Techmeme
August 14, 2024, 4:50 PM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple says developers can offer NFC transactions using the iPhone's Secure Element, separate from Apple Pay, starting in iOS 18.1; there'll be “associated fees”  —  Apple has announced that it is opening up the iPhone's NFC chip using the Secure Element to allow …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is prioritizing developing a tabletop home device with an iPad-like display and a robotic limb, aiming for a release in 2026 or 2027 for ~$1,000  —  - Executive who oversaw car project is leading the effort  — Device would offer twist on home products from Amazon and Meta
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
xAI launches Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta with improved reasoning and image generation, available now to X Premium and Premium+ users, and later via its API  —  Elon Musk-owned launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta today with improved reasoning.  The new Grok AI model can now generate images …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Apple approves Spotify updating its app to show in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the EU starting today, after Spotify's yearslong legal battle  —  Spotify will begin showing in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the European Union starting today, following a yearslong legal battle against Apple.
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X review: the Zen 5 flagship chips are fine for highly threaded productivity workloads, but the gaming issues need to be fixed  —  Earlier this month, AMD launched the first two desktop CPUs using their latest Zen 5 microarchitecture: the Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X.
Orianna Rosa Royle / Fortune:
During a talk, Eric Schmidt said Google is losing the AI race because it decided that work-life balance and working from home were “more important than winning”  —  Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt has a complaint about his old stomping ground—and it's one that workers have heard …
Troy Hunt:
A look at the National Public Data breach, first noted in April 2024 and posted publicly last week, and why it's unlikely that “nearly 3B people” were exposed  —  I decided to write this post because there's no concise way to explain the nuances of what's being described as one of the largest data breaches ever.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Access Now and Citizen Lab: Russian spy agencies are using deep knowledge about opponents, reporters, and human rights groups to target them via phishing emails  —  Traditional phishing attacks aimed to break into organizations advocating for Russian dissidents, among others.
Dara Kerr / NPR:
Meta shuts down CrowdTangle, less than three months before the US election, in favor of the Meta Content Library; Mozilla says 50K+ petitioned against the move  —  Meta has been bombarded by academics, researchers, politicians and regulators about a tool called CrowdTangle, which most people probably haven't heard of.
Ben Dowsett / Wired:
How the English Premier League plans to use 28+ iPhone 14 or newer cameras at stadiums to call offsides later in the 2024/25 season, ditching its VAR system  —  Later this season, the UK's top soccer division will replace its controversial VAR offside-detection system in favor of a whole bunch of Apple's smartphones.
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times:
A look at some of the victims of the now-ubiquitous deepfake video scams; an analysis of 2,000+ deepfakes found Elon Musk was featured in ~25% of such scams  —  “It's shifting now because organized crime has figured out, ‘we can make money at this,’” according to Lou Steinberg, the founder of CTM Insights, a cybersecurity research lab.
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:
Eli Blumenthal / CNET:
Financial Times:
How Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta are using accounting techniques to hide their growing emissions, while working to influence pollution disclosure rules  —  Critics say a proposed change could allow large energy users to hide their true emissions  —  By its own account, Amazon is a green business leader.

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign is a “high growth performer” in the Frost & Sullivan's Frost Radar™ for electronic signature software, 2024  —  We are happy to announce that Zoho Sign has clinched a position as a high growth performer …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 11/07 - More Election Stuff
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM ET, August 14, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Nic Fildes / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: