~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Google Cloud Q3 revenue grew 35% YoY to $11.35B with a 17% operating margin, outpacing AWS' 19% YoY revenue growth to $27.45B with a 38% operating margin  —  With Wall Street laser focused on cloud computing this week, Google outpaced its rivals in growth, a key sign for investors …

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: Experts say Tesla's imitation learning-based approach to building fully autonomous driving systems needs AI breakthroughs that may not be achieved for some time  —  Tesla is pushing to build true self-driving vehicles by 2026.  The way its CEO wants to do it seems risky.

Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE: Spot AI, which helps companies analyze security camera footage, raised $31M and unveiled Video AI Agents that can detect and trigger responses to safety issues  —  Startup Spot AI Inc. has raised $31 million in fresh funding to help companies analyze footage from security cameras at their facilities.

Harry McCracken / Fast Company: Interviews with Amazon's health chief Neil Lindsay and others on the company's health care push, the PillPack and One Medical acquisitions, its future, and more  —  Please don't say the company is trying to fix healthcare.  But it's melding its pharmacy, in-person, and virtual services into something that feels, well, Amazonian.

Laila Kearney / Reuters: Filing: US regulators rejected a proposal to let Amazon buy nuclear power for AWS data centers in Pennsylvania over energy grid reliability and other concerns  —  U.S. energy regulators rejected an amended interconnection agreement for an Amazon data center connected directly to a nuclear power plant …

Devin Gordon / New York Times: AI in Hollywood is a tech leap with a vast impact but remains a tool, not a replacement, for creatives; its speed, quality, and cost allow for VFX breakthroughs  —  The Los Angeles headquarters of Metaphysic, a Hollywood visual-effects start-up that uses artificial intelligence …

Hamid Ganji / Neowin: Apple's M4 Max chip scores 4,060 in single-core tests, making it the first production CPU to cross 4,000 in Geekbench 6, and scores 26,675 in multi-core tests  —  After months of swirling rumors, Apple revealed its new Mac devices with updated M4 chips last week.

Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic: Why Bluesky not adding the federation systems that let users leave the Bluesky server and take their community to other hosts can lead to “enshittification”  —  - Bluesky and enshittification: No one is the enshittifier of their own story.  — Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

David Pierce / The Verge: Amazon's plan to rearchitect Alexa around LLMs could finally help Alexa understand what users actually want and reduce the awkward syntax needed to use Skills  —  Ten years ago, Amazon imagined a future beyond apps — and it had the idea basically right.  But the perfect ambient computer remains frustratingly far away.

Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal: A profile of Microsoft CFO Amy Hood, a budget hawk who has been in the position for 11 years and is at the center of the company's AI spending spree  —  Amy Hood is at the center of Microsoft's bet-the-company dive into AI

Stephen Groves / Associated Press: US House Speaker Mike Johnson says the GOP “probably will” try to repeal the CHIPS Act, but then walks it back, saying the GOP may “further streamline” the bill  —  House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that Republicans “probably will” try to repeal legislation …

Bloomberg: Chainalysis study based on first-time use of digital wallets from January 1 to October 8, 2024: Tether's USDT has gained traction in EMEA time zones  —  - Some data signal USDT activity moved toward EMEA time zones  — US officials are reportedly stepping up probes into the token

Sara Fischer / Axios: The digital ad market, helped by US political ads, AI ad tools, and consumer spending, drove strong Q3 revenue growth for Alphabet, Meta, Snap, Reddit, and Roku  —  - Google's advertising revenue jumped more than 10% year-over-year, thanks in part to election-related ad spend, especially on YouTube …

Bloomberg: Bitcoin's 2024 price rally masks a bleaker picture in the wider crypto market, with crypto VC investment remaining a far way off the 2021 bull market and more  —  - Kraken, Consensys among crypto companies cutting headcount  — Crypto VC investment fell in third quarter, Galaxy report says

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal: A look at Denmark's sovereign AI supercomputer Gefion, which has 1,528 H100 GPUs and was built with $100M in funding from Novo Nordisk and a state-owned fund  —  The world's latest AI machine is powered by the success of two products: Nvidia's chips and Novo Nordisk's weight-loss drugs

Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg: A judge rules Parag Agrawal and other former Twitter executives can proceed with claims that Elon Musk cheated them out of severance pay by terminating them  —  A judge ruled late Friday that former chief executive officer Parag Agrawal and other high-ranking officers can proceed with claims …

Anissa Gardizy / The Information: Filing: US regulators block a proposal to let AWS buy nuclear power for data centers in Pennsylvania over energy grid reliability and other concerns  —  U.S. energy regulators on Friday rejected a proposal related to Amazon Web Services' deal to buy nuclear power for several data centers …

Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters: Intel scraps forecast of selling $500M+ worth of Gaudi AI accelerator chips in 2024, with CEO Pat Gelsinger citing chip transition and slower uptake to software  —  Intel's (INTC.O) upbeat revenue projections on Thursday masked a sore point for the embattled company: chips touted …

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Okta fixes a flaw present since July 23, 2024 that, under specific conditions, let users log in with any password if the account's username had 52+ characters  —  The vulnerability is fixed now, but Okta said that for three months it could've been used to access accounts with usernames stretching at least 52 characters long.

Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli / Financial Times: An interview with EssilorLuxottica CEO Francesco Milleri on the Meta partnership, smart glasses replacing smartphones, and more, as the firm is valued at €100B  —  Eyewear giant chief Francesco Milleri says wearable technology developed with Meta will fuel growth

Microsoft: Microsoft and a16z jointly share US public policy ideas for AI startups, saying “regulation should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs”  —  Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft; Brad Smith, Vice-Chair and President, Microsoft, Marc Andreessen …

Bloomberg: Nvidia will replace Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on November 8, after Amazon replaced Walgreens in February; Intel joined the index in 1999  —  - Intel, Dow Inc. are set to leave the 30-member index  — Nvidia up 3.2% in post-market trading, while Intel is down 2%

Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal: Polymarket user Fredi9999, a self-described Frenchman, says he bet $30M+ on Trump after analyzing polls; he can't exit his wagers without crashing the market  —  Self-described French trader says he bet more than $30 million on U.S. election after analyzing polls

Michael Kan / PCMag: Google researchers detail Project Big Sleep, formerly Project Naptime, which used an AI agent to discover a previously unknown and exploitable bug in SQLite  —  The company's experimental AI agent finds a previously unknown and exploitable software bug in SQLite, an open-source database engine.