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 

 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