Techmeme
July 10, 2024, 8:20 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
Source: Apple is not taking an OpenAI board observer role, as AI antitrust scrutiny mounts; OpenAI plans to host regular meetings with investors and partners  —  ChatGPT maker plans strategy to engage crucial partners as regulatory scrutiny of sector increases
Ina Fried / Axios:
Microsoft gives up an observer seat on OpenAI's board, citing the new board's “significant progress” and saying the company is “confident” in OpenAI's direction  —  - “We appreciate the support shown by OpenAI leadership and the OpenAI board as we made this decision,” Microsoft said.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft hikes the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by $3 to $19.99/month for new subscribers and plans a Standard tier for $14.99/month without day-one titles  —  Microsoft is planning to hike its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate pricing again in September, alongside launching a new “standard” …
Akshat Rathi / Bloomberg:
Environmental report: Google stops buying carbon offsets and no longer maintains operational carbon neutrality, but still aims to reach net-zero carbon by 2030  —  The tech giant, which has seen its planet-warming emissions rise because of artificial intelligence, has stopped buying cheap offsets behind the neutrality claim.
Financial Times:
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers detail the Blast-RADIUS MD5-based vulnerability affecting RADIUS, a widely-used network access authentication protocol first developed in 1991  —  Ubiquitous RADIUS scheme uses homegrown authentication based on MD5.  Yup, you heard right.  —  One of the most widely used network protocols …
Michael Kan / PCMag:
The US DOJ and its partners seized two domain names and 968 accounts on X used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced bot farm that spread disinformation  —  Russian media outlet RT ran the bot farm to pump out disinformation via 968 Twitter accounts, the US Justice Department says.
Kwanwoo Jun / Wall Street Journal:
Samsung Electronics's union workers declare an indefinite strike on the final day of a three-day walkout and say management showed no intention of holding talks  —  Union cites management's unwillingness to talk to union leaders  —  Samsung Electronics unionized workers have decided to launch …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Google now lets Advanced Protection Program users set up with a single passkey, using Android or iOS biometric authentication, instead of two physical keys  —  Google has made it a little easier for those at more risk of targeted online attacks to enroll in its Advanced Protection Program for Google accounts.
Harshita Mary Varghese / Reuters:
IDC: global PC shipments rose 3% YoY to 64.9M units in Q2 2024; Apple's shipments rose 20.8% YoY, the biggest jump among global PC makers  —  Global shipments of personal computers rose by 3% in the second quarter, helped by demand for AI-capable devices, with Apple (AAPL.O) …
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Sources: xAI ends talks with Oracle to expand an existing arrangement to rent Nvidia chips; source: Oracle is not part of xAI's supercomputer project in Memphis  —  Larry Ellison may be a friend and backer of Elon Musk, but even the Oracle executive chair isn't immune from Musk's impatience.
Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes:
Skild AI, which is building a foundational model for robotics, raised a $300M Series A at a $1.5B valuation led by Lightspeed, SoftBank, Coatue, and Jeff Bezos  —  Skild AI has raised $300 million to continue building its plug-and-play robotic intelligence with the hope of enabling companies to integrate it into robots of all kinds.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Anthropic now lets developers use Claude 3.5 Sonnet to generate, test, and evaluate their prompts, and adds new features, like generating automatic test cases  —  Prompt engineering became a hot job last year in the AI industry, but it seems Anthropic is now developing tools to at least partially automate it.
Kate Clark / The Information:
Source: a16z has secured thousands of AI chips, including Nvidia H100 GPUs, and is renting them to portfolio companies, with the aim of expanding to 20K+ GPUs  —  Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most active venture capital investors in generative artificial intelligence …
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Filing: Evolve Bank & Trust says LockBit accessed the personal data of at least 7.6M people during a February 2024 ransomware attack  —  U.S.-based banking-as-a-service giant Evolve Bank & Trust said that cybercriminals accessed the personal data of millions of customers during a recent cyberattack.
CNN:
An investigation finds Airbnb fails to protect its guests from hidden cameras and moves swiftly to contain user complaints and resolve them out of court  —  Watch AC360 at 8pm ET tonight for more on this investigation, including where cameras can be hidden inside Airbnb rentals.  —  CNN —
Wired:
Elliptic finds a Cambodian online market offering the crypto scam industry products and services, including money laundering and victim data, with $11B in sales  —  Deepfake scam services.  Victim data.  Electrified shackles for human trafficking.  Crypto tracing firm Elliptic found …
Matthew Ball / MatthewBall.co:
Q&A with Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth on the company's metaverse strategy, barriers to MR/VR growth, Reality Labs spending, AR glasses, AI, and more  —  On June 20th, I interviewed Andrew Bosworth.  “Boz” joined Facebook in 2006 as the company's ~10th engineer, subsequently building the original News Feed …

Sponsor Posts

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.
Standard Metrics:
Nail Portfolio Reviews, Board Meetings and LP Reporting  —  You didn't hire that Stanford grad to manage spreadsheets.  Automate VC portfolio reporting and free your talented team up to deliver portfolio insights.
Zoho:
Introducing Zia's game-changing features in Zoho Projects  —  Ever feel like tracking deadlines, task assignments, and progress updates is a never-ending struggle?  You're not alone.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
The Startup Podcast:
SearchGPT Takes on Google, Meta's AI Clones & The State of AI Investment (Reacts)
Sick of going All In? Try The Startup Podcast: Silicon Valley insiders analyzing the latest tech news and trends without the partisanship.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or RSS.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 08/02 - Intel Is Bailing Water
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 AM ET, July 10, 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.

More News

Financial Times:
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Matthew Connatser / The Register:

Earlier Picks

Grace Kay / Business Insider:
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg: