~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Josh Noble / Financial Times: How YouTube, NBC, Eurosport, and others are enlisting creators to cover the Paris Olympics, to fill in storytelling gaps and captivate a younger generation  —  NBC and Eurosport among those using ‘creators’ to spur interest and reach wider audiences  —  Sandra Kwon's life …

Allison Johnson / The Verge: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6 review: all-day battery, seven years of updates, and widgets for the outer screen are helpful but hard to run full apps  —  It's not the most fun, but reliability goes a long way. … Look, fun is fun and all, but sometimes boring is better.

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: A look at Bungie's future after it laid off 220 staffers, as current and former employees say it grew too fast and tried to develop too many projects at once  —  The creator of Halo and Destiny laid off more than 200 people this week including several top executives  —  Hi everyone.

Eric Platt / Financial Times: Filings: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway slashed its stake in Apple by ~50% in Q2, following a 13% cut in Q1, leaving it with a position worth $84.2B  —  Cash holdings hit a record high as billionaire investor dumps $76bn of stocks  —  Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has slashed …

Financial Times: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta boosted capex by 50% to a total of $106B in H1 2024, as they build AI infrastructure and pledge more investment hikes  —  Technology stocks have been volatile as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Google report huge increases in their investments in artificial intelligence

Riley Griffin / Bloomberg: How AI-formulated bioweapons became a security obsession inside Washington, DC, forcing officials to take tech advances in weaponizing disease seriously  —  A stunt got White House officials to take technological advances in weaponizing disease seriously.  —  Rocco Casagrande entered …

Gaby Del Valle / The Verge: Inside the MAGA-fueled 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, as attendees were divided on Trump's keynote speech, some let down, others calling it historic  —  Inside the MAGA-fueled fever dream of the 2024 Bitcoin Conference. … There were rumors that Elon Musk would introduce former …

Wall Street Journal: A profile of Huawei, which has expanded into new businesses, built out its supply chain, and boosted profit, thanks to billions of dollars in Beijing support  —  The Chinese telecom giant struggled at first under U.S. sanctions—then Beijing stepped in

Michael McWhertor / Polygon: ROMHacking.net, a community of people sharing hacks and fixes for old games, winds down, closes all ROM hack submissions, and moves its data to Internet Archive  —  ROMhacking.net's data is moving over to the Internet Archive  —  ROMhacking.net, a longtime resource for video game fan translations …

Andy Greenberg / Wired: A look at RayV Lite, an open-source laser hacking tool built by two hackers for less than $500 that can reverse engineer chips and exploit their vulnerabilities  —  The RayV Lite will make it hundreds of times cheaper for anyone to carry out physics-bending feats of hardware hacking.

The Information: Sources: Nvidia told Microsoft, and another large cloud provider, that its new Blackwell AI chips will be delayed by three months or more due to design flaws  —  Nvidia's upcoming artificial intelligence chips will be delayed by three months or more due to design flaws …

Lily Hay Newman / Wired: A security researcher says 4.6M Illinois voter and election records, including Social Security Numbers, were exposed by a contractor's unsecured databases  —  Social Security numbers, death certificates, voter applications, and other personal information was accessible on the open internet …

Patpicha Tanakasempipat / Bloomberg: Apple apologizes and pulls an ad set in Thailand after backlash from Thai lawmakers and influencers who deemed its portrayal of the country offensive  —  - Short film taints image of Thai tourism industry, critics say  — Apple apologizes for not fully capturing contemporary vibrancy

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Data breach notifications show US pharmaceutical giant Cencora has notified at least 1.43M individuals that their data was compromised in a February data breach  —  Cencora has so far notified over a million people around the U.S. that their personal and protected health information …

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Sources: Meta is offering Hollywood celebrities like Judi Dench millions of dollars for the right to use their voices for AI projects; SAG-AFTRA agreed to terms  —  - Judi Dench, Awkwafina are among the celebrities holding talks  — Some terms sought by Meta trigger actors' fears of AI

CNBC: Intel shares fall 26% to close at $21.48 in their biggest drop since 1974, after the company reported a big earnings miss; Intel's market cap is now below $100B  —  Intel shares plunged the most in 50 years on Friday, reaching a price not seen since 2013, after the chipmaker reported …

Gaby Del Valle / The Verge: Trump says Zuckerberg called him after the assassination attempt and told Trump he wouldn't endorse a Democrat because he “respected” Trump's reaction that day  —  Former President Donald Trump has expressed a newfound fondness for Mark Zuckerberg after years of railing against him.

Olga Kharif / Bloomberg: Crypto lender Genesis and related companies complete their bankruptcy restructuring and begin distributing ~$4B in digital assets and cash to creditors  —  - Bitcoin creditors will receive 51% recovery on in-kind basis  — Genesis distributions come soon after Mt Gox repaid billions

Akila Quinio / Financial Times: Sources: Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500M worth of existing shares at a $45B valuation; former employees are ineligible  —  Revolut has told staff it is launching a sale of up to $500mn worth of existing shares at a $45bn valuation, in a move that would cement …

The Information: Character.AI told staff that investors will be bought out at a valuation of ~2.5x its $1B 2023 valuation, and it plans to adopt open-source models for products  —  Google has agreed to pay a licensing fee to chatbot maker Character.AI for its models and will hire its cofounders and many of its researchers, the companies said.

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Character.AI co-founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and some employees, are joining Google; Google has signed a non-exclusive agreement to use its tech  —  In a big move, Character.AI co-founder and CEO CEO Noam Shazeer is returning to Google after leaving the company in October 2021 to found the a16z-backed startup.

New York Times: The US DOJ sues TikTok, saying it collected children's data without parents' permission, knowingly let users under the age of 13 create accounts, and more  —  The Justice Department said that TikTok illegally collected children's data and knowingly allowed users under the age of 13 to create accounts.

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: In a memo to staff, Samsung's chip business head Jun Young-hyun warns Samsung risks getting into a “vicious cycle” if it doesn't revamp its workplace culture  —  - Jun Young-hyun replaced his predecessor just a few months ago  — It's trying to catch SK Hynix in the hot AI memory chip market

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenSecrets: the number of groups lobbying the US government on AI grew from 459 in 2023 to 556 in H1 2024; OpenAI spent $800K in H1 2024, vs. $260K in 2023  —  AI lobbying at the U.S. federal level is intensifying in the midst of a continued generative AI boom and an election year that could influence future AI regulation.