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.

Sponsor Posts

Airtable:
Meet Airtable ProductCentral  —  The unified solution for managing your entire product development process in the AI era.
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.
Zoho:
Stay secure while signing documents digitally this Cybersecurity Awareness Month  —  National Cybersecurity Awareness Month was launched in October of 2004 and has been observed every year since.
Notion:
Get up to 6 months free of Notion with unlimited AI  —  Notion is trusted and loved by thousands of startups as their connected workspace—from building product roadmaps to tracking fundraising.  Build and scale your company with one tool!
Techmeme Ride Home:
Thu. 10/31 - Spooky... I Mean, Earnings Season
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 2:45 PM ET, October 31, 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

Dominic Chopping / Wall Street Journal:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Washington Post:
Kwanwoo Jun / Wall Street Journal: