~techmeme | Bookmarks (1000)

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Filing: Microsoft expects an ~$800M charge in Q2 2025 over GM's exit of the Cruise robotaxi business, after acquiring a minority stake in Cruise in January 2021  —  Microsoft (MSFT.O) expects to record an impairment charge of around $800 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 over General Motors' …

Ari Levy / CNBC: The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closes up 1.8% to pass 20,000 for the first time, pushing it up 33% in 2024 so far; Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta close at record highs  —  Alphabet and Tesla climbed to fresh records on Wednesday, closing at all-time highs alongside Amazon and Meta as the tech megacaps lifted …

Katie Robertson / New York Times: The NYT Tech Guild and its 600+ members reach a tentative deal with management on a contract enhancing job security, setting flexible hybrid schedules, and more  —  The union, which represents some 600 tech workers at the publication, had been negotiating for a contract for more than two years.

Sheena Vasani / The Verge: Google rolls out two updates to Android's unknown tracker alerts feature, letting users pause location updates from their phone and pinpoint unfamiliar trackers  —  Google is rolling out two new updates to its unknown tracker alerts feature that should make it easier for Android device owners …

Financial Times: Sources: EU regulators asked Google for more info in October about a secret ads partnership with Meta which skirted Google's own rules for targeting minors  —  Regulators request information after FT investigation into partnership that skirted search giant's rules on minors

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: A growing cohort of AI startups are recruiting scores of experts to train models on highly specialized tasks for sensitive sectors like defense and health care  —  From spotting weeds in cotton fields to scanning the bush for signs of poachers, AI startups are recruiting scores of experts for highly specialized tasks.

Kali Hays / Fortune: Stability AI CEO Prem Akkaraju says the startup, now focused on its API and licensing, has seen “triple digit growth” and has “a clean balance sheet, no debt”  —  Stability AI's CEO said the company' was back in growth mode after a rough period, with business …

Issie Lapowsky / Rest of World: How WhatsApp evolved from a messaging app into a business messaging growth platform, aggressively luring big businesses to its suite of paid messaging products  —  WhatsApp is already the world's most widely used messaging app.  Meta wants it to be a lot more.  —  • PHILADELPHIA, UNITED STATES

Patrick McKenzie / Bits about Money: A deep dive into “debanking”, which crypto advocates, including a16z, claim has been used against them by US political actors and agencies without due process  —  Recently, noted VC Marc Andreessen kicked off a discussion about debanking, in a podcast with his co-founder Ben Horowitz …

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: Norwegian payment service Vipps launches the world's first Apple Pay alternative on iOS, following Apple's move to open NFC access to developers from iOS 18.1  —  Norwegian payment service Vipps has become the world's first company to launch a competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone …

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Oracle reports Q2 revenue up 9% YoY to $14.06B, vs. $14.1B est., and signs a deal with Meta to train Llama models on Oracle's cloud; ORCL drops 7%+ after hours  —  Oracle shares slid 7% in extended trading on Monday after the database software company reported fiscal second-quarter results …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI says Sora limits the depiction of minors, and only a subset of users will be able to create videos of a real person using uploaded footage of that person  —  OpenAI launched its video-generating tool, Sora, on Monday.  But the company's opting not to release a key feature for most users pending further testing.

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: In mockups on GitHub, Bluesky teases Bluesky+, a $72-per-year or $8-per-month subscription offering profile customizations, higher video upload limits, and more  —  Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions.  The company first announced plans to develop …

OpenAI: OpenAI launches Sora in select countries; ChatGPT Pro offers up to 500 videos per month at up to 1080p, and ChatGPT Plus offers up to 50 videos at up to 720p  —  We're moving our video generation model out of research preview.  —  Learn more System Card  —  Our video generation model …

Marques Brownlee / Marques Brownlee on YouTube: Review of OpenAI's Sora video generator: excels at depicting landscapes, people, and stylistic content but often fails with basic physics like object permanence  —  SORA generates videos.  This is the first review.Get up to 40% off on last minute gifts at https://ridge.com/MKBHDThe (real) birding video: https://youtu.be/F...

John Russell / HPCwire: Google says it made a major quantum error correction breakthrough, unveils its Willow quantum chip with 105 improved qubits, and shares benchmarks and a roadmap  —  Google today introduced its latest quantum chip — Willow (~100 qubits) — coinciding with two key achievements run on the new chip …

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman on AGI, Copilot, AI agents, the OpenAI deal, joining Microsoft in March 2024, managing ~10K staff, DeepMind, and more  —  The company's new AI chief on working for Microsoft, the OpenAI relationship, and when superintelligence might actually arrive.

David Belson / The Cloudflare Blog: Cloudflare 2024 report: global internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024, Google remained the top service, global traffic from Starlink grew 3.3x in 2024, and more  —  The 2024 Cloudflare Radar Year in Review is our fifth annual review of Internet trends and patterns observed throughout the year …

Sabrina Willmer / Bloomberg: Filing: TikTok asks a US court to put on hold a law forcing a sale or ban of the app until SCOTUS can review it and the Trump admin can determine its position  —  TikTok asked that a US law forcing a sale or ban of the app by China-based parent company ByteDance Ltd. be put on hold to give...

The Guardian: An analysis of US FEC data: Trump received $273.2M in donations from tech executives and VCs, including $242.6M from Elon Musk, while Harris received $120.9M  —  FEC filings offer only a glimpse of the money tech is pouring into Washington as it seeks to influence government

Financial Times: Sources: ByteDance has taken an early lead in the generative AI race in China by poaching top talent from rivals and becoming Nvidia's biggest buyer in China  —  Beijing-based company has lured top AI talent from local rivals while becoming China's biggest buyer of Nvidia chips

Yongchang Chin / Bloomberg: Ant President Cyril Han will succeed Eric Jing as CEO on March 1; Jing will remain company chairman and Han, who is also the CFO, will continue reporting to him  —  Han will succeed Eric Jing as CEO on March 1 and be responsible for all business segments and daily management …

Wall Street Journal: A profile of Brain Krebs, who in the past 20 years has probed and outed some of the worst cybercriminals, including the alleged hackers of Snowflake clients  —  In the increasingly dangerous world of cybercrime, Brian Krebs faces threats, manipulation and the odd chess challenge

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware: The Intel Foundry Technology Research team announces breakthroughs in interconnect scaling, gate-all-around transistors, and packaging  —  Smaller, faster, better.  —  Today, the Intel Foundry Technology Research team announced technology breakthroughs in 2D transistor technology using …