~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Levi Sumagaysay / CalMatters: An investigation details the lack of enforcement of CA's Prop 22 about four years after the ballot initiative, backed by gig economy companies, became state law  —  Prop. 22 promised improved pay and benefits for California gig workers.  But when companies fail to deliver, the state isn't doing much to help push back.

Bloomberg: Character.AI, Aleph Alpha, and other AI startups that raised hundreds of millions are struggling to compete against better-funded rivals and Big Tech companies  —  Even companies that raised hundreds of millions in funding are bowing out of the race to develop advanced AI models.

Jennifer Elias / CNBC: A look at the DOJ's and multiple states' antitrust lawsuit against Google's ad business, as its trial is set to begin on September 9  —  A month after losing a landmark antitrust case brought by the Department of Justice, Google is headed back to court to face off for a second time against federal prosecutors.

Financial Times: Companies and customers say the cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips is lower in China than in the US despite the export controls  —  Supply of processors helps Chinese start-ups advance artificial intelligence technology despite Washington's restrictions

Megan Cassella / CNBC: In a letter, Kamala Harris is endorsed for president by 88 corporate leaders, including Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen  —  @IN/MEGAN-CASSELLA-BA02A160/ @MMCASSELLA  — Eighty-eight corporate leaders signed a new letter Friday endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: A look at LMSYS' Chatbot Arena and the issues surrounding the crowdsourced LLM benchmark platform, including biases, lack of transparency, and commercial ties  —  Human raters bring their biases  —  Over the past few months, tech execs like Elon Musk have touted the performance …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: S&P Global announces that Dell and Palantir will join the S&P 500, effective on September 23, 2024; DELL jumps 5%+ and PLTR jumps 7%+ after hours  —  Dell and Palantir both jumped about 7% in extended trading Friday after S&P Global announced that the companies would join the S&P 500 index.

Mia Sato / The Verge: Telegram says the app's source code has not changed, and its FAQ has been changed only to make it clearer how to report content on Telegram, including via DSA  —  Telegram has quietly removed language from its FAQ page saying private chats were protected and that “we do not process any requests related to them.”

Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch: Mangomint, which makes software for salon and spa operations, raised a $35M Series B led by Altos Ventures and says it has processed $1B+ in transactions  —  Back in 2017, Daniel Lang, Dan Poineau, and Sandra Huber came together to build Mangomint, a startup that makes salon and spa operations software.

Cecilia Kang / New York Times: The judge in the Google monopoly ruling says he'll take until August 2025 to determine remedies in the case and asks the DOJ to propose fixes by the end of 2024  —  After ruling against Google last month, Judge Amit P. Mehta said he would take until next August to determine fixes that the company must make.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Roblox plans a generative AI tool to let creators make 3D scenes using text prompts, and announces new social features like Party and Music Charts  —  At the annual Roblox Developers Conference, the company announced on Friday a series of upcoming changes coming to the platform in the next few months and years.

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: HyperWrite CEO unveils Reflection 70B, based on Llama 3.1 70B Instruct and trained using reflection-tuning, and says it beats GPT-4o in all benchmarks tested  —  There's a new king in town: Matt Shumer, co-founder and CEO of AI writing startup HyperWrite, today unveiled Reflection 70B …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Meta details its plans for WhatsApp and Messenger interoperability with third-party apps in the EU, with group chats in 2025 and voice and video calling in 2027  —  Meta on Friday published an update on how it plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European law that aims …

Chris McKay / Maginative: Replit launches Replit Agent, an AI agent that can build entire apps from scratch based on prompts, available in beta to Replit Core and Teams subscribers  —  Replit has launched an AI agent capable of building entire applications from scratch.  This isn't just another copilot coding assistant …

Alex Heath / The Verge: Roblox plans to let creators keep 50% to 70% of revenue when their titles are purchased in real currency on desktop computers vs. 30% for purchases with Robux  —  As Roblox marches toward its ultimate goal of 1 billion users, the company is finding new ways to share revenue with the developers …

Financial Times: Sources: US private equity group TPG is in talks to buy a stake in Europe's largest secondhand fashion site Vinted at a €5B valuation  —  US private equity group's interest highlights growing demand for second-hand goods from consumers and investors  —  US private equity group TPG …

Kaya Yurieff / The Information: Filing: OnlyFans revenue rose 20% YoY to ~$1.31B for the FY ending November 2023; creator accounts grew 29% YoY to ~4.1M while fan accounts rose 28% YoY to 305M  —  OnlyFans revenue rose 20% to about $1.31 billion for the fiscal year ending November 2023, compared to the previous year …

New York Times: Inside Amazon Zoox's command center in Foster City, California, which holds about 36 human technicians who oversee and provide remote assistance to robot taxis  —  In places like San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas, robot taxis are navigating city streets, each without a driver behind the steering wheel.

Nikou Asgari / Financial Times: Some tech and crypto firms, and Wyoming rush to launch their own stablecoins to profit from a recovering crypto market, as experts say tokens are of little use  —  But some industry experts warn that tokens are a ‘novelty asset’ used mostly for trading  —  Technology and crypto companies …

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware: Intel cancels plans for using its 20A process node for its Arrow Lake processors for the consumer market and will use external nodes instead, likely from TSMC  —  Out with the Intel node, in with TSMC.  —  In a surprise move, Intel announced today that it no longer plans to use …

Sam Sabin / Axios: Cybersecurity company Pango Group is acquiring all of Kaspersky's US customers, or ~1M users, after Commerce Department banned Kaspersky's software in the US  —  - Pango owns and offers a portfolio of cybersecurity products, including VPNs, antivirus software and identity theft protection tools.

Eli Tan / New York Times: A look at the economics of Waymo's robot taxi business as its dominance has grown since Cruise pulled its fleet off the road  —  Now that its technology is showing it can work on city streets, Alphabet, which owns Waymo, plans to invest billions more.  —  Over the last few months …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: YouTube expands its existing parental controls to let parents link their account to their teens' account and gain insight into the teens' activity  —  YouTube is expanding its existing set of parental controls with a new feature that would allow a parent to link their account to their teen's account …

Todd Feathers / Gizmodo: An analysis of OpenAI's GPT Store finds 100+ custom GPTs that appear to violate OpenAI's policies regarding sexual content, legal and medical advice, and more  —  A Gizmodo analysis of OpenAI's GPT store found more than 100 tools that appear to violate the company's policies regarding sexual content …