Techmeme
October 31, 2024, 2:45 PM

Top News

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Search to let paid users search for timely information using GPT-4o, after testing the feature in July 2024, a direct challenge to Google  —  The new option will let the chatbot's users search for timely information much as they would on the web.
Financial Times:
China sanctions Skydio, the US' largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine's military; sources say Skydio is rushing to find new suppliers for critical parts  —  Skydio, the US's largest drone maker and a supplier to Ukraine's military, faces a supply chain crisis after Beijing imposed sanctions …
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Sophos details a five-year battle with Chinese hackers exploiting its firewalls, and how its device “implants” traced the hacks to a university and a contractor  —  Sophos went so far as to plant surveillance “implants” on its own devices to catch the hackers at work—and in doing so …
Wired:
Zuckerberg says Meta is training Llama 4 models on a cluster of 100K+ H100 chips, “or bigger than anything that I've seen reported for what others are doing”  —  The race for better generative AI is also a race for more computing power.  On that score, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta appears to be winning.
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Kuo: Apple plans to use its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips made by TSMC's N7 process and with Wi-Fi 7 in the iPhone 17 lineup, reducing its reliance on Broadcom  —  Apple's big launches for 2024 are nearly complete, so reports are going to pick up regarding the 2025 product lineup.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google adds Gemini in Google Maps in the US, with AI-summarized reviews and answers to conversational questions by users, and adds 150 cities to Immersive View  —  Google Maps is getting a big update that's supposed to help you find new places to visit with AI.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft says Windows users will only be able to buy one year of Extended Security Updates for Windows 10 for $30, after support ends in October 2025  —  Microsoft is finally revealing that it will charge consumers $30 for a year of extra security updates to Windows 10.
ProPublica:
An investigation finds eight deceptive operations on Meta's platforms that collectively controlled 340+ Pages and placed 160K+ ads to collect users' information  —  Co-published with Tow Center for Digital Journalism  — Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks …
Andrew Webster / The Verge:
Nintendo launches Nintendo Music, an iOS and Android app that lets Switch Online subscribers stream or download gaming tunes from Nintendo titles  —  This time, it's a mobile app called Nintendo Music, which lets users listen to classic gaming tunes from Nintendo games spanning the last few decades …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Waymo was valued at more than $45B, after it raised $5.6B last week, led by Alphabet  —  - Company is rapidly expanding number of ride-hailing trips … The business said late last week that it had raised $5.6 billion in new capital at an undisclosed value.
Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic:
A look at X's Election Integrity Community, a feed to “share potential incidents of voter fraud” that has 50K+ members, launched by Elon Musk's America PAC  —  Elon Musk didn't just get a social network—he got a political weapon.  —  It's easy to forget that Elon Musk's purchase …
Gene Park / Washington Post:
Activision-Blizzard says the Call of Duty series has sold more than 500M copies to date; Nadella says Black Ops 6 set a record for first-day players  —  The Call of Duty series has sold more than 500 million copies to date, according to publisher Activision-Blizzard.  “Black Ops 6” set launch-day records.
Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Filing: Microsoft has made “funding commitments of $13B” to OpenAI and says losses from its stake were partly why it had a $683M expense on its Q1 investments  —  Microsoft disclosed the size of its OpenAI investment for the first time, acknowledging in its quarterly regulatory …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Kali Hays / Fortune:
Internal memo: Block CEO Jack Dorsey says Tidal is in for another mass layoff; insiders say as many as 100 people could be laid off, or ~25% of Tidal's staff  —  Block CEO and founder Jack Dorsey wants streaming music app Tidal to operate like a startup again - and that means layoffs
Bloomberg:
Source: Amazon's target deadline to unveil AI-upgraded Alexa has moved into 2025, after documents showed Amazon planned to unveil the product on Oct. 17, 2024  —  Amazon is eager to take on ChatGPT, but technical challenges have forced the company to repeatedly postpone the updated voice assistant's debut.
New York Times:
Kraken lays off workers and names Arjun Sethi as co-CEO; sources: the cuts total 15% of staff, or ~400, including COO Gilles BianRosa and CTO Vishnu Patankar  —  The influential cryptocurrency exchange has undergone several reorganizations in recent years.  —  Kraken, one of the world's …
John O'Nolan:
Ghost's CEO details the organization's governance structure and says the open-source CMS generates ~$7.5M in annual revenue and has been profitable for 12 years  —  Ghost is a distributed non-profit foundation which gives away all of its intellectual property under a permissive MIT license.

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