Techmeme
January 31, 2024, 10:35 AM

Top News

Washington Post:
A live blog of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on kids' online safety, including testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, Linda Yaccarino, and Evan Spiegel  —  The chief executives of five major tech companies are testifying Wednesday about allegations that they failed to protect children …
Hannah Murphy / Financial Times:
Ahead of a US Senate hearing, Mark Zuckerberg calls for requiring Apple and Google to verify ages via app stores; Linda Yaccarino and Evan Spiegel support KOSA  —  Heads of Meta and X are among five social media chief executives to face Congress grilling  —  The chief executives of five …
Todd Spangler / Variety:
UMG plans to stop licensing content to TikTok after their deal expires on January 31, saying they didn't reach terms over issues like artist compensation and AI  —  UMG said that its agreement with TikTok is set to expire on Jan. 31.  “The companies have not agreed to terms for a new agreement …
Sheila Chiang / CNBC:
Samsung reports Q4 revenue down 3.8% YoY to ~$51B, vs. ~$52.1B est., operating profit down ~35% YoY to ~$2.1B, vs. ~$2.6B est., and rising 2024 memory demand  —  - Samsung on Wednesday reported a 34.57% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter from a year ago, in line with its guidance issued earlier this month.
Eri Sugiura / Financial Times:
UK prosecutors say the Met Police seized 61K bitcoin, worth £1.4B+, in 2018, as part of a trial over an alleged ~£5B investment fraud in China between 2014-2017  —  One of the world's largest seizures revealed during trial of woman accused of laundering cryptocurrency for her former employer
Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to $86B, net income up 52% to $20.7B, Google Cloud revenue up 26% to $9.2B, and headcount down 4%+; GOOG drops 5%+  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - January 30, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $62B, net income up 33% YoY to $21.9B, Office Commercial revenue up 15% YoY, and LinkedIn revenue up 9% YoY  —  REDMOND, Wash. — January 30, 2024 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
A look at the four major categories of apps that could emerge at the intersection of crypto and AI, and the prospects and challenges of each category  —  Special thanks to the Worldcoin and Modulus Labs teams, Xinyuan Sun, Martin Koeppelmann and Illia Polosukhin for feedback and discussion.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia RTX 4080 Super review: a $200 price cut to $999, 16GB of VRAM, and impressive 4K performance, but not a big performance boost over the RTX 4070  —  Nvidia's RTX 4080 Super is the third and potentially final of Nvidia's refreshed 40-series GPUs.  The RTX 4070 Super got …
Tom Henderson / Insider Gaming:
A look at Ubisoft's problems, as insiders fear further layoffs: a wild goose chase of popular fads, like NFTs, constant delays, low player numbers, and more  —  As industry-wide layoffs continue to plague headlines, Ubisoft, the sixth-largest video game company by employees, is at a crossroads.
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology.  It's past time we call it what it is.
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Bipartisan Senators unveil the DEFIANCE Act, which would let people sue over deepfake porn and other AI “intimate” images, after the viral Taylor Swift images  —  US lawmakers have proposed letting people sue over faked pornographic images of themselves, following the spread …
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Sen. Brian Schatz on Congress' dysfunction in the tech space, regulating tech firms, the EU's DMA, AI, deepfakes, social media laws for kids, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii.  He's been in the Senate for a little more than a decade now, and he's seen a lot in that time.
More: BloombergThreads: @aaronrosspowellX: @senbrianschatz and @ksandler1
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Figure, which is building a humanoid robot, is in talks to raise as much as $500M in a round led by Microsoft and OpenAI at a $1.9B pre-money valuation  —  - Figure AI is building a humanoid robot to perform hard jobs  — Microsoft weighs leading round that could raise $500 million
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters:
AMD reports Q4 revenue down 10% YoY to $6.2B, net income up 3,076% to $667M, Data Center revenue up 38% to $2.3B, Q1 revenue forecast below est.; AMD drops 5%+  —  Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) forecast first-quarter revenue below market estimates on Tuesday …
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Block begins layoffs under a previously disclosed plan to cut staff by up to 10%, by imposing an “absolute cap” of a 12,000 headcount, which was 13,000 in Q3'23  —  The company plans to drastically reduce its headcount throughout 2024 through a series of layoffs and reorganizing measures.
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Sources: Google splits up its 30-strong Responsible Innovation team, after leader and founder Jen Gennai suddenly left; RESIN conducted 500+ reviews in 2023  —  A crucial team at Google that reviewed new AI products for compliance with its rules for responsible AI development faces …
The Information:
Sources: TikTok plans to open studios in several cities, including LA, where creators can livestream and sell products, a strategy that worked for Douyin  —  When TikTok creators start a livestream to chat about their new favorite hairbrush, dog toy or cleaning product, they're usually doing so from a setup in their own home.

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