Techmeme
August 14, 2024, 6:25 PM

Top News

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
xAI launches Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta with improved reasoning and image generation, available now to X Premium and Premium+ users, and later via its API  —  Elon Musk-owned launched Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini in beta today with improved reasoning.  The new Grok AI model can now generate images …
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Images generated by Grok, like Barack Obama doing cocaine and Donald Trump and Kamala Harris with guns, go viral on X, raising questions about Grok's guardrails  —  xAI's Grok chatbot now lets you create images from text prompts and publish them to X — and so far, the rollout seems as chaotic …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple says developers can offer NFC transactions using the iPhone's Secure Element, separate from Apple Pay, starting in iOS 18.1; there'll be “associated fees”  —  Apple has announced that it is opening up the iPhone's NFC chip using the Secure Element to allow …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is prioritizing developing a tabletop home device with an iPad-like display and a robotic limb, aiming for a release in 2026 or 2027 for ~$1,000  —  - Executive who oversaw car project is leading the effort  — Device would offer twist on home products from Amazon and Meta
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Apple approves Spotify updating its app to show in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the EU starting today, after Spotify's yearslong legal battle  —  Spotify will begin showing in-app pricing information for iPhone users in the European Union starting today, following a yearslong legal battle against Apple.
Dara Kerr / NPR:
Meta shuts down CrowdTangle, less than three months before the US election, in favor of the Meta Content Library; Mozilla says 50K+ petitioned against the move  —  Meta has been bombarded by academics, researchers, politicians and regulators about a tool called CrowdTangle, which most people probably haven't heard of.
Danny Gallagher / Engadget:
The US FTC announces a final rule banning the sale of fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones, with fines as high as $50K per violation  —  The new rules prohibit the selling of fake and AI-generated reviews and testimonials in several forms.
Orianna Rosa Royle / Fortune:
During a talk, Eric Schmidt said Google is losing the AI race because it decided that work-life balance and working from home were “more important than winning”  —  Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt has a complaint about his old stomping ground—and it's one that workers have heard …
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X review: the Zen 5 flagship chips are fine for highly threaded productivity workloads, but the gaming issues need to be fixed  —  Earlier this month, AMD launched the first two desktop CPUs using their latest Zen 5 microarchitecture: the Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 5 9600X.
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Sources: Sonos is considering relaunching its previous mobile app as it works to improve the redesigned version, which launched in May to widespread criticism  —  Sonos has explored the possibility of rereleasing its previous mobile app for Android and iOS — a clear sign of what an ordeal the company's hurried redesign has become.
Troy Hunt:
A look at the National Public Data breach, first noted in April 2024 and posted publicly last week, and why it's unlikely that “nearly 3B people” were exposed  —  I decided to write this post because there's no concise way to explain the nuances of what's being described as one of the largest data breaches ever.
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Access Now and Citizen Lab: Russian spy agencies are using deep knowledge about opponents, reporters, and human rights groups to target them via phishing emails  —  Traditional phishing attacks aimed to break into organizations advocating for Russian dissidents, among others.
Ben Dowsett / Wired:
How the English Premier League plans to use 28+ iPhone 14 or newer cameras at stadiums to call offsides later in the 2024/25 season, ditching its VAR system  —  Later this season, the UK's top soccer division will replace its controversial VAR offside-detection system in favor of a whole bunch of Apple's smartphones.
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times:
A look at some of the victims of the now-ubiquitous deepfake video scams; an analysis of 2,000+ deepfakes found Elon Musk was featured in ~25% of such scams  —  “It's shifting now because organized crime has figured out, ‘we can make money at this,’” according to Lou Steinberg, the founder of CTM Insights, a cybersecurity research lab.
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
The main takeaway from the Google Pixel event is Android's primacy, and Google's integration with Android is worth preserving if the goal is spurring innovation  —  The original Pixel was released in 2016 at the end of interesting, at least when it came to smartphones.
More: SlashGear, CNET, and 9to5Google
Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal:

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Earlier Picks

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Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: