Techmeme
October 21, 2024, 4:25 PM

Top News

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Hands-on with Apple's hearing health features for AirPods Pro 2, set for iOS 18.1: hearing aids work well, hearing protection in all modes, and a hearing test  —  The AirPods Pro 2 will soon offer more robust hearing protection and a new hearing aid feature.  But it's the hearing test that has really hooked me.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority:
Qualcomm unveils the 8 Elite, a 3nm mobile chip with 2 prime and 6 performance CPU cores, claiming a 45% CPU boost over the 8 Gen 3, faster NPU and GPU, more  —  The new name marks a major departure from previous Snapdragons.  —  •  —  After much speculation, Qualcomm has lifted …
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft unveils 10 new AI agents for its enterprise-focused Dynamics 365 apps covering sales, finance, and more, ahead of Salesforce's Agentforce availability  —  AI agents are reigniting the competition between Microsoft and Salesforce.  —  Microsoft announced 10 new AI agents …
Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of and interview with Tim Cook on being “perfectly fine with not being first”, running Apple, Vision Pro, AI, the Design Studio, group chats, and more  —  The CEO of the world's most valuable company led two of the biggest product launches of his tenure this year …
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk:
Stripe announces it has finalized a deal to acquire stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge; Michael Arrington says the deal was worth $1.1B  —  Bridge, which has raised $54 million in funding, previously said it aspired to become the blockchain version of Stripe, operating a global system in which other developers could integrate
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi on AI, tax, and more; in a follow-up, an exec said “at the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted”  —  We declined. … Today's episode of Decoder, well — it's a ride.  I'm talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi …
João da Silva / BBC:
ByteDance says it fired an intern in its ad tech team for “maliciously interfering” with AI training, and says operations were unaffected by their actions  —  TikTok owner, ByteDance, says it has sacked an intern for “maliciously interfering” with the training of one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Blade Runner 2049's producer sues Musk, Tesla, and WBD for allegedly using AI to create imagery close to the film, despite a denied request, to promote Cybercab  —  Alcon Entertainment, the Hollywood company behind “Blade Runner 2049,” said it had denied a request to use images from the movie but that Mr. Musk did so anyway.
Joe Warminsky / The Record:
UK-based Sophos plans to acquire Atlanta-based cybersecurity company Secureworks for ~$859M, expected to close in early 2025; Dell owns ~79% of Secureworks  —  Prominent cybersecurity company Sophos is acquiring another well-known firm in the industry, Secureworks, for about $859 million, the two companies announced Monday.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
xAI launches an API for “grok-beta” priced at $5 per million input tokens or $15 per million output tokens; it is unclear which AI model “grok-beta” might be  —  In August, Elon Musk's xAI promised to make Grok, the company's flagship generative AI model powering a number of features on X, available via an API.
More: VentureBeat and MediaPostForums: Hacker News
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Dow Jones and New York Post sue AI startup Perplexity for alleged copyright infringement and say it hasn't replied to a July 2024 letter about copyright issues  —  News Corp CEO accuses Perplexity of ‘content kleptocracy’ … “Perplexity is a generative artificial intelligence company …

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