A test of ~1,300 top games on Microsoft's new Copilot+ PCs finds only about half ran smoothly; Microsoft says some titles with demanding graphics may not play (Yang Jie/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/microsoft-rolled-out-ai-pcs-that-cant-play-top-gamesand-theres-no-quick-fix-0a1b6376?st=tehrtpnld2rac6n
http://www.techmeme.com/240903/p36#a240903p36


Apple is gearing up for a battle with app makers and legislators over whether regulation of teen's social media use should happen in apps or at the device level (Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-helped-nix-part-of-a-child-safety-bill-more-fights-are-expected-23905d4d
http://www.techmeme.com/240902/p4#a240902p4


Techmeme

Top news and commentary for technology's leaders, from all around the web.

This account shares top-level Techmeme headlines. Visit our site for full context.

#searchable

Website: https://www.techmeme.com/


An investigation finds Airbnb fails to protect its guests from hidden cameras and moves swiftly to contain user complaints and resolve them out of court (CNN)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/09/business/airbnb-hidden-camera-invs/
http://www.techmeme.com/240710/p4#a240710p4


The US DOJ and its partners seized two domain names and 968 accounts on X used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced bot farm that spread disinformation (Michael Kan/PCMag)

https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-disrupts-russian-bots-spreading-propaganda-on-twitter
http://www.techmeme.com/240709/p26#a240709p26


As Nvidia passes Microsoft's market cap, John Chambers, who was the CEO when Cisco passed Microsoft during the dot-com boom, says the situation now is different (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvidias-ascent-to-most-valuable-company-has-echoes-of-dot-com-boom-dd836c90?st=276shvptwdhe3vf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p7#a240619p7


Sources: Huawei, which is considering taking a cut of in-app purchases on HarmonyOS, nears a deal with Tencent to exclude WeChat from revenue sharing (Pei Li/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-19/huawei-tencent-near-deal-to-exclude-wechat-from-revenue-sharing
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p6#a240619p6


A Google DeepMind study involving 20 professional comedians who already use AI in their work finds LLMs struggled to produce material that was original or funny (Rhiannon Williams/MIT Technology Review)

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/17/1093740/what-happened-when-20-comedians-got-ai-to-write-their-routines/
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p5#a240619p5


Fengate Asset Management acquires over two-thirds stake in eStruxture, which operates data centers in 15 locations in four Canadian cities, in a $1.3B deal (Paul Vieira/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/fengate-acquires-canada-data-storage-firm-estruxture-in-1-3-billion-deal-ed53d33f?st=l6ntf0pel38stz5&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p4#a240619p4


Japan is looking to lure AI investment away from Europe and elsewhere by adopting a light-touch, industry-led approach to regulating AI (Nikkei Asia)

https://t.co/p1HSNmxzxM
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p3#a240619p3


Sources: Google and OpenAI have stepped up staff vetting over Chinese espionage threat; Sequoia has encouraged some portfolio companies to tighten staff vetting (Financial Times)

https://t.co/QWmahZMWcQ
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p2#a240619p2


A look at Mozilla's acquisition of Anonym, which offers "privacy-preserving" ad tools, and how Anonym might interact with a user base that tends to block ads (Thomas Claburn/The Register)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/mozilla_buys_anonym_betting_privacy/
http://www.techmeme.com/240619/p1#a240619p1


FOI documents: eight UK train stations scanned passenger faces for two years as part of AI trials; Amazon software was used to predict age, gender, and emotions (Matt Burgess/Wired)

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-ai-cameras-emotions-uk-train-passengers/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p38#a240618p38


Consensys says the US SEC is closing its investigation into Ethereum 2.0 and "will not bring charges alleging that sales of ETH are securities transactions" (Ryan Ozawa/Decrypt)

https://decrypt.co/236039/sec-dropping-ethereum-investigation-consensys
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p37#a240618p37


The California Labor Commissioner's Office fines Amazon $5.9M for violating a 2022 state law by failing to properly inform workers of quotas at two warehouses (Caroline O'Donovan/Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/18/amazon-fine-labor-law-california/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p36#a240618p36


Internal memo: Meta merges its Reality Labs teams into the "Metaverse" product group that now includes Quest, and the AR product group, now called "Wearables" (Alex Heath/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/18/24181420/meta-wearables-reality-labs-layoffs
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p35#a240618p35


Qilin, a cohort of Russian-speaking hackers, claims responsibility for the ransomware attack impacting London hospitals for weeks and demands $50M to end it (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/uk-hospital-hackers-say-they-ve-demanded-50-million-in-ransom
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p34#a240618p34


Qualcomm agrees to pay $75M to resolve a suit from shareholders accusing Qualcomm of defrauding them by hiding its anticompetitive sales and licensing practices (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/qualcomm-reaches-75-mln-settlement-over-sales-licensing-practices-2024-06-18/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p33#a240618p33


AMD says it is looking into claims that company information was stolen in a hack, after a user on BreachForums said they breached AMD's systems (Ian King/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/amd-is-investigating-claims-that-company-data-was-stolen-in-hack
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p32#a240618p32


Appfigures: iOS 18 could "Sherlock" trail apps, grammar helpers, math solvers, password managers, and emoji apps that have an estimated $393M in annual revenue (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/ios-18-could-sherlock-400m-in-app-revenue/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p31#a240618p31


The US FTC says it has referred a complaint to the DOJ against TikTok and ByteDance over potential violations of the Children's Online Privacy Act (Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-ftc-refers-complaint-against-tiktok-justice-department-2024-06-18/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p30#a240618p30


An ex-Snap engineer debuts Butterflies, a social network where users can create AI personas that then interact with users and other AIs via posts and DMs (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/former-snap-engineer-launches-butterflies-a-social-network-where-ais-and-humans-coexist/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p29#a240618p29


Forbes demands Perplexity not infringe on Forbes IP and drop Forbes-sourced articles; Perplexity-made content remains without attribution, including on YouTube (Sara Fischer/Axios)

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/18/forbes-perplexity-ai-legal-action-copyright
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p28#a240618p28


Devs say Apple is denying or delaying notarization of iOS apps, including emulators and AltStore apps, to enforce its rules, defeating the point of the EU's DMA (Jason Snell/Six Colors)

https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/06/apple-refuses-to-notarize-emulator-app/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p27#a240618p27


HPE and Nvidia unveil private cloud offerings for generative AI workloads coming this fall, including HPE Private Cloud AI, a co-developed "turnkey" option (Larry Dignan/Constellation Research)

https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/insights/hpe-unveils-private-cloud-ai-broad-nvidia-partnership-aimed-genai-workloads
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p26#a240618p26


Nvidia passes Microsoft during intraday trading to become the most valuable public company, with a ~$3.33T market cap; NVDA is up over 9x since January 2023 (Kif Leswing/CNBC)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/18/nvidia-passes-microsoft-in-market-cap-is-most-valuable-public-company.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p25#a240618p25


Filings: X is still working on Venmo-like payments features, with a 2024 US launch target; X had $1.48B in revenue in first six months of 2023, down ~40% YoY (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/documents-show-how-musk-s-x-plans-to-become-the-next-venmo
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p24#a240618p24


AI search engine startup Genspark launches, offering a Sparkpage overview for queries, and raised a $60M seed led by Lanchi at a $260M post-money valuation (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/genspark-is-the-latest-attempt-at-an-ai-powered-search-engine/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p23#a240618p23


ASUS VivoBook S 15 Copilot+ PC review: Snapdragon X Elite is incredible, all day battery life, gorgeous 15.6" OLED screen, and $1,299 for 1TB SSD and 16GB RAM (Zac Bowden/Windows Central)

https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/laptops/asus-vivobook-s-15-copilot-pc-review
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p22#a240618p22


Source: Apple told at least one supplier it has suspended work on the next Apple Vision Pro; sources: it's still aiming to debut a cheaper model by end of 2025 (The Information)

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-suspends-work-on-next-high-end-headset-focused-on-releasing-cheaper-model-in-late-2025
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p21#a240618p21


A study of 10 chatbots, including from Perplexity and OpenAI, shows how often they repeat Russian disinfo and cite fugitive John Dougan's fake local news sites (Ina Fried/Axios)

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/18/ai-chatbots-russian-propaganda
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p20#a240618p20


London-based SurrealDB, which helps developers consolidate their databases, raised $20M led by FirstMark and Georgian, taking its total funding to $26M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/surrealdb-is-helping-developers-consolidate-their-databases/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p19#a240618p19


Xreal unveils the $199+ Beam Pro, a 6.5-inch device that powers Xreal's glasses, runs Android 14-based NebulaOS, uses a Snapdragon chip, and has two USB-C ports (David Pierce/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/18/24180298/xreal-beam-pro-ar-glasses-usb-c-launch
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p18#a240618p18


Maryland-based Huntress, an SMB-focused managed security platform, raised a $150M Series D led by Kleiner Perkins, Meritech, and Sapphire at a $1.5B+ valuation (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cyber-company-huntress-raises-150-million-in-series-d-funding-d76a04f6?st=ctfrhm386o7a9kn&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p17#a240618p17


Blackstone plans to buy Japanese digital comic provider Infocom in a ~$1.7B deal, in its biggest private equity transaction in Japan to date (Lisa Du/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/blackstone-taps-steamy-romance-manga-fans-in-1-7-billion-deal
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p16#a240618p16


Autonomous trucking startup Waabi raised a $200M Series B led by Uber and Khosla Ventures, after an $83.5M Series A in 2021, and aims for a full launch in 2025 (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/autonomous-trucking-startup-waabi-raises-200-mln-2024-06-18/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p15#a240618p15


Sources: Apple is set to settle a long-running EU antitrust investigation over payments, after the EU accepted measures that Apple committed to in January 2024 (Javier Espinoza/Financial Times)

https://t.co/3JSLCKQoNm
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p14#a240618p14


Amazon Labor Union members vote to join forces with the 1.3M-member Teamsters union; ALU President Christian Smalls says Teamsters allocated $8M for organizing (Noam Scheiber/New York Times)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/18/business/economy/amazon-labor-union-teamsters.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p13#a240618p13


Margrethe Vestager says Apple has a number of "very serious" issues under the EU's DMA, and the conclusions of an investigation will arrive "hopefully soon" (Arjun Kharpal/CNBC)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/18/apple-issues-very-serious-under-landmark-eu-rules-vestager.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p12#a240618p12


Some Google users, frustrated by the results, turn to Reddit as a search alternative; a weeklong test finds Reddit is best for product recommendations and more (Ann-Marie Alcántara/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/can-you-replace-google-search-with-reddit-i-tried-it-for-a-week-ea1f36c5?st=dnyht7vzp8jzvng&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p11#a240618p11


Sources: Huawei is considering taking a cut of in-app purchases on its Harmony OS, and has discussed a ~20% fee with developers, below Apple and Google's 30% (Pei Li/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/huawei-considers-app-store-fees-as-it-surpasses-iphone-in-china
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p10#a240618p10


A look at Apple's upcoming CarPlay updates, which aim to be "a design toolkit for automakers", including feature "layers", "remote UI", and "punch-through UI" (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/17/24180353/apple-carplay-wireless-system-features
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p9#a240618p9


Meta launches its much-awaited Threads API, letting developer publish posts, fetch content, manage replies, and view analytics, after an API beta in March 2024 (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/18/threads-finally-launches-its-api-for-developers/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p8#a240618p8


Social media creators say earning a decent, reliable income is getting harder, as platforms pay less for popular posts and brands get pickier about partnerships (Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/social-media-influencers-arent-getting-richtheyre-barely-getting-by-71e0aad3?st=snqhy92nimb59t6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p7#a240618p7


A look at Shein's efforts to diversify away from fast fashion, as the company struggles to get third-party merchants to sign up for its marketplace (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)

https://t.co/N5eh5bu9L3
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p6#a240618p6


Down-ballot campaigns in the US are experimenting with AI, which can help them save money and time, while also raising fears about the threats of AI deepfakes (Associated Press)

https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-local-races-deepfakes-2024-1d5080a5c916d5ff10eadd1d81f43dfd
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p5#a240618p5


A look at India's quick commerce market, which has become an important distribution channel for Indian food brands, as Zepto and others expand beyond groceries (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/can-quick-commerce-leapfrog-e-commerce-in-india/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p4#a240618p4


Google launches Gemini app for Android in India, supporting English and nine other languages; Gemini will be available via Google app on iOS in the coming weeks (Amar Subramanya/Google)

https://blog.google/intl/en-in/company-news/technology/gemini-in-india-now-on-mobile-multilingual-and-more-powerful-for-your-everyday-tasks/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p3#a240618p3


Cambridge-based CuspAI, which is developing AI-powered tech for designing new materials, raised a $30M seed and has added Geoffrey Hinton to its advisory board (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-18/ai-legend-geoffrey-hinton-to-advise-uk-green-materials-startup
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p2#a240618p2


Signal president Meredith Whittaker warns the EU's recent "upload moderation" proposal to detect CSAM "fundamentally undermines encryption" of messaging apps (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/stop-playing-games-with-online-security-signal-president-warns-eu-lawmakers/
http://www.techmeme.com/240618/p1#a240618p1


Sources: Shein CEO Xu Yangtian has deliberately kept a low profile for fear of attracting unwanted public attention; Shein has never published any photos of him (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3266882/shein-heads-towards-ipo-its-chinese-billionaire-founder-stays-under-cloak-secrecy
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p35#a240617p35


Finbourne, which helps financial companies organize and use their data in AI and other models, raised a £55M Series B at a valuation just over £280M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/finbourne-taps-70m-for-tech-that-turns-financial-data-dust-into-ai-gold/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p34#a240617p34


Q&A with Tubi CEO Anjali Sud, who joined from Vimeo in September 2023, on the streaming industry, working within Fox, subscription fatigue, copyright, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/24178580/tubi-ceo-free-tv-streaming-ads-decoder-podcast-interview
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p33#a240617p33


Constructor, which provides an AI-powered product discovery and search service for e-commerce companies, raised a $25M Series B at a $550M valuation (Abhinaya Prabhu/Tech Funding News)

https://techfundingnews.com/constructor-raises-25m-for-e-commerce-companies-to-transform-product-discovery-with-ai/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p32#a240617p32


Adobe unveils Firefly-powered image generation in Acrobat, and support for analysis of multiple documents, including non-PDF files, in Acrobat AI Assistant (Calvin Wankhede/Android Authority)

https://www.androidauthority.com/adobe-ai-assistant-acrobat-3451988/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p31#a240617p31


Inside Snapchat's teen opioid crisis: law-enforcement sources and parents allege that the company has helped fuel an overdose epidemic across the US (Paul Solotaroff/Rolling Stone)

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/inside-snapchat-teenage-opioid-crisis-1235036691/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p30#a240617p30


Real-time data analytics startup Tinybird raised a $30M Series B, at a "significantly higher" valuation than its $37M Series A; source: it's now valued at $240M (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/tinybird-raises-another-30-million-to-transform-data-into-real-time-apis/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p29#a240617p29


Coinbase debuts "pre-launch markets" on its global and advanced exchanges outside the US, UK, and Canada, for positions on tokens before they hit spot exchanges (Lawrence Lewitinn/The Block)

https://www.theblock.co/post/300497/coinbase-starts-offering-pre-launch-markets-trading-on-its-international-and-advanced-exchanges
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p28#a240617p28


Microsoft says the latest version of Windows 11, version 24H2 now in the Release Preview Channel, is "only available for Copilot+ PCs devices" (Mark Hachman/PCWorld)

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2370043/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p27#a240617p27


Tether, the top stablecoin provider, says it made a new synthetic dollar that is backed by gold and will trade as aUSDT via smart contracts on Ethereum Mainnet (María Paula Mijares Torres/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/tether-announces-a-new-synthetic-dollar-that-is-backed-by-gold
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p26#a240617p26


Mandiant: up to 10 companies breached in a campaign targeting Snowflake customers have been extorted with stolen data and face ransom demands from $300K to $5M (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/hackers-demanding-as-much-as-5-million-from-snowflake-clients
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p25#a240617p25


DeepMind is developing AI tech to take raw pixels of videos and generate synced soundtracks; it's not too convincing, and there are no plans to release publicly (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/deepminds-new-ai-generates-soundtracks-and-dialog-for-videos/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p24#a240617p24


Apple says it is no longer offering Apple Pay Later, the "buy now, pay later" service that launched in the United States last year (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/17/apple-pay-later-united-states-ending/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p23#a240617p23


Finaloop, which offers accounting tools to e-commerce businesses, raised a $35M Series A led by Lightspeed and says its customer base grew 400% in the last year (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/from-sperm-freezing-to-accounting-tools-finaloops-founder-scores-35m-to-solve-e-commerce-retailers-bookkeeping-headaches/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p22#a240617p22


Uber says "tens of thousands of riders" in Phoenix have matched with a "Waymo (AI) driver" and have given "a nearly 4.9 average star rating" (Alan Ohnsman/Forbes)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2024/06/17/a-robotaxi-business-is-a-dream-for-elon-muskbut-already-a-reality-for-waymo/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p21#a240617p21


The US DOJ sues Adobe for allegedly harming "consumers by enrolling them in its default, most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing" plan terms (Emma Roth/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/17/24180196/adobe-us-ftc-doj-sues-subscriptions-cancel
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p19#a240617p19


Around two dozen sources detail Google's decision to form the Google DeepMind "super-unit" in April 2023, shifting the AI lab from research to products (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/google-deepmind-shifts-from-research-lab-to-ai-product-factory
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p14#a240617p14


Naver-owned online comics platform Webtoon aims to raise up to $315M in a US IPO, offering shares for $18 to $21 each and targeting an up to $2.67B valuation (Arasu Kannagi Basil/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/navers-webtoon-entertainment-targets-up-267-bln-valuation-us-ipo-2024-06-17/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p18#a240617p18


Runway unveils Gen-3 Alpha, a model to generate high-quality, detailed, highly realistic video clips of 10 seconds in length, after releasing Gen-2 in June 2023 (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)

https://venturebeat.com/ai/runway-unveils-new-hyper-realistic-ai-video-model-gen-3-alpha-capable-of-10-second-long-clips/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p17#a240617p17


TikTok expands its Symphony ad suite, adding AI dubbing and custom or stock Digital Avatars based on paid actors or created to resemble specific creators (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/17/24179971/tiktok-ads-ai-generated-avatars-creators-language-dubbing
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p16#a240617p16


YouTube is testing Notes, an experimental crowdsourced tool to let users add context to videos, similar to X's Community Notes, on mobile in the US in English (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/youtube-is-experimenting-with-notes-a-crowdsourced-feature-that-lets-users-add-context-to-videos/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p15#a240617p15


Vietnam's state media says three of its five active international undersea internet cables are down, impacting connections with the US, Europe, and Asia (Khanh Vu/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/three-vietnams-five-undersea-internet-cables-are-down-2024-06-17/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p13#a240617p13


Swiss privacy-focused app developer Proton establishes the Proton Foundation to transition to a nonprofit foundation model, similar to Signal and Mozilla (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/17/privacy-app-maker-proton-transitions-to-non-profit-foundation-structure/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p12#a240617p12


The US Surgeon General says platforms should add a "warning label" saying that "social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents" (Vivek H. Murthy/New York Times)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/opinion/social-media-health-warning.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p11#a240617p11


Hacking group ShinyHunters claims to have breached contractor EPAM Systems to steal data from Ticketmaster and ~165 other Snowflake users; EPAM denies the claim (Kim Zetter/Wired)

https://www.wired.com/story/epam-snowflake-ticketmaster-breach-shinyhunters/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p10#a240617p10


How Terray Therapeutics uses AI to discover and develop drugs, generating 50TB of raw data daily, part of a wave of startups looking to harness AI in medicine (Steve Lohr/New York Times)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/17/business/ai-drugs-development-terray.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p9#a240617p9


Kuo: the Apple Watch Series 10 will be thinner and its screen will grow from 41mm to 45mm and 45mm to 49mm; Apple will use 3D printing to make some components (Tim Hardwick/MacRumors)

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/17/kuo-apple-watch-series-10-larger-screen-thinner/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p8#a240617p8


Logitech unveils the MX Ink, a stylus for Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3, plus "future headsets", the Quest's first third-party input device, shipping in September (Scott Hayden/Road to VR)

https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-first-third-party-input-logitech-stylus/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p7#a240617p7


Google begins rolling out a "Listen to this page" feature on Chrome for Android, letting the browser read text-heavy web pages (Abner Li/9to5Google)

https://9to5google.com/2024/06/16/chrome-listen-tts-android/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p6#a240617p6


McDonald's ends its two-year IBM partnership to test automated Drive Thru order taking and plans to remove the tech from 100+ restaurants by July 26 (Jonathan Maze/Restaurant Business)

https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/mcdonalds-ending-its-drive-thru-ai-test
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p5#a240617p5


Experts say generative AI is set to make certain skills in finance and accounting redundant and free up time for workers to focus more on value-added tasks (Seb Murray/Financial Times)

https://t.co/D3va4RAXGS
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p4#a240617p4


Copywriters detail how AI is changing their jobs, with some seeing a new line of work to make AI-generated text sound more human, a job that pays a lot less (Thomas Germain/BBC)

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240612-the-people-making-ai-sound-more-human
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p3#a240617p3


How Black founders are creating AI models like ChatBlackGPT and Latimer.ai that cater to Black and brown communities, as current AI models lack cultural nuance (TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/16/black-founders-are-creating-tailored-chatgpts-for-a-more-personalized-experience/
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p2#a240617p2


Structure Research: tech companies' data center plans in India will push the nation from the sixth place to the top spot in Asia Pacific for self-built capacity (Financial Times)

https://t.co/gKW34k8wSk
http://www.techmeme.com/240617/p1#a240617p1


Sources: activist fund Starboard Value has taken a ~$500M stake in Autodesk and spoken to its board over concerns regarding a probe that led to its CFO's ouster (Rohan Goswami/CNBC)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/17/autodesk-adsk-starboard-activist-probe-sec-lawsuit.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p11#a240616p11


Sources: Wells Fargo's credit card with fintech startup Bilt, which gets points on rent payments and saw 1M+ signups in 18 months, costs the bank up to $10M/mo. (Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/wells-fargo-credit-card-rent-rewards-8e380852
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p10#a240616p10


With new logos for Siri and Apple Intelligence, Apple joins OpenAI and others in AI branding that is non-threatening, simple, and non-anthropomorphic (Devin Coldewey/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/15/apple-joins-the-race-to-find-an-ai-icon-that-makes-sense/
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p9#a240616p9


Survey: 52% of US and 63% of UK respondents say they would be uneasy with news produced mostly using AI; 59% worry about false news content online, up 3% YoY (Sheila Dang/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/global-audiences-suspicious-ai-powered-newsrooms-report-finds-2024-06-16/
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p8#a240616p8


How Apple added support for automatic transcript generation in the Podcast app, a feature highly requested by both disabled users and podcast creators (Ari Saperstein/The Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/15/apple-podcast-transcription-feature
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p7#a240616p7


Kids are interacting with AI in school and online, serving as testers for a new generation of tech, making them the ones to experience some of its worst effects (Caroline Mimbs Nyce/The Atlantic)

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/06/kids-generative-ai/678694/?gift=2iIN4YrefPjuvZ5d2Kh300zjvd8M-WeJys073Nn3zn0&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p6#a240616p6


A Texas federal jury orders Amazon to pay nearly $122M to adtech company AlmondNet for infringing on two patents related to personalized ad targeting (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-hit-with-122-mln-us-verdict-internet-advertising-patent-case-2024-06-14/
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p5#a240616p5


A look at Apple's slow rollout of AI features, impressive visionOS 2 beta, plans for thinnest, lightest devices in tech, including a phone in the iPhone 17 line (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-06-16/when-is-apple-intelligence-coming-some-ai-features-won-t-arrive-until-2025-lxhjh86w
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p4#a240616p4


Report: alleged ringleader of the Scattered Spider hacking group was arrested in Spain; sources: the accused is a 22-year-old Scottish man named Tyler Buchanan (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/06/alleged-boss-of-scattered-spider-hacking-group-arrested/
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p3#a240616p3


Despite disinformation concerns during India's elections, political parties largely used AI, including deepfakes, constructively, primarily for voter outreach (The Conversation)

https://theconversation.com/indian-election-was-awash-in-deepfakes-but-ai-was-a-net-positive-for-democracy-231795
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p2#a240616p2


Q&A with FTC Chair Lina Khan about scrutinizing Big Tech's "innovations in potential lawbreaking" with AI deals, use of AI at FTC, startups, acquisitions, more (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/15/ftc-chair-lina-khan-on-startups-scaling-and-innovations-in-potential-law-breaking/
http://www.techmeme.com/240616/p1#a240616p1


DefiLlama: crypto startup funding has crossed $100B since 2014; The Block Research: Coinbase Ventures has made 443 investments or ~4% of all deals since 2017 (Bloomberg)

http://alturl.com/55wz9
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p10#a240615p10


A look at tech companies' investments in AI startups: Nvidia and NVentures completed a total of 32 deals in 2023, while Microsoft and M12 made 21 investments (Chris Metinko/Crunchbase News)

https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/msft-nvda-lead-big-tech-startup-investment/
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p9#a240615p9


Leaked documents reveal life-threatening issues at Amazon's primary-care service One Medical, raising concerns about Amazon's frugal approach to health care (Caroline O'Donovan/Washington Post)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/15/amazon-one-medical-patient-safety/
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p8#a240615p8


Apple added a Vocal Shortcuts accessibility feature in iOS 18 that lets users give Siri a new wake word, such as "hello, computer" (Juli Clover/MacRumors)

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/14/ios-18-rename-siri/
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p7#a240615p7


How Duolingo uses streaks and notifications to keep users coming back to the app; 5M of Duolingo's 30M+ DAUs have one year streaks and 70% have weeklong streaks (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/duolingo-streaks-notifications-app-spanish-bc87d6e4?st=y9q82nw5dbsruas&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p6#a240615p6


A profile of game publisher Devolver Digital, which gives indie studios immense creative freedom, doesn't take IP rights from them, and is turning 15 on June 25 (Rollo Romig/New York Times)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/arts/devolver-digital-video-game-publishing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.z00.RYTK.X8KH3yG5JvN5&smid=url-share
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p5#a240615p5


Apple may not be bringing Apple Intelligence to iPhone 15, which has 6GB of RAM vs. iPhone 15 Pro's 8GB, due to RAM requirements for on-device AI processing (Andrew Williams/Wired)

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-intelligence-wont-work-on-100s-of-millions-of-iphones-but-maybe-it-could/
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p4#a240615p4


How the launch of AI search chatbots such as Bing Copilot is affecting advertisers, as they look for new ways to target users with relevant ads (Paresh Dave/Wired)

https://www.wired.com/story/as-google-ai-overview-targets-advertisers-it-could-learn-a-lot-from-bing/
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p3#a240615p3


How disabled people use Apple Vision Pro for work, entertainment, and more, and interviews with some disabled Apple staff who built the accessibility features (Andrew Leland/New York Magazine)

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/apple-vision-pro-disabled-users.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p2#a240615p2


Indie games were the real stars of the Summer Game Fest 2024; the top 10 bestselling games of 2024 so far on Steam in terms of units sold are almost all indie (Keza MacDonald/The Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/games/article/2024/jun/12/pushing-buttons-best-of-summer-game-fest
http://www.techmeme.com/240615/p1#a240615p1


Nigeria drops tax evasion charges against Binance executives Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, who still face money laundering charges (Camomile Shumba/CoinDesk)

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/06/14/nigeria-drops-tax-charges-against-binance-executives-family-spokesperson/
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p17#a240614p17


Nvidia announces Nemotron-4 340B, a family of models that developers can use to generate synthetic data for training LLMs for commercial applications (Ankit Patel/NVIDIA)

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nemotron-4-synthetic-data-generation-llm-training/
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p16#a240614p16


Source: Sam Altman recently told some investors that OpenAI is considering changing to a for-profit benefit corporation that its nonprofit board doesn't control (The Information)

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-ceo-says-company-could-become-benefit-corporation-akin-to-rivals-anthropic-xai
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p15#a240614p15


US prosecutors charge two men with operating Empire Market, a dark web marketplace for illicit goods and services that did $430M+ in sales between 2018 and 2020 (Jake Bleiberg/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-14/pair-charged-with-running-dark-web-market-for-illicit-goods
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p14#a240614p14


Tempus AI's shares closed up 8.8% at $40.25 in the company's Nasdaq debut, giving it a market value of about $6.6B, after raising $410.7M in its IPO (Riley de León/CNBC)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/google-backed-tempus-ai-pops-by-as-much-as-15percent-in-nasdaq-debut.html
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p13#a240614p13


Sources: Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based LLM developer founded last year by Google alumni, is raising ~$100M at a $1B valuation in a round led by NEA, Khosla, and Lux (The Information)

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-japanese-rival-gets-1-billion-valuation-from-silicon-valley-investors
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p12#a240614p12


Sources: Mustafa Suleyman's presence at Microsoft is causing some awkwardness with OpenAI, as he looks at the algorithms behind models like GPT-4 (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)

https://www.semafor.com/article/06/14/2024/microsoft-ai-ceo-mustafa-suleyman-audits-openais-code
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p11#a240614p11


Sources: the EU plans to charge Meta under the DMA, focusing on its pay or consent model where users pay a subscription for an ad-free Facebook and Instagram (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-meta-set-face-eu-charges-under-landmark-tech-rules-sources-say-2024-06-14/
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p10#a240614p10


Gemini will return ~$50M of digital assets to investors who were locked out of their accounts when Gemini Earn collapsed, to settle a lawsuit by New York's AG (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-14/gemini-to-pay-50-million-to-settle-new-york-crypto-fraud-claims
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p9#a240614p9


Sonos faces a backlash after removing a line from its privacy policy in the US that said Sonos "does not and will not sell personal information" of its users (Chris Welch/The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/14/24178433/sonos-privacy-policy-customer-data-controversy
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p8#a240614p8


Sources: the EU has determined that Apple's anti-steering rules for developers do not comply with the DMA, and plans charges against Apple in the coming weeks (Financial Times)

https://t.co/81QurPcNtm
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p7#a240614p7


Meta will not launch Meta AI in Europe after the Irish DPC asked it to delay training its LLMs using the public Facebook and Instagram content of EU users (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/meta-will-not-launch-meta-ai-europe-now-2024-06-14/
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p6#a240614p6


Sources: Shein tries to suppress its chair's claim that the retailer is American, amid fears it could annoy China, which needs to approve Shein's London IPO (Financial Times)

https://t.co/nRx9eIhJk4
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p5#a240614p5


The crypto industry has amassed a $160M war chest to bolster pro-crypto US candidates, which could be pivotal in handing the Senate majority to GOP in November (Steven T. Dennis/Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-14/crypto-titans-160-million-war-chest-threatens-senate-democrats
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p4#a240614p4


Sources: Lightspeed wants to become a registered investment adviser, letting it use more than 20% of its funds, the cap for VC firms, to trade secondary markets (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)

https://t.co/gCTlqdGncn
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p3#a240614p3


Boulder, Colorado-based Enveda, which combines AI with ancient remedies for drug discovery, raised a $55M Series B extension from investors including Microsoft (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

https://tcrn.ch/4bZAWSG
http://www.techmeme.com/240614/p2#a240614p2


Apple limits the development and testing of third-party browser engines to devices physically located in the EU, forcing browser makers to have staff in the EU (Thomas Claburn/The Register)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/apple_browser_eu/
http://www.techmeme.com/240517/p15#a240517p15


Bluesky rolls out an app update that lets users customize their algorithmic feeds through "show more like this" and "show less like this" buttons (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/10/bluesky-now-lets-you-personalize-its-main-discover-feed-using-new-controls/
http://www.techmeme.com/240510/p9#a240510p9


The US awards TSMC $6.6B in grants and up to $5B in loans to build a third Arizona fab, slated to make 2nm chips by 2030, alongside TSMC's $65B+ investment (Bloomberg)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-08/tsmc-gets-11-6-billion-in-us-grants-loans-for-three-chip-fabs
http://www.techmeme.com/240408/p6#a240408p6


Wiz details two now-fixed security issues on the Hugging Face AI platform that put customer data at risk, as Hugging Face partners with Wiz to improve security (Kevin Poireault/Infosecurity)

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/wiz-discovers-flaws-generative-ai/
http://www.techmeme.com/240406/p2#a240406p2