📱 ChatGPT Receives Significant Upgrades

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Today is Friday, August 4th. There are so many interesting news stories to explore today, so let's jump right in! Here are the top headlines for today:

• ChatGPT Receives Significant Upgrades

• Google Alerts for Online Personal Info

• Threads Retention Struggles

• Apple's Investment in Generative AI

• Apple & Amazon Earnings

• US Credit Downgraded by Fitch

• Revolutionary Superconductor

• and more...

READ TIME: 5.0 MINUTES

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Tech Companies

Google Alerts for Online Personal Info (3-minute read)

Google is introducing notifications for when users' personal contact details appear online, providing the ability to request removal directly from the search results.

Warner Bros. Discovery Drops Subscribers (3-minute read)

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a loss of 1.8 million subscribers across HBO, Discovery+, and Max, potentially due to overlapping subscriptions. Despite this, the company asserts a successful transition to Max and reveals upcoming live content features.

Meta's Threads Struggles with Retention (3-minute read)

Threads, Meta's app, faces a sharp decline in user engagement, with daily active users dropping 82% since launch, as users spend less time and have fewer sessions on the app.

Startup Scene

AI Cloud Provider CoreWeave Nets $2.3B (8-minute read)

AI cloud compute provider CoreWeave has secured a $2.3 billion debt financing round led by Blackstone and Magnetar Capital. The funding will enable the firm to reach its goal of establishing 14 data centers by the end of the year and continue to expand its team.

Endor Labs Secures $70M for Open-Source Security (5-minute read)

Endor Labs raised $70 million in a Series A round to enhance code security and developer productivity. The startup focuses on open-source software (OSS) governance to reduce vulnerability noise by identifying and managing secure, high-quality OSS.

AI Corner

ChatGPT Receives Significant Upgrades (2-minute read)

OpenAI announced substantial updates to its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, making it more user-friendly and interactive. Plus subscribers can now enjoy full integration with the more advanced GPT-4 model, and multiple file uploads are supported. Despite competition from Bard, Claude AI, and Google's Anthropic, ChatGPT remains the industry's leading chatbot.

Apple's Long-Term Investment in Generative AI (4-minute read)

In recent interviews, Apple CEO Tim Cook emphasized the company's longstanding commitment to generative AI research, highlighting its integration across products to enhance user experience. With a noted increase in research and development spending, now at $22.61 billion, Cook underlined the technology's fundamental role in Apple's core offerings.

Markets & Money

Apple Sales Slump Persists (5-minute read)

Despite beating Wall Street sales and profit targets for Q3, Apple's shares fell by 2% as the tech giant forecasts a continuing sales slump into the current quarter. Weak iPhone sales have disappointed investors despite strong performances from the services sector and growth in China. Future expectations for iPhone sales remain uncertain, yet Apple anticipates further growth in the services sector.

Amazon Surpasses Q2 Expectations, Boosts Stock (3-minute read)

Amazon's Q2 report revealed higher-than-anticipated profits and a 7% stock surge in after-hours trading, largely attributable to extensive layoffs. The company's net sales stood at $134.38 billion, beating an estimate of $131.63 billion. Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported sales of $22.14 billion, slightly above the anticipated $21.71 billion. For Q3, Amazon anticipates revenue between $138 billion and $143 billion, ahead of the expected $138.3 billion.

India Restricts Tech Imports (5-minute read)

India has restricted the import of laptops, tablets, personal computers, and servers to boost local manufacturing. The government's recent policy necessitates a valid license for restricted imports but does not apply to personal baggage. This follows a successful ban on smart TV imports that had a positive impact on local production. The move aligns with India's initiative to stimulate domestic manufacturing, including a $2 billion scheme aimed at promoting local hardware production.

US Credit Downgraded by Fitch (4-minute read)

Fitch Ratings has downgraded the US's long-term foreign currency rating from AAA to AA+. This decision is based on increasing debt levels and a polarized political environment, which the agency believes compromises the US's reliability in paying its debts. Despite the Treasury Secretary's rebuttal, the move reflects ongoing concerns about US fiscal management and the repeated debt ceiling crises.

Sports Betting Upstarts Fail (4-minute read)

Online sportsbooks are collapsing amid a market consolidation around the largest, most financially secure players with significant brand recognition. Recently, Fox Corp. and Flutter Entertainment announced the closure of their barely impactful sports betting platform, Fox Bet.

Insights & Analysis

Insight: The news about the potential superconductive material (LK-99) came out last week. As the findings are still questioned as being false or real, we have not sent out summaries of the story. However, if the discovery is correct this would be one of the most significant scientific break-thoughts in modern time. Therefore we here present two articles, one that questions the findings and one that is more informative.

Revolutionary Superconductor Sparks Interest (3-minute read)

The creators of a new material, which they claim is a revolutionary superconductor, have ignited a wave of intrigue despite skepticism from peers. This superconductor promises perfect electrical conduction without energy loss.

LK-99 Superconductor Claims Questioned (5-minute read)

South Korean physicists recently announced the creation of a room-temperature superconductor, LK-99, heralded as a game-changer in fields like fusion energy, batteries, and quantum computing. Despite generating global excitement, many experts are skeptical, citing unsuccessful attempts to replicate the research and questioning the data presented by the South Korean team.

Apps & Gadgets

Instagram Toughens DM Spam Policy (2-minute read)

Instagram introduces stricter direct message (DM) request policies, including limiting unsolicited senders to a single text-only message, enhancing user safety.

AMD's Mid-Range Pro Graphics Refresh (6-minute read)

AMD unveils Radeon Pro W7600 and W7500, new mid-range professional video cards based on its RDNA 3 architecture. The graphics cards offer improved compute, ray tracing capabilities, and DisplayPort 2.1 outputs.

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