~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Okta fixes a flaw present since July 23, 2024 that, under specific conditions, let users log in with any password if the account's username had 52+ characters  —  The vulnerability is fixed now, but Okta said that for three months it could've been used to access accounts with usernames stretching at least 52 characters long.

Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli / Financial Times: An interview with EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri on the Meta partnership, smart glasses replacing smartphones, and more, as the firm is valued at €100B  —  Eyewear giant chief Francesco Milleri says wearable technology developed with Meta will fuel growth

Microsoft: Microsoft and a16z jointly share US public policy ideas for AI startups, saying “regulation should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs”  —  Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft; Brad Smith, Vice-Chair and President, Microsoft, Marc Andreessen …

Bloomberg: Nvidia will replace Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on November 8, after Amazon replaced Walgreens in February; Intel joined the index in 1999  —  - Intel, Dow Inc. are set to leave the 30-member index  — Nvidia up 3.2% in post-market trading, while Intel is down 2%

Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal: Polymarket user Fredi9999, a self-described Frenchman, says he bet $30M+ on Trump after analyzing polls; he can't exit his wagers without crashing the market  —  Self-described French trader says he bet more than $30 million on U.S. election after analyzing polls

Michael Kan / PCMag: Google researchers detail Project Big Sleep, formerly Project Naptime, which used an AI agent to discover a previously unknown and exploitable bug in SQLite  —  The company's experimental AI agent finds a previously unknown and exploitable software bug in SQLite, an open-source database engine.

The Information: CoreWeave told investors its signed contracts are worth $17B, including $10B by Microsoft from 2023 to 2030, and it expects revenue to grow 4x to $8B in 2025  —  CoreWeave, a fast-growing cloud startup that operates data centers for artificial intelligence developers, pitches itself to investors …

Jay Peters / The Verge: Meta rolls out its Quest v71 update, including a redesign of Meta Horizon OS, a calendar app, and the ability to use Travel Mode on a train  —  Meta is introducing some big changes with its Quest v71 update, including a redesign of Meta Horizon OS, a calendar app, and the ability to use Travel Mode on a train.

Reuters: Disney forms the Office of Technology Enablement to coordinate its use of emerging technologies such as AI and mixed reality, to be led by CTO Jamie Voris  —  Walt Disney (DIS.N) is forming a new unit to coordinate the company's use of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and mixed reality …

Anton Shilov / Tom's Hardware: Intel outlines plan to break free from TSMC manufacturing, including making a majority of Nova Lake CPUs, due in 2026, internally  —  Good days are coming for Intel.  —  Intel's next-generation Panther Lake (via SeekingAlpha) processors will contain 70% in-house silicon, positively affecting the company's margins.

Washington Post: CCDH: of 283 X posts in 2024 with false election claims that Community Notes members had responded to, only 20 had notes with enough votes to be publicly shown  —  X's crowdsourced fact-checking program has been hailed as a bold idea for social media.  Research shows it's failing at a critical moment.

Kali Hays / Fortune: In a note to staff, Block CEO Jack Dorsey says Tidal is in for another mass layoff; insiders say as many as 100 people could be laid off, or ~25% of Tidal staff  —  Jack Dorsey told staff at music streaming app Tidal that they're in for another mass layoff.

John O'Nolan: John O'Nolan, CEO of open-source CMS Ghost, outlines the organization's governance structure and says the platform generates around $7.5M in annual revenue  —  Ghost is a distributed non-profit foundation which gives away all of its intellectual property under a permissive MIT license.

Lauren Feiner / The Verge: Study finds US judges are using algorithmic risk assessments for criminal defendants selectively, instead of wholesale adopting or rejecting algorithms' advice  —  When Northwestern University graduate student Sino Esthappan began researching how algorithms decide who stays in jail, he expected “a story about humans versus technology.”

Wired: Zuckerberg says Meta is training Llama 4 models on a cluster of 100K+ H100 chips, “or bigger than anything that I've seen reported for what others are doing”  —  The race for better generative AI is also a race for more computing power.  On that score, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta appears to be winning.

Sam Kim / Bloomberg: South Korean government data: semiconductor production fell 3% YoY in September 2024, the first decline in 14 months, indicating slowing demand for memory chips  —  - Latest industrial data add to concerns over Korean chips  — Samsung separately posts income that falls shy of expectations

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is “executing quite well” in building out AI infrastructure, as Meta raises the low end of its 2024 capex guidance to $38B from $37B  —  Meta has been so quick to build out its massive data center and computing infrastructure for artificial intelligence projects …

Bloomberg: Source: Amazon's target deadline to unveil AI-upgraded Alexa has moved into 2025, after documents showed Amazon planned to unveil the product on Oct. 17, 2024  —  Amazon is eager to take on ChatGPT, but technical challenges have forced the company to repeatedly postpone the updated voice assistant's debut.

Ina Fried / Axios: Microsoft says its AI business is on track to surpass an annual revenue run rate of $10B in Q2, its fastest product category ever to reach that milestone  —  - Axios confirmed with Microsoft that was a reference to the current quarter, Microsoft's fiscal second quarter, which runs through December.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Filing: Microsoft has made “funding commitments of $13B” to OpenAI and says losses from its stake were partly why it had a $683M expense on its Q1 investments  —  Microsoft disclosed the size of its OpenAI investment for the first time, acknowledging in its quarterly regulatory …

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Aurora Innovation delays deploying its autonomous commercial trucks from Q4 2024 to April 2025 to validate its self-driving tech, with up to 10 trucks at launch  —  Autonomous vehicle technology startup Aurora Innovation is targeting April 2025 for commercial deployment of its autonomous trucks …

Kwanwoo Jun / Wall Street Journal: Samsung Q3: revenue up 17% YoY to ~$57.4B, net profit up 73% to ~$7.3B, operating profit of ~$6.7B, and chip unit operating profit down 40% QoQ to ~$2.8B  —  Net profit for the July-September period up 73% from a year earlier  —  Samsung Electronics reported better-than-expected net profit …

New York Times: Kraken lays off workers and names Arjun Sethi as co-CEO; sources say the cuts amount to 15% of its workforce, or ~400 employees, including the COO and the CTO  —  The influential cryptocurrency exchange has undergone several reorganizations in recent years.

Bloomberg: Siemens agrees to buy engineering software company Altair for ~$10B including debt, a 19% premium on Altair's October 21 closing price; deal to close in H2 2025  —  - Transaction provides 19% premium to Altair shareholders  — Acquisition of US-based Altair is largest ever by Siemens