Network Support Blog

Silla Brush / Bloomberg: BlackRock has agreed to buy Preqin, a UK-based provider of private markets data, for £2.55B in cash  —  The acquisition deepens BlackRock's ability to oversee risks and analyze data across fast-growing markets for private assets, and also expands its Aladdin technology systems … http://www.techmeme.com/240701/p2?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240701p2

Che Pan / South China Morning Post: Sources: Huawei plans to partner with Chinese foundry Wuhan Xinxin to develop high-bandwidth memory chips, marking its latest effort to defy US sanctions  —  - US-blacklisted Huawei's move into high-bandwidth memory chips would mark its latest effort to defy Washington's tech sanctions http://www.techmeme.com/240701/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240701p1

Financial Times: Sources: BlackRock has agreed to buy Preqin, a UK-based provider of private markets data, for £2.55B in cash  —  Pursuit of data providers has grown alongside demand for ever more granular financial information  —  BlackRock has agreed to buy Preqin, a UK private markets data group … http://www.techmeme.com/240630/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240630p11

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica: Interviews with the creator and maintainers of FreeDOS, the only MS-DOS-compatible OS still under active development, about its continued relevance and more  —  Project's creator talks to Ars about where FreeDOS has been, where it's going.  —  Two big things happened in the world of text-based disk operating systems in June 1994. http://www.techmeme.com/240630/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240630p10

Benjamin Taubman / Bloomberg: Kaiko: the proportion of Bitcoin traded over weekends has fallen to 16% in 2024 so far, down from 28% in 2019, a trend likely accelerated by Bitcoin ETFs launch  —  - Weekend trading drops to 16% of total volume, Kaiko says  — ETFs, dwindling volatility lessen appeal, researcher says http://www.techmeme.com/240630/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240630p5

Luisa Beltran / Fortune: Chime buys enterprise employee rewards company Salt Labs, sources say in a deal worth up to $173M; Salt Labs had raised $18M and was valued at $80M in December  —  Jason Lee, the entrepreneur who cofounded the payroll service DailyPay, is selling his latest startup, Salt Labs, to neobank Chime Financial. http://www.techmeme.com/240629/p15?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240629p15

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: EU tech regulators asked Temu and Shein to provide details on how they comply with the Digital Services Act by July 12, following complaints by consumer bodies  —  Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce retailer Temu and China-founded peer Shein were ordered by EU tech regulators to provide details … http://www.techmeme.com/240629/p14?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240629p14

Evgeny Morozov / Financial Times: How Avery Johnson and Warren Brodey, early members of the American Society for Cybernetics, created a lab in 1967 with a utopian vision to personalize computing  —  In the late 1960s, a secret US lab was dedicated to mapping the edges of computing  —  At around 3pm on October 24 1968 … http://www.techmeme.com/240629/p13?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240629p13

Steven Levy / Wired: An interview with Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, on open-source AI, his Web3 company Near, “user-owned AI”, and more  —  Illia Polosukhin doesn't want big companies to determine the future of artificial intelligence. http://www.techmeme.com/240629/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240629p11

Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk: A US judge rules that SEC charges against Binance, Binance.US, and CZ for violating federal securities laws can proceed, but dismisses secondary sales charges  —  A federal judge ruled the SEC had plausibly alleged Binance, Binance.US and Changpeng Zhao violated federal securities laws. http://www.techmeme.com/240629/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240629p1

Tim Marchman / Wired: Quora-owned AI chatbot platform Poe is providing users with downloadable HTML files of paywalled articles from outlets including NYT, Forbes, and The Atlantic  —  WIRED was able to download stories from publishers like The New York Times and The Atlantic using Poe's Assistant bot. http://www.techmeme.com/240628/p20?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240628p20

Dan Primack / Axios: ZeroEyes, a gun detection video analytics and alert service, raised a $53M Series B led by Sorenson Capital, and says it has ~400 clients in 42 US states  —  - Its purpose is to identify guns and then share those images with trained professionals who can alert first responders and local staff if appropriate. http://www.techmeme.com/240628/p19?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240628p19

Sean Endicott / Windows Central: Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says content on the open web is “freeware” that anyone can copy or use to reproduce, due to the fair use “social contract”  —  Microsoft's CEO of AI said that content on the open web can be copied and used to create new content. http://www.techmeme.com/240628/p18?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240628p18

Reuters: Baidu unveils an upgraded version of its AI model, Ernie 4.0 Turbo, and says its chatbot Ernie Bot has reached 300M users since its launch  —  Chinese search engine giant Baidu(9888.HK) on Friday unveiled an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence (AI) model, Ernie 4.0 Turbo … http://www.techmeme.com/240628/p9?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240628p9

Devindra Hardawar / Engadget: Surface Pro Copilot+ review: the best Microsoft tablet yet, with a versatile Flex keyboard and decent AI features, but has noticeable heat and fan noise issues  —  Microsoft finally solved the Windows on Arm dilemma.  —  It's taken 12 years, but Microsoft has finally made an Arm-powered Surface tablet … http://www.techmeme.com/240628/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240628p8

Ken Yeung / VentureBeat: Google says Gemma 2 will be available to researchers and developers through Vertex AI from July as a new 9B-parameter model and the prior 27B-parameter model  —  Google says Gemma 2, its open lightweight model series, will be available to researchers and developers through Vertex AI starting next month. http://www.techmeme.com/240627/p28?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240627p28

The Information: As tech companies grapple with the limited availability of Nvidia chips globally, Chinese companies like Alibaba face a tougher situation due to US restrictions  —  U.S. rules curbing the export of artificial intelligence chips to China are beginning to squeeze the country's AI industry. http://www.techmeme.com/240627/p27?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240627p27

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Character.AI lets users talk to AI characters over calls in multiple languages, including English and Chinese, and says 3M+ users made 20M+ calls during testing  —  a16z-backed Character.AI said today that it is now allowing users to talk to AI characters over calls. http://www.techmeme.com/240627/p26?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240627p26

Katie Roof / Bloomberg: Clay, which develops AI tools focused on sales and marketing for businesses, raised $46M led by Meritech at a $500M valuation, taking its total funding to $66M  —  Company was valued at $500 million in its latest funding round.  —  An artificial intelligence startup focused on sales … http://www.techmeme.com/240627/p25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240627p25

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft plans to launch its Xbox TV app on Amazon's Fire TV Sticks in July in 25+ countries, letting Game Pass Ultimate subscribers access Xbox Cloud Gaming  —  Microsoft is launching its Xbox TV app on Amazon's Fire TV Sticks in July.  The Xbox app will provide access to Xbox Cloud Gaming … http://www.techmeme.com/240627/p24?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240627p24

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Meta rolls out its Meta Verified program for WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia, with subscription plans starting from $14 a month  —  Meta on Thursday said it is rolling out its Meta Verified program for WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia, and eventually to more countries. http://www.techmeme.com/240606/p33?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240606p33

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg: How Suicide Squad became the biggest video game flop of 2024 so far, including a tumultuous development and delayed release; WBD took a $200M loss on the game  —  After seven years of tumultuous development, Warner Bros. took a $200 million loss on the Rocksteady game http://www.techmeme.com/240606/p23?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240606p23

Joshua Robertson / TheGamer: Ikea plans to hire 10 people to run its virtual Roblox store, including to help pick out furniture and serve meatballs in the Bistro, and will pay £13.50/hour  —  - Ikea is hiring 10 people to run a virtual store in Roblox, as part of a campaign to show young people the career paths available at the store. http://www.techmeme.com/240606/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240606p11

Wired: Investigation: 22M+ flight coordinates show how the US' first police drone program, in Chula Vista, California, impacts residents and raises privacy concerns  —  A WIRED investigation, based on more than 22 million flight coordinates, reveals the complicated truth about the first full-blown … http://www.techmeme.com/240606/p6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240606p6

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Amazon's robotaxi unit Zoox plans to start testing its autonomous vehicles this summer in Austin and Miami, the company's fourth and fifth public testing cities  —  Zoox, Amazon's self-driving unit, is bringing its autonomous vehicles to more cities.  —  The self-driving technology company … http://www.techmeme.com/240605/p34?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240605p34

Sage D. Young / Unchained: Coinbase launches its smart wallet, which uses passkeys instead of seed phrases and works without app or extension installs, in a move to simplify onboarding  —  The launch of Coinbase's smart wallets, which don't require seed phrases or the downloading of a browser extension or an application … http://www.techmeme.com/240605/p23?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240605p23

Nduka Orjinmo / Bloomberg: In a letter, 16 Republican lawmakers accused Nigeria of taking Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan “hostage” and urged President Biden to help secure his release  —  - Tigran Gambaryan was detained on a trip to Nigeria in February  — Binance, Gambaryan face charges including aiding tax evasion http://www.techmeme.com/240605/p16?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240605p16

Will Shanklin / Engadget: Twitch says its Twitch Tier 1 subscriptions in the US will increase from $4.99 to $5.99 per month on July 11, the first price rise for US subscribers  —  Monthly Tier 1 memberships will go up by $1 in July.  —  Twitch is joining Spotify, Max, Peacock, Crunchyroll, EA and other content services … http://www.techmeme.com/240605/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240605p7

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: A profile of CoreWeave; the cloud GPU provider plans to spend $2.2B to build three European data centers and repurpose several Core Scientific facilities  —  CoreWeave benefits from jump in AI chip demand and eyes UK and Europe expansion  —  An upstart challenger to cloud computing giants Amazon … http://www.techmeme.com/240605/p4?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240605p4

Emilia Terzon / ABC: Australia's privacy regulator sues Medibank over an October 2022 data breach, accusing the health insurer of failing to protect the data of 9.7M customers  —  Health insurance giant Medibank is facing a maximum fine theoretically in the trillions of dollars after the Australian Information … http://www.techmeme.com/240604/p44?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240604p44

Kelly Phillips Erb / Forbes: Washington DC's AG says Michael Saylor and his company MicroStrategy will pay $40M to settle a tax suit, calling it “the largest income tax recovery” ever in DC  —  Michael Saylor and his company, MicroStrategy, will pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit alleging violations of the city's False Claims Act and tax laws. http://www.techmeme.com/240604/p33?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240604p33

Emily Baker-White / Forbes: Sources: TikTok accounts, including brands and celebrities like CNN and Paris Hilton, are getting hacked via a zero-day exploit that only requires opening a DM  —  The compromised accounts include CNN and Paris Hilton — and all users have to do to be hacked is open a DM. http://www.techmeme.com/240604/p26?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240604p26

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: OpenAI fixes a ChatGPT issue that caused a major outage for 2.5 hours, starting at around 12:20am PDT; ChatGPT went down for over five hours on May 23  —  OpenAI has fixed an issue that caused a ChatGPT outage for several hours on Tuesday.  The company said it is monitoring results at 12:21 AM PDT. http://www.techmeme.com/240604/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240604p10

Marah Eakin / Wired: A look at the “world's first beauty pageant for AI creators”, launched in April 2024 by creator platform Fanvue, after 10 semifinalists were announced on June 3  —  The idea of an AI beauty pageant might seem laughable or grotesque, depending on who you ask. http://www.techmeme.com/240604/p7?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240604p7

Toby Sterling / Reuters: ASML opens a test laboratory for its High NA EUV machine with Belgium's Imec in the Netherlands, and expects customers to use it for manufacturing in 2025-2026  —  ASML (ASML.AS), the biggest maker of equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, said on Monday it has opened a test laboratory … http://www.techmeme.com/240603/p25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240603p25

Emilia David / The Verge: Amazon details Project PI, which is active in several warehouses and uses computer vision to detect if products are damaged or don't meet buyers' criteria  —  Amazon's Project PI, or “Private Investigator,” setup combines generative AI and computer vision to “see” damage on products or determine … http://www.techmeme.com/240603/p19?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240603p19

Swetha Gopinath / Bloomberg: Raspberry Pi plans to sell shares at £2.60 to £2.80 each in its London IPO, aiming to raise ~£157M; shareholder Arm has agreed to buy $35M more worth of shares  —  British personal computer maker Raspberry Pi and its shareholders are looking to raise £157 million … http://www.techmeme.com/240603/p9?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240603p9

CRN: AMD announces a yearly data center GPU release cycle, starting with Instinct MI325X, slated for later in 2024 and meant to best Nvidia H200 in peak performance  —  The chip designer says the Instinct MI325X data center GPU will best Nvidia's H200 in memory capacity, memory bandwidth … http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p11

Mark Hachman / PCWorld: AMD announces two new Ryzen AI 300 series mobile chips, Ryzen AI 9 365 and Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, each with a 50 TOPS NPU, shipping in July  —  AMD should enter the Copilot+ generation of PCs with the new Ryzen AI 300 series, a mobile processor with an NPU that AMD claims will lead the industry with 50 TOPS of AI power. http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p10

Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech: AMD unveils four new Ryzen 9000-series desktop CPUs slated for July, based on its new Zen 5 architecture, which it says delivers 16% more instructions per cycle  —  During AMD's Computex 2024 kick-off keynote, AMD's CEO, Dr. Lisa Su, officially unveiled and announced the company's next generation of Ryzen processors. http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p9?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p9

Suzanne Smalley / The Record: Q&A with FTC's Privacy and Identity Protection executive Ben Wiseman on proposed commercial surveillance rules, connected car industry's data practices, more  —  I can more broadly speak about the increased rulemaking over the past several years and I think it reflects two things. http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p8?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p8

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Jensen Huang said at Computex that Asus, Pegatron, Wistron, and others will deliver cloud, on-prem, embedded, and edge AI systems using Nvidia Blackwell GPUs  —  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced at Computex that the world's top computer manufacturers today are unveiling Nvidia Blackwell … http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p3?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p3

Politico: Donald Trump's campaign joins TikTok, the app he once tried to ban; a TikTok official says there's a 2:1 ratio of pro-Trump versus pro-Biden content on the app  —  Trump's joining of TikTok is a major win for the embattled app that's fighting for its existence in Washington. http://www.techmeme.com/240602/p1?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240602p1

Rest of World: A look at activist groups' efforts to keep Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from building more data centers in Chile, amid a drought expected to last until 2040  —  Multiple groups are working to keep Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from doubling the number of centers in the country, fearing environmental devastation. http://www.techmeme.com/240601/p12?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240601p12

Reuters: CISPE denies a report that it was nearing a settlement with Microsoft to withdraw its EU antitrust complaint about Microsoft's cloud licensing practices  —  European trade group CISPE denied a report on Saturday that it was nearing a settlement with Microsoft (MSFT.O) to withdraw … http://www.techmeme.com/240601/p11?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240601p11

Alexandra Alter / New York Times: How TikTok influencers helped a self-published author sell 1M+ copies of her book, including ~700K on the TikTok shop, showing how TikTok changed book marketing  —  Keila Shaheen's “The Shadow Work Journal” shows how radically book sales and marketing have been changed by TikTok. http://www.techmeme.com/240601/p10?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240601p10

Bloomberg: What to expect at Computex 2024, where the CEOs of Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and Arm are speaking, as AI hardware products like AI PCs take center stage  —  - Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Arm chiefs all speaking at show  — Computex popularity underscores Taiwan's global importance http://www.techmeme.com/240601/p5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=blogger#a240601p5