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Techmeme
February 29, 2024, 11:35 PM
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Top News

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Source: Embracer plans to sell its subsidiary Saber Interactive to private investors in a $500M deal, making Saber a privately-owned company with ~3,500 staff  —  Saber will continue developing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic  —  Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB will sell …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft launches Copilot for Finance in public preview, helping users reconcile data in Excel, speed up the collections process in Outlook, and more  —  - Microsoft is launching a Copilot for Finance, which it said will be able to perform a handful of common role-specific actions in Excel and Outlook.
Bloomberg:
Meta plans to deprecate the Facebook News tab in the US and Australia in early April 2024 and stop signing deals for traditional news content in those countries  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is winding down its news feature in the US and Australia, part of a broader shift away from the category for the social media giant.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Alibaba researchers detail EMO, or Emote Portrait Alive, an AI system that creates a realistic talking or singing video from a portrait photo and an audio file  —  Researchers at Alibaba's Institute for Intelligent Computing have developed a new artificial intelligence system called “EMO,” …
Consumer Reports:
Researchers find serious security flaws in cheap video doorbells sold by Chinese company Aiwit under various brand names on Amazon, Shein, Temu, and other sites  —  The devices are also sold by Walmart, Sears, and other retailers—and big platforms have faced few consequences for shipping flawed products
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Change Healthcare confirms that the ransomware group BlackCat is behind the ongoing attack that has caused widespread disruptions to pharmacies across the US  —  - Change Healthcare on Thursday confirmed that the ransomware group Blackcat is behind the ongoing cybersecurity attack that's been impacting its systems since last week.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
JFrog finds ~100 malicious PyTorch and Tensorflow Keras models on Hugging Face, some of which can execute code on users' machines to give attackers a backdoor  —  At least 100 instances of malicious AI ML models were found on the Hugging Face platform, some of which can execute code on the victim's machine …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Microsoft outlines its new DirectSR API, which lets game developers integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and others  —  Microsoft has outlined a new Windows API designed to offer a seamless way for game developers to integrate super resolution AI-upscaling features from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Brave debuts its AI-powered assistant Leo, which can create real-time summaries of webpages or videos, generate long-form written content, and more, on Android  —  Brave is launching its AI-powered assistant, Leo, to all Android users.  The assistant allows users to ask questions …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google adds Photomath, which solves math problems after users take photos, to its Play Store and App Store publisher accounts, after buying the app in May 2022  —  In May of 2022, Google announced that it was acquiring a math solver app called Photomath.  The deal closed last year …
Stephanie Kirchgaessner / The Guardian:
A US judge orders the NSO Group to hand over its code for Pegasus and other spyware products to Meta, as part of Meta's ongoing litigation to protect WhatsApp  —  Israeli company NSO Group is accused in lawsuit by Meta's messaging app of spying on 1,400 users over a two-week period
Larry Dignan / Constellation Research:
Dell reports Q4 revenue down 11% YoY to $22.3B, vs. $22.2B est., Client revenue down 12% to $11.7B, and Infrastructure revenue down 6% to $9.3B; DELL jumps 15%+  —  Dell Technologies reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter as the company saw strong demand for AI-optimized servers.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
HPE reports Q1 revenue down 14% YoY to $6.76B, vs. $7.1B est., Server revenue down 23% YoY to $3.4B, and reduces its FY 2024 outlook for sales growth and profit  —  Revenue will increase as much as 2%, excluding currency fluctuations, in the fiscal year ending in October.
Greg Bensinger / Reuters:
Email: GM told Cruise employees that a third party had estimated the self-driving unit's internal share price at $11.80, down from $24.27 just one quarter ago  —  General Motors' (GM.N) Cruise saw its internal share price cut by more than half from a quarter ago as the fallout …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Robotics startup Figure AI confirms raising $675M at a $2.6B valuation and is partnering with OpenAI to “develop next-generation AI models for humanoid robots”  —  - Figure AI raised $675 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and OpenAI.

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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:35 PM ET, February 29, 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

Chris Willman / Variety:
Taylor Swift purchases her catalog of recordings, which were initially released through Big Machine Records, from Shamrock for an undisclosed nine-figure sum

The Bookseller:
Boundless, which bought crowdfunding publisher Unbound in March, tells authors that royalties accrued before March won't be paid until Boundless is cash stable

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Business Insider is cutting staff by 21% to “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control” and “exiting the majority of our Commerce business”

More News

Paul Vieira / Wall Street Journal:
Canada's antitrust watchdog expands its four-year probe into Google's online ad practices, with a focus on whether the company engages in predatory pricing
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Stack Overflow launches OverflowAPI to give AI companies access to its knowledge base, starting with Google, which will use the data for Gemini for Google Cloud
Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post:
The US launches a probe into possible security risks of Chinese-manufactured vehicles, saying modern cars are like smartphones and could be used for espionage
Davey Winder / Forbes:
Russian-speaking LockBit threatens to release Fulton County Court's Donald Trump case docs “that could affect the upcoming US election”, if a ransom isn't paid

Earlier Picks

Reuters:
Coinbase says all services on its website have been restored after a “display issue” on February 28 caused some users to see a zero balance in their account
Leo Schwartz / Fortune:
Gemini agrees to return the $1B+ owed to customers and pay a $37M fine in a settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services related to Gemini Earn
Alex Koller / CNBC:
EA plans to cut 5% of its workforce, part of a plan that includes reducing office space and sunsetting some games; EA employed 13,400 workers as of March 2023
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