Techmeme
July 16, 2024, 9:35 AM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Elon Musk plans to commit ~$45M per month to America PAC, a new pro-Trump super PAC; other backers include 8VC's Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins  —  Other backers of America PAC include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
A look at Trump VP pick JD Vance's tech ties, including working at Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital and investing in Rumble; Vance advocated repealing Section 230  —  Vance has long had connections to Silicon Valley through his former life as a venture capitalist, including to long-time Donald Trump supporter and investor Peter Thiel.
New York Times:
After Trump was shot, Elon Musk backed his bid and made 100+ posts stepping up his political speech, entering uncharted territory for a social media leader  —  The owner of X broke with tradition at other social media companies to support the former president, as he drives political conversation on his site.
Wall Street Journal:
Nullbulge, a hacktivist group critical of AI art, leaks Disney's alleged Slack messages over “how it handles artist contracts” and AI; Disney is investigating  —  ‘Hacktivist’ group critical of AI-generated art says it has obtained swaths of data from Disney's Slack channels, some of which it has published online
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
UMG, Sony, and other record labels sue Verizon for $2.6B+ over allegations of violating copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music  —  Lawsuit: One user's IP address was identified in 4,450 infringement notices.  —  Major record labels sued Verizon on Friday …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Apple launches the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, tvOS 18, and watchOS 11, but without any Apple Intelligence features  —  You can now download the public betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and watchOS 11.  Apple's updated operating systems will eventually include …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: Google offered CISPE ~€455M worth of Google Cloud licenses and €14M in cash in a deal for CISPE to maintain its antitrust complaint against Microsoft  —  - Cloud group rejected Google package to keep their EU case  — CISPE eventually reached antitrust settlement with Microsoft
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Microsoft researchers unveil SpreadsheetLLM, an encoding method designed to enable LLMs to efficiently understand and analyze complex spreadsheet data  —  Microsoft researchers have unveiled “SpreadsheetLLM,” a new AI model designed to understand and work with spreadsheets, in a significant development for the world of enterprise AI.
Liza Lin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: China's CAC requires AI companies to prepare between 20K and 70K questions designed to test whether their AI models produce safe answers before release  —  Government support helps China's generative AI companies gain ground on U.S. competitors, but political controls threaten to weigh them down
Kim Zetter / ZERO DAY:
Kaspersky plans to close its US business and eliminate US-based positions, following the country's ban on the sale of its antivirus tool starting July 20  —  Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, has told workers in its U.S.-based division that they are being laid off this week …

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The Information:
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg:
Bloomberg: