Techmeme
August 8, 2024, 11:40 AM

Top News

Josh Self / Politics.co.uk:
In a now-deleted X post, Elon Musk reposted a fake Telegraph story shared by a far-right party about the UK opening “Detainment Camps”; the post had 1.8M views  —  Elon Musk has deleted a post on X, the social media platform he owns, in which he spread fake news about …
Financial Times:
Similarweb: active UK Telegram users hit 3.1M on July 29 and 3.7M on July 30 after a stabbing, as rioters used chat apps, up from a ~2.7M average in early 2024  —  Messaging service, known for ‘hands off’ approach to content moderation, faces pressure to tackle extremist groups
Financial Times:
Sources: Google and Meta ran a pilot program in the US in May 2024 to target Instagram ads to teenagers on YouTube, which prohibits targeting ads to under-18s  —  Campaign on YouTube to boost Instagram's appeal to young people skirted search group's rules for marketing to under-18s
Camilla Hodgson / Financial Times:
The UK CMA opens a formal merger inquiry into Amazon's Anthropic investment after getting “sufficient information” about the deal; Amazon is “disappointed”  —  CMA to escalate matter to the first phase after seeking views on tech giant's investment in the AI start-up
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
A researcher details a Windows Update vulnerability that could be exploited to downgrade key components of Windows to older versions that contain known flaws  —  A researcher found a vulnerability that would let hackers strategically downgrade a target's Windows version to reexpose patched vulnerabilities.
Thomas Brewster / Forbes:
Researchers: hackers have used an 18-year-old flaw in how Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on macOS handle queries to a 0.0.0.0 IP address to breach private networks  —  Weaknesses in Chrome, Firefox and Safari gave hackers a route into internal networks, even those protected by firewalls, security researchers warn.
Adam James / The Block:
John Liu / New York Times:
Interviews with 12 TSMC staff detail ongoing culture clashes in Arizona, as well as Japan and Germany; about 50% of the 2,200 Phoenix workers came from Taiwan  —  The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company facility in Phoenix.Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Google says it stopped making the Chromecast after intense competition, shifting to a premium device, and views the Nvidia Shield as something to strive towards  —  The Chromecast is going away after more than a decade in Google's hardware portfolio, with the company phasing it out to make room for the new Google TV Streamer.
Nicholas Sutrich / Android Central:
Meta closes Ready at Dawn Studios, acquired in June 2020 and which produced VR games like Lone Echo and Echo VR, to meet Reality Labs' new budgetary ceiling  —  Echo VR developer Ready at Dawn Studios is now closed for business.  —  Updated 8/17 at 5:19pm ET: The information Android Central …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
A group of VCs, including Reid Hoffman and Ron Conway, hosted a “VCs for Kamala” Zoom call to support Harris' campaign with up to 600 attendees, raising $150K  —  It started with a “rage tweet.”  —  “Gonna start ‘VCs for Democracy,’” Leslie Feinzaig, founder and general partner at Graham & Walker, wrote on X in late July.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Flyr, which provides software to travel companies, raised $225M in equity and $70M in debt, source says at a $900M valuation, bringing its total raised to $500M  —  Investors valued the startup at $900 million in its latest funding round. … The deal, led by WestCap, values the startup at $900 million …
Richard Nieva / Forbes:
Hugging Face buys XetHub, a collaboration platform started by ex-Apple employees that raised $7.5M to help developers work with and build large-scale models  —  Purchased for an undisclosed sum, XetHub is staffed by a number of former Apple employees.  Hugging Face thinks …
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:
A US judge orders Ripple to pay a $125M penalty for selling XRP to institutional investors, well below the almost $2B the SEC sought in the case; XRP jumps 20%+  —  - Regulator had sought almost $2 billion in fines, penalties  — Ripple token XRP surges on court ruling but is flat this year
Axios:
Anduril Industries raised a $1.5B Series F co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital at a $14B valuation, up from ~$8.5B after raising ~$1.5B in December 2022  —  - Sands Capital and existing investor Founders Fund co-led the Series F round, which is at a 65% post-money premium to where Anduril last raised money in late 2022.
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Ofcom publishes an open letter to social media platforms raising concerns about the use of their tools to incite violence, following days of rioting in the UK  —  The U.K.'s internet regulator, Ofcom, has published an open letter to social media platforms raising concerns about the use of their tools to incite violence.
Financial Times:

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