Techmeme
August 20, 2024, 8:10 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 …
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.
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 …
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.
Eric Newcomer / Newcomer:
In a letter to investors, Bolt says its finalizing a $450M Series F at a $14B valuation, but the deal terms are bewildering and hard to believe  —  The financial technology company told investors that it is raising at a $14 billion valuation.  That's hard to believe.  —  ∙ Paid
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 …
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 …
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 …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
How EQ plays a defining role in workplace communication  —  What if everyone you worked with had a psychic ability to understand how you're feeling and respond accordingly?  Wouldn't that be great?
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

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China's catching up to US AI... Here's why it won't matter
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Spotlight On:
Supabase's Paul Copplestone on the difference between "playing startup" and strategy
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Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback - Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
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More News

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

Earlier Picks

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