~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer: Some GitHub projects have been targeted with malicious commits; a Texas researcher claims someone is impersonating him to make the submissions and smear him  —  GitHub projects have been targeted with malicious commits and pull requests, in an attempt to inject backdoors into these projects.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: ByteDance is valuing itself at about $300B as part of a recent buyback offer, one of its highest valuations ever  —  Investors see Trump victory as a positive with threat of TikTok ban looming in U.S.  —  TikTok parent ByteDance is valuing itself at about $300 billion …

Morgan Meaker / Wired: A profile of and an interview with Aura Salla, a former Meta lobbyist turned EU Parliament member, who says the EU's Big Tech regulation went too far, too fast  —  Aura Salla was once the tech giant's top lobbyist in Brussels.  Now, her presence as a regulator in the European Parliament is proving controversial.

Nandagopal Rajan / The Indian Express: An interview with Apple's Tim Millet and Tom Boger on Apple's chip strategy, making big changes to the Neural Engine after the 2017 transformer paper, and more  —  'No other platform can touch our power performance per watt.  That's the tangible benefit to users,' Tom Boger, Vice President of Mac Product Marketing at Apple, said.

ProPublica: Investigation: Microsoft offered the US government free cybersecurity upgrades in 2021, increasing government reliance on Microsoft due to high switching costs  —  - Raising the Bar: President Joe Biden asked tech companies to “raise the bar on cybersecurity.”

Dominic Patten / Deadline: Many Netflix viewers faced issues while watching the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight and the undercard bouts, including the stream glitching and losing sound  —  From nearly the start of the undercard bouts from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the streamer has been freezing, losing sound and proving slow to reload.

Ellen Huet / Bloomberg: A look at the challenges facing the Trump administration for regulating AI; policy analysts suspect Trump will dismantle or reshape the US AI Safety Institute  —  There's a broad expectation the president-elect will reverse attempts to craft rules that put safety ahead of maximum speed in developing the technology.

Jonathan Greig / The Record: An Ohio man is sentenced to three years for running crypto mixer Helix, which laundered $311M+ from 2014 to 2017; he must forfeit $311M+ and assets worth $400M+  —  The operator of the cryptocurrency mixing service Helix was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: T-Mobile's network was among the systems hacked by the China-linked Salt Typhoon group, and some foreign telecommunications firms were also compromised  —  Carrier joins growing list of known victims, including AT&T and Verizon, of the major Chinese spying operation

Ben Schoon / 9to5Google: Report: Samsung plans to release its smart glasses in Q3 2025; the glasses will be powered by Qualcomm's AR1 chipset and use Google's Gemini to handle AI tasks  —  According to a new report, Samsung's upcoming XR glasses that are being developed in collaboration with Google won't arrive until …

Shakeel Hashim / Transformer: Musk v. Altman: email shows Brockman and Sutskever had concerns about Altman in 2017, Musk claims Altman proposed OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency, and more  —  New emails released as part of Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI reveal that the company's fondness of drama is hardly new.

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: One year after Sam Altman was dramatically ousted and reinstated, OpenAI remains dominant as it continues to push ahead on impressive new products  —  The ChatGPT maker is still the company to beat in AI despite going through a turbulent period.  —  One year after Sam Altman's dramatic …

Ari Levy / CNBC: Palantir stock jumps 11% after announcing a move from the NYSE to the Nasdaq; its stock is up 50%+ since reporting better-than-expected earnings on November 4  —  Palantir shares continued their torrid run on Friday, soaring 11% to a record, after the developer of software for the military announced plans …

Jay Peters / The Verge: Bluesky says it has “no intention” of taking user content to train AI tools, ahead of X implementing new terms of service that let it train AI on user content  —  ‘We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so.’

Luc Cohen / Reuters: A senior SDNY prosecutor says the office will devote fewer resources to policing crypto crimes after securing several major convictions, including that of SBF  —  The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan will devote fewer resources to policing cryptocurrency crimes after securing several major convictions …

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Apple removes RFE/RL's Svoboda app from the Russian App Store at the demand of Roskomnadzor; Apple also removed recent podcasts by Ekho Moskvy and others  —  U.S. technology giant Apple has notified RFE/RL that it has removed several of its apps following a request from Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor.

Mia Sato / The Verge: Facebook makes Views its primary metric for content, bringing it in line with Instagram; each time a piece of content appears on a screen, it counts as a View  —  Views will be measured not just on video content but also on photos, text posts, and more.  When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced …

Emma Roth / The Verge: Mark Zuckerberg says Threads is testing custom feeds for certain profiles or topics; the Threads' version seems easier to use than Bluesky's custom feeds  —  Threads is testing a way to create custom feeds for certain profiles or topics, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday.

Jibin Joseph / PCMag: UK mobile operator Virgin Media O2 creates Daisy, an AI-generated “scambaiter” tool that mimics the voice of an elderly woman to waste scammers' time  —  After a survey found that 71% of Brits want revenge on scammers, mobile operator O2 deploys Daisy, an AI tool that keeps fraudsters on the line to waste their time.

Peter Blumberg / Bloomberg: X sues to block California's AB 2655, aimed at curbing AI-generated deceptive election content on social media, claiming it impinges on free speech  —  Elon Musk's social media platform X sued to block a California law aimed at curbing AI-generated deceptive election content on social media …

Yang Jie / Wall Street Journal: Nvidia says Jetson Thor, a computer first unveiled in March 2024 and designed for testing humanoid robot software, will be available in the first half of 2025  —  The company is targeting a fragmented market of robot makers  —  Nvidia is set to bring its new technology for powering humanoid robots …

Bloomberg: Sources: the UK Treasury is planning to introduce legislation on stablecoins and staking; the FCA says it plans to publish a crypto regulatory roadmap “shortly”  —  - Government to introduce legislation on stablecoins, staking  — UK faces industry pressure for clarity as US, EU set pace

Samuel K. Moore / IEEE Spectrum: Nvidia B200 GPU and Google Trillium TPU debut on the MLPerf Training v4.1 benchmark charts; the B200 posted a doubling of performance on some tests vs. the H100  —  The Nvidia B200 and Google Trillium debut on the MLPerf benchmark charts  —  Samuel K. Moore is IEEE Spectrum's semiconductor editor.

Ava Benny-Morrison / Bloomberg: Filing: FTX co-founder Gary Wang, due for sentencing on Nov. 20, built “tools” to help the US government detect potential fraud in the stock and crypto markets  —  - Prosecutors said the Wang offered ‘outstanding’ cooperation  —  Much like his former FTX colleagues …