~techmeme | Bookmarks (999)

Austin Carr / Bloomberg: A profile of Texas-based Tyler Tech, which has become a dominant US local government software provider, despite a history of software flaws and release delays  —  Tyler Tech dominates America's software industry managing parks, courts, municipal offices and prison networks.  And you thought the DMV was rough before.

Mike Masnick / Techdirt: A look at the 2nd Circuit's incredibly damaging ruling favoring publishers in a copyright dispute over The Internet Archive's ebook lending program  —  What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn't bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library?

Anthony Cuthbertson / The Independent: CelesTrak: SpaceX controls 62%+ of all active satellites in orbit, ~10x more than closest rival OneWeb, after launching its 7,000th Starlink satellite on Sep. 5  —  SpaceX's Starlink network is growing by an average of three satellites per day  —  Your support helps us to tell the story

Wall Street Journal: Sources: xAI discussed a deal that would give Tesla access to its AI models to help power Full Self-Driving in exchange for a share of Tesla's software revenue  —  Under a proposed arrangement, the startup would give Tesla access to its AI technology in exchange for a slice of the carmaker's software revenue

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Bluesky says it had over 9M users as of September 6, after adding 3M new users in the week or so since Brazil blocked X, and that video support is “coming soon”  —  Bluesky keeps growing: The company announced that as of Friday morning, it had added 3 million new users, bringing its total user count to more than 9...

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Payroll startup Warp, part of YC's W23 batch, disavows a racist post from an affiliate X account, amid claims its affiliates on X are posting “engagement bait”  —  Warp is under the spotlight following controversial posts from an account tied to the company.

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Hero Games' Daniel Wu reflects on his studio's 20% stake in Game Science, the creator of China's biggest PC game Black Myth: Wukong, which has sold 18M+ copies  —  - China's biggest PC game reached 18 million sales in two weeks  — Beijing endorsement of ‘Wukong’ seen as positive for industry

New York Times: Analysis of 3.2M+ Telegram messages from 16K+ channels shows how the app is inundated with criminal activity, CSAM, drug dealers, white nationalists, and more  —  Drug dealers, scammers and white nationalists openly conduct business and spread toxic speech on the platform …

Eva Hartog / Politico: A profile of Pavel Durov's older brother Nikolai, who is reportedly still in Russia and is responsible for Telegram's encryption standard MTProto protocol  —  Nikolai Durov, who is also wanted by cops in France, is responsible for the messaging app's encryption standard.

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 …