Techmeme: Investigation: a Russian espionage and hacking campaign targeted Georgia for years and breached its Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, central bank, and more (Bloomberg)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Site News

October 21, 2024, 10:05 AM

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.

More: MacRumors, Wall Street Journal, Engadget, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, CNET, CNET, TechRadar, Wired, Tom's Guide, BGR, CNET on YouTube, MobileSyrup, Women's Health, CNBC, Tom's Guide, Forbes, New York Times, Slate, and WinBuzzer

Threads: @chriswelch. X: @lutherlowe and @gma. Forums: r/apple

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 …

More: UploadVR, 9to5Mac, WSJ. Style on YouTube, AppleInsider, Digital Trends, TechRadar, Moneycontrol, and Livemint

Threads: @eshumarneedi and @joannastern. Mastodon: @marcoarment@mastodon.social. X: @parkerortolani. Forums: r/apple

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.

More: The Guardian, PCMag, Silicon UK, South China Morning Post, Benzinga, Cybernews.com, TechNode, NewsBytes, and Tech in Asia

Forums: Hacker News and r/anime_titties

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Perplexity is looking to raise ~$500M to double its valuation to $8B or more; Perplexity's annualized revenue is ~$50M, up from ~$10M in March 2024 — Search-based chatbot seeks to raise about $500 million in what would be its fourth funding round in a year

More: Tech Startups, Bloomberg, The keyword, Bloomberg, CNBC, Inc, TipRanks Financial, PYMNTS.com, The Information, Proactive, SiliconANGLE, WinBuzzer, Benzinga, TechCrunch, Financial Times, and Tech in Asia

X: @berber_jin1, @benfritz, and @wsj

Alexandra Marquez / NBC News:

After Elon Musk promises to give $1M to one swing state voter per day who signs his PAC's petition, PA's governor says “law enforcement could take a look” — Musk announced Saturday that every day until Election Day, he would give $1 million to a randomly selected voter who signs a petition circulated by his super PAC.

More: Election Law Blog, Talking Points Memo, The Verge, Disconnect, Fortune, New York Times, The Daily Beast, Reuters, CNBC, BBC, Benzinga, CCN.com, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Washington Examiner, Rolling Stone, Metro.co.uk, The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Caller, Associated Press, CBS News, New York Post, The Indian Express, Mother Jones, Financial Times, NPR, The Information, Global News, KTVU-TV, and Breitbart

Threads: @ronaldfilipkowski. Mastodon: @TonyStark@progressivecafe …, @fixatedpersonsunit@aus.social, @interfluidity@zirk.us, and @jplebreton@mastodon.social

Bluesky: @chickenpuppet.bsky.social, @bubbaprog.ilovecitr.us, @parismarx.bsky.social, @jeffjarvis.bsky.social, and @mmasnick.bsky.social

X: @rickhasen, @elonmusk, @hugolowell, @elonmusk, @electproject, @mehdirhasan, @juddlegum, @elonmusk, @coribush, @elonmusk, @axidentaliberal, @rickhasen, @jdcmedlock, @whstancil, @samstein, @oalexanderdk, @pourteaux, @radiofreetom, and @america. LinkedIn: Hans Lak

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 …

Threads: @reckless1280. Forums: Hacker News

Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:

Q&A with Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis on his Nobel Prize being “a watershed moment for AI”, biology, AlphaFold 3, Isomorphic Labs, drug programs, and more — Founder of the artificial intelligence R&D lab says scientific understanding can prevent mis-steps in developing the technology

More: Axios and Business Insider

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Sources: some at Apple think it is over two years behind the leaders in generative AI; a closer look at changes in Apple's HR and hardware engineering groups — Apple's new iPad mini highlights the company's secret advantage in artificial intelligence. Also: Sonos weighs a headphone reboot …

More: HotHardware, T3, MacRumors, TechRadar, Cult of Mac, WinBuzzer, 9to5Mac, BGR, MacDailyNews, Tom's Guide, Android Authority, Neowin, TrendForce News, Wccftech, On my Om, Thurrott, iPhone in Canada Blog, Digital Trends, Patently Apple, AppleInsider, The Mac Observer, Forbes, PhoneArena, and Hindustan Times

Threads: @carnage4life. X: @markgurman, @markgurman, @markgurman, @thejoshmeister, @vnchocotaco, @neilcybart, @markgurman, @zollotech, and @markgurman

Forums: Hacker News, r/sonos, r/apple, and MacRumors Forums

Paayal Zaveri / Bloomberg:

Zip, which uses AI to help businesses manage buying goods and services, raised $190M led by BOND at a $2.2B valuation, up from $1.5B in May 2023 — - The procurement startup raised $190 million in the deal — Bond led the financing, with participation from DST and CRV

Bloomberg:

Investigation: a Russian espionage and hacking campaign targeted Georgia for years and breached its Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, central bank, and more — With an election this week, documents seen by Bloomberg expose the extent of Moscow's infiltration of the former Soviet state.

X: @rj_gallagher, @willneal93, @martijnrasser, and @albertonardelli

Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:

IBM launches its open source Granite 3.0 models, including 2B and 8B general purpose versions and Mixture-of-Experts models, aimed at enterprise customers — Make no mistake about it, enterprise AI is big business, especially for IBM. — IBM already has a $2 billion book of business related …

More: Benzinga, Tech Monitor, IBM, CRN, IBM Blog, WinBuzzer, AI News, SiliconANGLE, Reuters, Constellation Research, and Tech in Asia

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:

Meet Airtable ProductCentral — The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.

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:

CIO challenge 3: Can I optimize security and compliance for maximum protection? — Welcome to the next installment of our CIO series! Our previous blog post explored how you can connect Zoho Workplace …

Notion:

Get up to 6 months free of Notion with unlimited AI — Notion is trusted and loved by thousands of startups as their connected workspace—from building product roadmaps to tracking fundraising. Build and scale your company with one tool!

Sponsor Techmeme

Who's Hiring In Tech?

Google: Bring questions. Build answers.

Grafana Labs: A leader in OSS observability.

Glean: The Work AI platform.

Vanta: The leading trust management platform.

Redpanda: Streaming data platform for devs.

Automattic: 43% down, 57% to go. WordPress.

Cribl: The Data Engine for IT and Security.

Corelight: Disrupt cyberattacks with evidence.

Codeium: Create code for AI that creates code.

World Labs: A spatial intelligence company.

Abnormal: AI for Human Behavior Security.

Mytra: Software-defined robotics solution.

PayPal: Opening opportunities for all.

Adobe: Let’s create experiences that matter.

Stripe: Help us build universal payments.

Add your company here

Techmeme Ride Home:

Mon. 10/21 - Google Get's A Stay

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.

Sponsor this podcast

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:05 AM ET, October 21, 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.

From Mediagazer

New York Magazine:

New York Magazine says the publication and Olivia Nuzzi agreed to part ways, and an independent probe found no inaccuracies or evidence of bias in Nuzzi's work

Juli Clover / MacRumors:

Disney no longer lets new and returning customers sign up for and buy subscriptions to Hulu or Disney+ through Apple's App Store, avoiding Apple's cut

Kerry Flynn / Axios:

Sources: G/O Media has agreed to sell Jalopnik, a news and opinion site about car culture and one of its few remaining brands, to Static Media

Upcoming Tech Events

Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit

Maui

Oct 22

Bloomberg Technology Summit London

HYBRID: Masters of Scale Summit

Valencia Digital Summit

Valencia, Spain

Oct 24

IPO (expected): Horizon Robotics (HKEX: 9660.HK)

Oct 24

Earnings: LG Electronics

Earnings: GOOG, SNAP, RDDT, AMD, EA

Oct 30

Earnings: META, MSFT, DASH, COIN, HOOD, TWLO, BKNG, EBAY, ROKU

Oct 31

Earnings: AAPL, AMZN, INTC, UBER, Samsung Electronics, MBLY, RBLX

Nov 4

Earnings: PLTR, NXPI

Nov 6

Earnings: LYFT, ARM, APP, MTCH, TTWO

Nov 7

Earnings: PINS, NET

Nov 11-14

Web Summit REGISTER NOW

Lisbon

Nov 18-22

HYBRID: Microsoft Ignite

New York Times DealBook Summit

More News

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:

Seattle-based Carbon Robotics, which offers an AI-powered deweeding robot for farmers, raised a $70M Series D led by BOND, taking its total funding to $157M

More: FinSMEs, Seattle Business Journal, and SiliconANGLE

Nicholas Fearn / Financial Times:

ABI expects there to be 8,400 global data centers by 2030, as investors capitalize on the AI boom; Statista projects the industry will be worth $624B by 2029

More: Constellation Research

Bloomberg:

Tracxn: Indian health tech-related startups raised $3.7B since 2022, about half of the $7.4B raised in the sector across the Asia Pacific region

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:

How OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are using different approaches to improve “model behavior”, an emerging field shaping systems' responses and characteristics

More: Cryptopolitan. X: @cristinacriddle

Washington Post:

A look at the Harris campaign's outreach to the tech sector, as it tries to convince companies that she'll chart her own course while avoiding policy specifics

More: Washington Examiner. X: @adamkovac, @omid, @skupor, @wendyranderson, @katrinanation, @aaschapiro, @scribe_light, and @jason_kint

Wired:

At a San Francisco protest, blind Uber and Lyft users say the companies aren't doing enough to stop drivers from turning away passengers with visual impairments

More: TechCrunch. X: @nfb_voice. Forums: r/Blind

Lisa Bonos / Washington Post:

Polymarket users have bet ~$2B on predicting the next US president; Polymarket has excluded US users since 2022 as part of a settlement with federal regulators

More: Polymarket, Benzinga, Gizmodo, Cointelegraph, International Business Times, Polymarket, IJR, ZeroHedge News, The Independent, and The Crypto Times

X: @biancoresearch, @nic__carter, @matthew_d_green, @nope_its_lily, and @carlquintanilla

Earlier Picks

Daysia Tolentino / NBC News:

After allegations of poor working conditions on MrBeast's Amazon Studios show Beast Games, industry insiders call for more safety oversight on creator-run sets

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @nbcwashington. Forums: r/television