Techmeme
August 20, 2024, 9:35 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
PitchBook: seven banks' ~$13B loans to Musk to buy Twitter have been “hung” for two years, weighing on balance sheets, the worst buyout for banks since 2008-09  —  Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, bringing in interest payments but weighing on banks' balance sheets
OpenAI:
OpenAI launches fine-tuning for GPT-4o, which lets developers customize a version of the model with their own datasets to improve domain-specific performance  —  Fine-tune custom versions of GPT-4o to increase performance and accuracy for your applications  —  Today, we're launching fine-tuning …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says Waymo is now giving 100K+ paid robotaxi rides every week in LA, San Francisco, and Phoenix, a few months after passing 50K+  —  Waymo disclosed Tuesday it's now giving more than 100,000 paid robotaxi rides every week across its three main commercial markets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
CNBC:
Daniel Wiessner / Reuters:
A US district judge in Texas strikes down the FTC's ban on worker noncompete agreements, due to start September 4, after her temporary block of the rule in July  —  A federal judge in Texas on Tuesday barred a U.S. Federal Trade Commission rule from taking effect that would ban agreements commonly signed …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Flight tracking site FlightAware, which claims 10M+ monthly users, reports a breach dating back to January 2021 that exposed names, SSNs, addresses, and more  —  Flight tracking site FlightAware has blamed a “configuration error” for exposing a raft of personal information of its customers …
Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
A US appeals court revives a class action suit by Google Chrome users who say Google collected personal info even if Chrome was not synced with a Google account  —  A U.S. appeals court said Google (GOOGL.O) must face a revived lawsuit by Google Chrome users who said the company collected …
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Condé Nast makes a multiyear deal with OpenAI, letting ChatGPT and SearchGPT surface stories from The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, and Wired  —  The media company joins The Atlantic, Axel Springer, Vox Media, and a host of other publishers who have partnered with OpenAI.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft launches a single unified Teams app that allows switching between work, personal, and education accounts on Windows and Mac  —  Microsoft is finally launching a single unified Microsoft Teams app that will allow you to switch between personal and work accounts.
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Shein sues Temu for copyright infringement, accusing the company of stealing trade secrets and masquerading “as a legitimate e-commerce ‘marketplace’”  —  Shein, notorious for being accused of copyright infringement by small artists and big brands alike …
Amy Or / Bloomberg:
Sources: Walmart, JD.com's largest shareholder, is seeking to raise up to $3.74B by selling its stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm; JD falls 9%+ after hours  —  - Walmart is offering shares in $24.85-$25.85/each range  — Share sale marks the end of partnership that started in 2016
More: Reuters
Daniel Tencer / Music Business Worldwide:
The AGs of 10 states join the US DOJ's antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster; 39 states, plus DC, are now part of the lawsuit  —  The attorneys general of 10 states have joined the US Department of Justice (DoJ)'s antitrust lawsuit seeking to break off Live Nation …

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Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
Everyone's an engineer now: Inside v0's mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js)
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Derek Thompson (Writer, The Atlantic) and Zach Weinberg (Co-founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) Discuss the Tariff Withdrawal and America's Future
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Great Chat:
The bull case for domestic manufacturing
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Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Why DOGE is killing the agency that keeps banks from ripping you off
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
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More News

Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Kamil Kowalcze / Bloomberg:
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Connor Jones / The Register:
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: