sisco / Politico:
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Bill Donahue / Billboard:
Bill Peters / MarketWatch:
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: