Some in Silicon Valley hope Kamala Harris could provide a chance for a reset, after years of bipartisan criticism in Washington DC toward Big Tech companies
Would she bring continuity with Joe Biden's policies? A more centrist vibe? A sharper progressive bite?
Mark Zuckerberg argues that “open source AI” is the path forward, closed models are vulnerable to vendor lock-in and state-backed espionage, and more
RE: https://www.threads.net/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : You can find @zuck's full post here https://www.facebook.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Mark Zuckerberg has shared a persuasive...
Alphabet reports Q2 revenue up 14% YoY to $84.7B, net income up 29% YoY to $23.6B, Search revenue of $48.5B, up from $42.6B YoY, headcount down 1% to 179,582
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - July 23, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024.
CrowdStrike says the problematic July 19 software update that brought down 8.5M Windows PCs was deployed into production due to “a bug in the Content Validator”
CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in its own test software for the mass-crash-event it caused last week.
Sources: Apple is working on a foldable, clamshell-design iPhone that could debut as soon as 2026, and reached out to Asian component suppliers in recent months
Apple is working on a foldable iPhone that could be released as early as 2026 and in recent months reached out to suppliers …
Meta says it will allow developers to use the outputs from Llama models, including Llama 3.1 405B, to improve other models for the first time
“Open source AI is the path forward,” says Mark Zuckerberg, misusing the term. — In the AI world, there's a buzz in the air …
Ferrari plans to accept crypto payments for its cars at European dealers from the end of July, and internationally by the end of 2024, expanding on the US
Ferrari (RACE.MI) said on Wednesday it would extend its scheme to accept payments in cryptocurrency for its luxury sports cars …
Elon Musk says “I am not donating $45M a month to Trump”, and that he created America PAC to support Trump, without revealing precisely how much he is donating
Elon Musk is not spending $45 million a month to elect former President Donald Trump, though he has created …
Alphabet reports Other Bets Q2 revenue of $365M, up from $285M in Q2 2023, a $1.13B loss, up from $813M YoY, and announces a “multiyear” $5B investment in Waymo
$5B in newly committed funding from Alphabet — 50,000 weekly paid, public rides — 2M trips to date … Forums: r/sanfrancisco : Alphabet to invest $5 billion in self-driving car unit Waymo r/technolog...
Google Cloud Q2 revenue grew 29% YoY to $10.35B, vs. $10.2B est.; Cloud exceeded $10B in quarterly revenues and $1B in operating profit for the first time
Jennifer Elias / CNBC :
Meta debuts Llama 3.1 405B, the “first frontier-level open source AI model”, as well as new Llama 3.1 70B and 8B models, and says it's working on Llama 4
Researchers suggest using “synthetic” data, created by AI systems to train AI systems, could lead to the rapid degradation of AI models and a collapse over time
Research suggests use of computer-made ‘synthetic data’ to train top AI models could lead to nonsensical results in future
Twitch introduces new policy and moderation updates to curb sexual harassment, including making its policy “easier to understand” and adding moderation tools
Twitch has introduced new policy and moderation updates that aim to help curb sexual harassment.
Kamala Harris took a leading White House role on AI, including meeting executives; a Harris win could mean a continued relatively smooth runway for AI companies
New York Times :
X reverts its water pistol emoji back to a firearm on the web, after Twitter originally switched the pistol emoji from a realistic-looking handgun in 2018
X (fka Twitter) has quietly redesigned its 🔫 Water Pistol emoji to display as a firearm. This diverges from the cross-platform conversion …
Google updates the Play Store on Android to add categorized “Collections” that show installed app content, expand Play Pass, and add curated comics in Japan
Google is bringing a handful of new features to its Google Play store on Android today.
Sources: the Google-Wiz deal failed, in part, due to antitrust fears and CrowdStrike's outage, which increased the potential value of cloud security companies
particularly if top antitrust cops change. That memo may seem definitive, and needed to for employee sanity, but these things are always fluid. Mark Bergen / @mhbergen : ...also there's the “known unk...
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 review: very good battery life, easy multitasking, and seven years of updates, but narrow cover screen, bulky, heavy, and expensive
Samsung's flagship foldable is as good as ever, but it feels anything but fresh. … The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is like staying in a really fancy Airbnb.
US spot ether ETFs hit $1B+ in trading volume across nine funds, a strong debut but far from the $4.6B traded during the spot bitcoin ETFs debut in January 2024
- Trading volume still trailed amount posted by Bitcoin ETFs — Debuts for two of the funds rank among some of the best ever
Irish government data: data centers in Ireland used 21% of its electricity in 2023, up 20% YoY, more than the 18% of electricity used by all urban homes
Statistics raise concerns that rise in demand for data processing driven by AI could derail climate targets
Google's failed deal with Wiz, and with HubSpot before that, puts Google in an awkward spot to grow Cloud; Wiz staff are likely upset at missing a big payday
It's the second time in as many months that the tech giant has lost a deal to boost its lagging cloud business.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says the Senate will take up the Kids Online Safety Act this week, signaling there's enough support among his colleagues
including children. The Senate should say NO to bills that undermine online privacy like KOSA. https://netchoice.org/... [image] Oma Seddiq / @omaseddiq : .@SenSchumer gets visibly emotional and tears...
Compliance startup Vanta raised a $150M Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $2.45B valuation, up from $1.6B in 2022, to accelerate adding AI to its products
Sequoia Capital led the financing, which the company said it would use in part to accelerate work in artificial intelligence.
The Overture Maps Foundation, backed by Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TomTom, and others, releases four global open maps datasets; Transportation remains in beta
It's not often you'll find Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta in the same room collaborating toward the same goals.
Law enforcement officials and experts: criminal groups are shying away from large ransomware-as-a-service platforms after disruption operations and an exit scam
Veteran cybercriminals involved in ransomware attacks are increasingly shying away from large ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) …
Microsoft Copilot customers say the AI assistants are no plug-and-play offering and involve feeding them data; the Copilots only excel at distilling information
Early adopters say deploying the company's Copilot bots requires cleaning up corporate data and lots of employee training.
The US NCSC warns US tech startups that “foreign threat actors”, including China, might use private investment to exploit them and threaten national security
Counter-intelligence centre says hostile states such as China could gain sensitive data and intellectual property
India scraps “angel tax” for all classes of investors, a major victory to the country's startup ecosystem that had lobbied for years against the measure
Manish Singh / TechCrunch :
Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, costing around $17 to $18, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board”
Elon Musk says Starlink service is now active in a hospital in Gaza, reflecting Israel's reluctance for Gaza residents to have internet access more broadly
Eva Dou / Washington Post :
Stability AI unveils Stable Video 4D, a model based on the existing Stable Video Diffusion model to take video input and generate videos from eight perspectives
Stability AI is expanding its growing roster of generative AI models, quite literally adding a new dimension with the debut of Stable Video 4D.
Meta plans to roll out its AI assistant to the Quest in August, limited to US and Canada users in experimental mode, after debuting on the Ray-Ban smart glasses
The US FTC seeks info from Mastercard, Accenture, and six other companies related to their “surveillance pricing products” that use personal data, AI, and more
A dip in rental profits and a shift to longer stays has led some US hosts and property managers to circumvent Airbnb, including asking guests to book directly
Natalie Lung / Bloomberg :
dYdX says v3, an older version of its DeFi crypto exchange that is reportedly for sale and averages ~$1.5B/week in derivatives trading, “has been compromised”
In an effort to compete with Shein and Temu, Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall offer qualified merchants, selling goods in the fashion category, free overseas shipping
Kelly Le / South China Morning Post :
Sources: Samsung's HBM3 chips have been cleared by Nvidia for use in its H20 GPU, developed for the Chinese market; HBM3E chips are still being tested
All Raise: ~18% of US VC firms have one or more female partners, double from 2018; PitchBook says female founders secured ~28% of total US deal value in 2023
- Advocacy group reports women partners are part of more firms — All Raise CEO says progress at risk from diversity criticisms
Texas Instruments reports Q2 revenue down 16% YoY to $3.82B and forecasts Q3 revenue in line with analysts' estimates of $4.14B, easing fears of a chip downturn
Ian King / Bloomberg :
A profile of Blake Benthall, arrested in 2014 for running Silk Road 2.0, which had 1.7M users and $8M/month sales, as he promotes his crypto startup Fathom(x)
New York Times : X: @rmac18 , @kashhill , @emers0nian , and @eddyelfenbein X: Ryan Mac / @rmac18 : 10 years ago, @kashhill and I covered the downfall of Silk Road 2.0 and the arrest of its leader Bla...
French cybersecurity company Exclusive Networks receives a binding buyout proposal from private equity firms CD&R and Permira valuing Exclusive at ~€2.2B
Phil Serafino / Bloomberg :
Source: OpenAI has reassigned Aleksander Madry, the head of its Preparedness AI safety team, to a role within its research organization focusing on reasoning
LA-based Pearl, an FDA-approved startup that uses AI to assist dentists to make diagnoses, raised a $58M Series B led by Left Lane Capital at a $400M valuation
Katie Roof / Bloomberg :
Foxconn announces plans to invest $137.5M to construct a new business HQ in Zhengzhou, China, after signing a contract with the Henan provincial government
Internal messages: Meta staff complained about Threads' algorithm limiting political posts, after the For You page was slow to show news of Biden dropping out
it's still the number 1 conversation Drew Harwell / @drewharwell : Policy going as well as expected https://www.theinformation.com/ ... See also Mediagazer
Seattle-based QA Wolf, which helps companies automate QA testing for apps, raised a $36M Series B and opens a waitlist for Android and iOS test automation
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Sources: enterprise financial software maker OneStream raised $490M after pricing its IPO at $20/share, above its $17-$19 marketed range, for a $4.6B valuation
Echo Wang / Reuters :
Mytra, a startup building autonomous robots for warehouses that can move loads up to 3,000 pounds, emerges from stealth with $78M in total funding
Brian Heater / TechCrunch : X: @mikecollett . LinkedIn: Brian Kembel X: Mike Collett / @mikecollett : Excited to back the terrific @Mytra team led by @ChrisWalti and Ahmad Baitalmal, who announced to...
Level AI, maker of AI-powered tools to automate customer service tasks, raised a $39.4M Series C led by Adams Street Partners, taking its total raised to $73.1M
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
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Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
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.