Techmeme
September 24, 2024, 6:00 PM

Top News

Larry Dignan / Constellation Research:
Google Cloud debuts Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro with a 2M context window, twice as big as before, “grounding” for better Google search accuracy, and new agents  —  Google Cloud launched a series of updates including new Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro models with a 2 million context window …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Brady Dale / Axios:
Caroline Ellison, a star witness in the prosecution of FTX founder and former boyfriend SBF, is sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the FTX scandal  —  - “I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years. … - She talked to the government prior to Bankman-Fried's arrest …
New York Times:
Sources: Mark Zuckerberg wants to get away from politics, pulling back from charitable causes that may seem partisan, tamping down employee activism, and more  —  It was only a little more than a decade ago that Mark Zuckerberg had few qualms about airing his politics.
Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
The US DOJ sues Visa, alleging it has an illegal monopoly over debit network markets and has tried to unlawfully crush competitors, including PayPal and Square  —  The financial service company reportedly tried to ‘smother’ competitors and feared Apple as an ‘existential threat.’
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Spotify rolls out its AI Playlist feature in beta to Premium subscribers in the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, after launching in the UK and Australia  —  Spotify is expanding an AI feature that creates customized playlists from your text descriptions to additional English-speaking regions.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Marques Brownlee says “I hear you” after criticism of his new freemium wallpaper app Panels, over privacy concerns, a $50/year price for full access, and more  —  Marques Brownlee, the YouTuber known as MKBHD, has responded to backlash over the launch of his new wallpaper app, called Panels.
Katie Kilkenny / The Hollywood Reporter:
SAG-AFTRA calls a strike against League of Legends, formerly strike exempt, filing an NLRB complaint and saying Formosa Interactive also refuses “fair AI terms”  —  The union charges one of the multiplayer game's producers, Formosa Interactive, with attempting to work around …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI adds five voices to Advanced Voice Mode, which is now rolling out to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users and, next week, to enterprise and education users  —  OpenAI announced it is rolling out Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) to an expanded set of ChatGPT's paying customers on Tuesday.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google updates Google Photos' mobile video editor for Android and iOS, adding editing tools and AI presets that should make trimming and tweaking clips easier  —  Features coming to Android devices include a new “Speed” tool for creating slo-mo or sped-up videos, a new “Auto enhance” …
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Stability AI says filmmaker James Cameron has joined its board of directors  —  The director says that “the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave” of film technology, as he joins the company behind the popular Stable Diffusion AI model.
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
TikTok says it plans to shut down TikTok Music on November 28 and delete user data; originally called Resso, the app launched in 2019 and was in five countries  —  TikTok Music will go offline on Nov. 28 and customer data will be deleted, the music division said in a post on its website.
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
Collaboration software maker Smartsheet agrees to be acquired by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners for ~$8.4B, or $56.50/share, set to close in January 2025  —  Collaboration software maker Smartsheet on Tuesday announced Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners will acquire it in an all-cash deal valuing …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
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:
Passkeys Week for a passwordless future: Learn how Zoho is embracing passkeys  —  Passkeys are the modern-day alternative authentication method that was introduced to replace traditional passwords for enhanced security and convenience.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Mon. 11/18 - More Smartglasses On The Horizon
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 6:00 PM ET, September 24, 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

Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Chris Welch / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

US Department of State:
Bloomberg:
Daniel Kuhn / The Block: