~techmeme | Bookmarks (1029)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Anthropic hires OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma, who spent years as a doctoral fellow at Google before joining OpenAI's founding team as a research scientist  —  Durk Kingma, one of the lesser-known co-founders of OpenAI, today announced that he'll be joining Anthropic.

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: An interview with WhatsApp Product Director Alice Newton-Rex on end-to-end encryption, spotting misinformation, the UK's Online Safety Act, Telegram, and more  —  The messaging platform's director of product discusses privacy issues, AI and new features for the app's 2bn users

Kate Knibbs / Wired: A look at Calliope Networks, a content licensing company whose License to Scrape program is targeting YouTubers to strike their own AI training data agreements  —  While big platforms like Reddit have signed deals with the AI giants, YouTube leaves licensing in the hands of individual creators.

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: In the past year, one researcher reported vulnerabilities in 19 commercial services used by hundreds of courts, state agencies, and police departments in the US  —  With hundreds of courts and agencies affected, chances are one near you is, too.  —  Public records systems that courts …

Rozanna Latiff / Reuters: Google starts construction of a new $2B data center in Malaysia, says its investments would create 26,500 jobs and contribute $3B+ to Malaysian economy by 2030  —  Google (GOOGL.O) said on Tuesday its investments in Malaysia would create 26,500 jobs and contribute more than $3 billion …

Kevin Collier / NBC News: FCC's connectivity data in counties affected by Hurricane Helene: as of Sept. 30, 370 of North Carolina's 1,452 cell sites are out because of a lack of power  —  In some counties, fewer than 10% of all cellphone service sites are fully functioning.  —  Some of the victims of Hurricane Helene are cut off from the outside world.

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: YC-backed PearAI criticized for forking another AI code editor covered under the Apache license and changing the license to its own made-up closed license  —  A Y Combinator startup named PearAI launched with an X post thread and YouTube video on Saturday and created immediate controversy.

Jody Godoy / Reuters: A US court awards Amazon a partial dismissal of FTC's lawsuit accusing it of illegal monopolies, in a sealed ruling whose details weren't immediately clear  —  Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) won partial dismissal of a U.S. Federal Trade Commission's lawsuit accusing it of maintaining illegal monopolies …

Mike Scarcella / Reuters: Apple asks a judge to throw out or narrow an App Store anti-steering injunction, saying rulings in two unrelated cases undermine an order Epic won in its suit  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has asked a U.S. judge to throw out or narrow a decision governing its lucrative App Store, saying …

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: MIT spinoff Liquid AI debuts its non-transformer AI models LFM 1B, 3B, and 40B MoE, and claims they achieve “state-of-the-art performance at every scale”  —  Liquid AI, a startup co-founded by former researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) …

New York Times: Filing: UAE-based G42 accounted for 87% of Cerebras' H1 2024 revenue and has committed to buy $335M worth of its stock by April 2025, giving G42 a 5%+ stake  —  Cerebras makes a chip that is 56 times the size of a chip commonly used for artificial intelligence, with the potential to crunch data …

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: Notes on Google NotebookLM's Audio Overview feature, which generates a podcast with two AI hosts discussing user-provided content and is surprisingly effective  —  Audio Overview is a fun new feature of Google's NotebookLM which is getting a lot of attention right now.

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: A US judge dismisses a DOJ lawsuit accusing eBay of violating environmental laws by allowing the sale of harmful products, citing Section 230 protections  —  A federal judge dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit accusing eBay (EBAY.O) of violating environmental laws by allowing …

CNBC: AI chip startup Cerebras Systems files for an IPO, with plans to trade on the Nasdaq as CBRS, and reports a net loss of $66.6M on $136.4M in sales in H1 2024  —  Artificial intelligence chip startup Cerebras Systems on Monday filed its prospectus for an initial public offering …

Jason Koebler / 404 Media: Udemy uses opt-out windows, the first of which lasted three weeks and just ended, that its creators must use to prevent their videos from being used to train AI  —  Teachers are surprised they have been opted into having their classes scraped for AI training.

Umar Shakir / The Verge: YouTube reaches a deal with SESAC that will bring back songs by Adele, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and others that were removed over the weekend in the US  —  YouTube has reached a deal with the music licensing organization SESAC that will bring back songs that were removed over the weekend.

Matthew Lynley / Supervised: A look at OpenAI's sprawling product portfolio as the startup matures into a real business and runs into the challenges of avoiding product creep  —  Plus: OpenAI's portfolio is getting a little big.  —  ∙ Paid  —  This issue was finished on a mobile device so I apologize ahead of time for any typos and formatting errors.

Jem Aswad / Variety: YouTube blocks songs by Adele, Bob Dylan, Green Day, and others in the US, after its music licensing agreement with performing rights organization SESAC expired  —  Songs by Adele, Bob Dylan, Green Day, R.E.M., Burna Boy, Rush and many others are currently unplayable on YouTube in the U.S. due …

Alex Perry / Bloomberg: Mark Zuckerberg's personal wealth has climbed almost sixfold to $200B+ in less than two years, buoyed by Meta's record-high share price, which is up 60%+ YTD  —  - Meta CEO's wealth has jumped sixfold in the past two years  — Shares of Meta are trading near record high, up 60% this year

Steven Levy / Wired: Q&A with Trae Stephens, partner at Founders Fund and Executive Chairman of Anduril, on autonomous AI's role in warfare, building a wearable e-reader, and more  —  He's deep in the defense-startup world as a Founders Fund partner and Anduril cofounder.  His bunker, though, isn't fully prepped for the end times.

Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Bumble, Muzz, and Match Group are pushing their friend-finding and community-building products to attract young users hit by so-called dating app fatigue  —  Bumble and Match Group launch friendship and social products to help reverse post-pandemic slowdown

Brian Steinberg / Variety: Sources: Amazon Prime Video is in talks with veteran anchor Brian Williams to host a live Election Night special, its first entry into news-related programming  —  Brian Williams may have found his next TV-news job....except it won't be on traditional TV.  —  The veteran NBC News …

Ricardo Brito / Reuters: Court docs: Brazil's Supreme Court say X still needs to pay $5M+ in pending fines, including a new one, before it will be allowed to resume service in Brazil  —  Brazil's Supreme Court said on Friday that social platform X still needs to pay just over $5 million in pending fines …

New York Times: Sources: TSMC's execs took to calling Sam Altman a “podcasting bro” after he said it would take $7T and many years to build 36 chip plants to fulfill his vision  —  Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, is talking to the United Arab Emirates, Asian chipmakers and U.S. officials …