~techmeme | Bookmarks (985)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Paytm sells its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2M, ending Paytm's ties with SoftBank, which sold its remaining Paytm shares in June  —  Paytm has agreed to sell its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2 million, as the Indian firm sheds …

John Thornhill / Financial Times: In a recent discussion, YC partners said the incubator was deluged with applications from startups looking to develop AI agents, which could become the new SaaS  —  Big companies are trumpeting the value of consumer-facing personal digital helpers to make our lives easier

Che Pan / South China Morning Post: Sources: the US spared China's top DRAM producer CXMT from its latest round of chip curbs because of Japan's opposition; Tokyo Electron is a major CXMT supplier  —  The US spared China's top producer of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) from its latest round of chip export restrictions …

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Samsung releases One UI 7 beta for Galaxy S24, with a huge visual overhaul, a “Now Bar”, a vertically scrolling app drawer, new security and AI tools, and more  —  Months later than expected, Samsung has officially unveiled its Android 15 update, One UI 7, and the company …

M.G. Siegler / Spyglass: Pat Gelsinger was dealt a bad hand by Intel's board, which gave him just three years to execute a turnaround despite challenging timing and circumstances  —  Dealt a bad hand by a board who wouldn't give him enough time, Intel's next leader needs full control to think different

Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk: Popular NFT project Pudgy Penguins plans to launch a Solana-based token called PENGU within this year, with 23.5% of the 88B tokens reserved for its NFT holders  —  Pudgy Penguins is among the most popular NFT collections, and its comic penguins have a big presence on X, YouTube and Instagram.

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: A Brazilian judge overturns an injunction that would have forced Apple to enable iOS sideloading in 20 days, calling the regulator's decision “disproportionate”  —  Following a report earlier today about Apple appealing a Brazilian antitrust regulator's ruling on the App Store …

Reuters: The US FCC proposes rules for carriers to submit an annual certification attesting they have a plan to protect against cyberattacks, after the Salt Typhoon hack  —  U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel is proposing that communications service providers …

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: California says ride-hail drivers need to pass a fingerprint background check to transport unaccompanied minors; Uber launched Uber for Teens in CA in February  —  Uber has 30 days to require certain drivers to get fingerprinted if the ride-hail giant intends to continue transporting unaccompanied teens in California.

Bloomberg: Trump says David Sacks will be the “White House AI and crypto czar” to “work on a legal framework so the crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for”  —  - New post will help Trump put imprint on developing industries  — Venture capitalist Sacks helped Trump make inroads with tech

Paul Ziobro / MarketWatch: GitLab co-founder Sid Sijbrandij steps down as CEO to focus on his health, transitions to executive chair, and names former New Relic CEO Bill Staples as CEO  —  Gitlab co-founder Sid Sijbrandij is stepping down as chief executive due to focus on his health, including treatment for cancer.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Meta tests letting Threads users see metrics for their individual posts, including views, likes, and replies, as part of changes to Threads' Insights feature  —  Threads is testing the ability for users to see how well their individual posts performed on the social network.

Victoria Song / The Verge: Oura rolls out Symptom Radar, a feature for detecting early signs of a respiratory illness using metrics like heart rate variability, to Oura Ring Gen 3 and 4  —  At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, many wearable companies rushed to see if their devices could detect early signs of the disease.

Greg Otto / CyberScoop: US intelligence reports: online terrorist network 764 is using techniques normally used for financial crimes, such as SIM swapping, to commit child sextortion  —  The child sextortion group 764 and the global collective of loosely associated groups known as “The Com” are using tools …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: US SEC filing: xAI raised $6B from 97 participants, taking its total funding to $12B; xAI was reportedly aiming for a $50B valuation, double from six months ago  —  xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, has raised $6 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter: Meta teams up with James Cameron's Lightstorm Vision to bring “live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP” to Quest headsets  —  The multiyear deal will make Meta Quest the exclusive mixed reality headset of Lightstorm, and is meant to turbocharge 3D content development.

Joe Tidy / BBC: Telegram agrees to work with the IWF to stop the spread of CSAM; IWF calls Telegram's decision “transformational” and the first step in a “much longer journey”  —  After years of ignoring pleas to sign up to child protection schemes, the controversial messaging app Telegram …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Salesforce says online Cyber Monday sales grew 3% YoY to $49.7B globally and just 2% YoY to $12.8B in the US; Adobe says US online sales grew 7.3% YoY to $13.3B  —  The figures are now in for consumer spending on Cyber Monday, the third big online spending day — alongside Thanksgiving and Black Friday …

Sean Hollister / The Verge: A look at ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger's history at Intel, the setbacks he faced in trying to turn the company around, and why investors may have lost confidence in him  —  On Monday, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger abruptly decided to retire after less than four years on the job.  That was the official story, anyhow.

Nicole Carpenter / Polygon: Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, with servers remaining on until June 3, 2025, and plans to cut ~277 people from the production team  —  Servers will remain on until June 3, 2025, but the game will no longer be offered for download, and player registration will be closed.

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: AWS introduces Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless, distributed SQL database that promises high availability, strong consistency, and PostgreSQL compatibility  —  At its re:Invent conference, Amazon's AWS cloud computing unit today announced Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless …

Bloomberg: Bluesky COO Rose Wang says the social network is not “a US-centric, left-leaning app” and that Bluesky plans to launch a subscription service by the end of 2024  —  - Company isn't building an app for ‘one voice,’ Wang says  — Service has added more than 10 million US users since election

Kali Hays / Fortune: Sources: Meta's internal coding tool, Metamate, incorporates OpenAI's GPT-4 alongside Llama to make the tool more useful for developers and other Meta staff  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  —  Despite Mark Zuckerberg hailing Meta's Llama AI model as among the best in tech, his company is happy to also use a rival when needed.

Jonathan Greig / The Record: Vodka maker Stoli says an August 2024 ransomware attack contributed to the bankruptcy filing of its US arm, amid its ongoing issues with the Russian government  —  A ransomware attack on the multinational Stoli Group in August helped push two of the vodka-maker's U.S. subsidiaries into bankruptcy, the company's CEO said last week.