Techmeme
November 20, 2024, 3:45 PM

Top News

Sarah Wynn / The Block:
A US judge sentences FTX co-founder Gary Wang to “time served”, meaning no jail time; Wang pleaded guilty in December 2022 to fraud charges after FTX collapsed  —  - Gary Wang pleaded guilty in December 2022 to fraud-related charges following the collapse of FTX a month earlier.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Amazon unveils the $400 Echo Show 21, an upgrade to the Echo Show 15 from 2022, with a 21" 1080p display and auto-framing camera, and updates the Echo Show 15  —  Amazon's first wall-mounted smart display just got a big upgrade.  Today, the company announced the launch of the Echo Show 21 …
Margi Murphy / Bloomberg:
US prosecutors charge five alleged members of the Scattered Spider hacking group for their role in the hacks of 29+ individuals and theft of $11M+ in crypto  —  - $11 million stolen in years-long campaign targeting US firms  — Loosely-knit group consists of young men in US and UK
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Threads begins rolling out the ability to create custom feeds globally, giving users options beyond “For You” and “Following” feeds  —  As X competitor Bluesky takes off, topping 20 million users, Meta's own Twitter-like app, Instagram Threads, has begun rolling …
Wired:
An investigation reveals how phone coordinates collected by US data broker Datastream expose the movements of US military and intelligence workers in Germany  —  More than 3 billion phone coordinates collected by a US data broker expose the detailed movements of US military and intelligence workers …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Chinese AI company DeepSeek unveils DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview, a “reasoning” AI model that it claims is competitive with OpenAI's o1, and plans to open source it  —  A Chinese lab has unveiled what appears to be one of the first “reasoning” AI models to rival OpenAI's o1.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
David Streitfeld / New York Times:
How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment, telling staff to destroy messages, avoid some words, and copy in lawyers, as it faces US lawsuits  —  Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google systematically told employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words and copy the lawyers as often as possible.
Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
As OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google reportedly see diminishing generative AI training returns, a market hype break may be useful, just as with previous innovations  —  Businesses will benefit from some much-needed breathing space to figure out how to deliver that all-important return on investment.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Trump's team is talking with the crypto industry over whether to create a White House post dedicated to cryptocurrency policy and is vetting candidates  —  - President-elect's team is vetting candidates for the job  — Crypto industry executives spoke with Trump this week
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
Leaked documents: Graykey, a phone unlocking tool used by police, can access “partial” data from the iPhone 12 up to the iPhone 16 running iOS 18 or iOS 18.0.1  —  The Graykey, a phone unlocking and forensics tool that is used by law enforcement around the world …
Mishaal Rahman / Android Police:
Google ships the first Android 16 developer preview, far ahead of schedule compared to the past decade, hoping to lower fragmentation by giving OEMs more time  —  Surprise!  Google is releasing the first developer preview of Android 16 today so that app developers can test the new APIs …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Menlo Ventures: business spending on generative AI hit $13.8B in 2024, up from $2.3B in 2023; OpenAI's marketshare in enterprise AI declined from 50% to 34%  —  Business spending on generative AI surged 500% this year, from $2.3 billion in 2023 to $13.8 billion, according to data released by Menlo Ventures on Wednesday.
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
The Biden admin finalizes $1.5B CHIPS Act incentives for GlobalFoundries, meaning it can start receiving federal funding for facilities in Vermont and New York  —  - Pact doesn't include $1.6 billion loan from proposed agreement  — Biden administration has been firming up Chips Act awards
Sharon Goldman / Fortune:
How Mark Zuckerberg made Llama a cornerstone of AI ambitions at Meta, whose smartphone-era services and products have been constrained by Apple and Google  —  Zuckerberg has pushed Meta to build Llama into all its products and services, including its Orion augmented reality glasses now in prototype stage.
Ray Maker / DC Rainmaker:
Strava updates its API terms to prohibit third parties from using any data in AI models or similar apps, including to show a user's Strava data to other users  —  Yesterday Strava sent out an e-mail to users, outlining a change that's occurring almost immediately, regarding 3rd party apps …

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