Techmeme
August 20, 2024, 4:40 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
PitchBook: seven banks' ~$13B loans to Elon Musk to buy X have been “hung” for two years, weighing on balance sheets, the worst buyout for banks since 2008-2009  —  Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, bringing in interest payments but weighing on banks' balance sheets
Erin Woo / The Information:
A letter to investors claims Bolt is finalizing a $450M Series F at a $14B valuation with harsh terms for existing investors; Ryan Breslow aims to return as CEO  —  As startup founder comebacks go, this may rank as one of the most remarkable.  —  Bolt founder Ryan Breslow is returning …
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:
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.
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 …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to make the most expensive iPhone models in India for the first time, as Foxconn rushes to produce iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max in India  —  - Plan shows Apple making further progress with India assembly  — Company is shifting output to India to diversify beyond China
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 …
Blake Brittain / Reuters:
Writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Johnson sue Anthropic for misusing “hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books” to train Claude  —  Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court …
Bloomberg:
Chinese-made, Tencent-backed game Black Myth: Wukong became Steam's second most popular title ever within hours of its launch, gaining 2.1M+ concurrent players  —  - The made-in-China blockbuster surpasses Cyberpunk play record  — Monkey King epic on track to set records for concurrent gamers
Anna Gross / Financial Times:
Ofcom says it has 460+ people working on enforcing the Online Safety Act and plans to grow that by 20% to 550+ by March 2025, or 33% of its 1,500 total staff  —  Online safety rules in the spotlight after violent unrest sparked by spread of misleading news on social media
Connor Jones / The Register:
Cisco Talos says eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft's macOS apps could be abused by attackers to record video and sound from a device, log user input, and more  —  Windows giant tells Cisco Talos it isn't fixing them  —  Cisco Talos says eight vulnerabilities in Microsoft's macOS apps …

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
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 4:40 PM ET, August 20, 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

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Ryan Smith / AnandTech:
Kamil Kowalcze / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian:
Perry Stein / Washington Post:
Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: