Techmeme
August 2, 2024, 9:55 PM

Top News

New York Times:
The US DOJ sues TikTok, saying it collected children's data without parents' permission, knowingly let users under the age of 13 create accounts, and more  —  The Justice Department said that TikTok illegally collected children's data and knowingly allowed users under the age of 13 to create accounts.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and some employees, are joining Google; Google has signed a non-exclusive agreement to use its tech  —  In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed startup.
The Information:
Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products  —  Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, the companies said.
CNBC:
Intel shares fall 26% to close at $21.48 in their biggest drop since 1974, after the company reported a big earnings miss; Intel's market cap is now below $100B  —  Intel shares plunged the most in 50 years on Friday, reaching a price not seen since 2013, after the chipmaker reported …
Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
Trump says Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt and told Trump he wouldn't endorse a Democrat because he “respected” Trump's reaction that day  —  Former President Donald Trump has expressed a newfound fondness for Mark Zuckerberg after years of railing against him.
Brian Schwartz / CNBC:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta is offering Hollywood celebrities like Judi Dench millions of dollars for the right to use their voices for AI projects; SAG-AFTRA agreed to terms  —  - Judi Dench, Awkwafina are among the celebrities holding talks  — Some terms sought by Meta trigger actors' fears of AI
Asa Hiken / Ad Age:
Google pulled an Olympics TV ad where a father uses Gemini to help his daughter write a personal letter to an athlete, after criticisms that the ad is tone-deaf  —  ‘Dear Sydney’ had been criticized for appearing tone-deaf to AI concerns  —  Google has pulled an ad from its Olympics' TV rotation …
Patpicha Tanakasempipat / Bloomberg:
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Data breach notifications show US pharmaceutical giant Cencora has notified at least 1.43M individuals that their data was compromised in a February data breach  —  Cencora has so far notified over a million people around the U.S. that their personal and protected health information …
Olga Kharif / Bloomberg:
Crypto lender Genesis and related companies complete their bankruptcy restructuring and begin distributing ~$4B in digital assets and cash to creditors  —  - Bitcoin creditors will receive 51% recovery on in-kind basis  — Genesis distributions come soon after Mt Gox repaid billions
Akila Quinio / Financial Times:
Sources: Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500M worth of existing shares at a $45B valuation; former employees are ineligible  —  Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500mn worth of existing shares at a $45bn valuation, in a move that would cement …
Nathan Edwards / The Verge:
Surface Pro 11 review: OLED display is vibrant, Flex Keyboard is magic, hardware is solid, but it's costly, not all x86 apps run well, AI features are skippable  —  Microsoft's latest 2-in-1 is all in on Arm, and it's the closest the company's come to merging the power of a laptop with the battery life and flexibility of a tablet.
Forums: r/Surface and r/gadgets
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
Stability AI announces Stable Fast 3D, an AI model for rapid 3D asset generation, which it says can generate a 3D asset from a single image in 0.5 seconds  —  Not all that long ago, it used to be hard, really hard to generate 3D images.  It was a process that involved complex wireframes, complicated software and beefy hardware.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Nintendo reports Q1 revenue down 46.5% YoY to ~$1.65B, vs. ~$1.92B est., net profit down 55.3% YoY to ~$536M, and Switch sales down 46% YoY to 2.1M units  —  Nintendo on Friday reported revenue and profit that plunged in the company's fiscal first quarter, as sales of the ageing Switch console decline.

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.
Zoho:
CIO challenge 6: Can we find an effective solution that also minimizes operational costs?  —  Welcome to the next and final installment of our CIO series!  After what feels like a thousand cups of coffee …
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 11/15 - Crypto Ascendant
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 9:55 PM ET, August 2, 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

Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
The Canadian Press:
Tuvan Gumrukcu / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Pei Li / Bloomberg:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Josh Sisco / Politico:
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Bill Donahue / Billboard:
Bill Peters / MarketWatch:
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: