The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Sources: OpenAI is in early talks to buy Trail of Bits, which finds and fixes vulnerabilities in open-source software; founded in 2012, it has 40+ employees (The Information) [24d]
• Tencent raised ~$5.7B via US dollar and offshore yuan debt offerings, drawing $23B+ in orders; source: it had initially been expected to raise at least $4.5B (Reuters) [24d]
• A look at OpenAI's safety concerns over loop transformers before shipping its next major model; Microsoft accidentally confirmed GPT-6.1 Sol uses the technique (The Information) [24d]
• Apple v. OpenAI: a US judge partly grants Apple's motion for expedited discovery, ordering OpenAI to hand over forensic images of devices and other documents (Annelise Levy/Bloomberg Law) [24d]
• The FBI says it worked with CrowdStrike to dismantle 40+ laptop farms across Texas used to help North Koreans get remote US tech jobs under stolen identities (Dustin Volz/New York Times) [24d]
• Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announces Xbox Labs, a small team to test emerging ideas, citing recent game ports and mashups, many of them built with AI tools (Jon Hicks/GamesIndustry.biz) [24d]
• Federal prosecutors say a Saudi national was arrested over bugging an OpenAI executive conference room; OpenAI found the audio recorder around September 30 (The San Francisco Standard) [24d]
• OpenAI says the FBI arrested one of its staffers after the company found a hidden recording device in its offices and used its models to identify who placed it (@openainewsroom) [24d]
• Sources: self-driving simulation software maker Applied Intuition has received investment offers that would value it at $30B+, up from $15B in June (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information) [24d]
• Anthropic details Scion, a git replacement for its monorepo, built by seven engineers with Claude in five months, as daily merges rose from 2.5K in May to 30K+ (Anthropic) [24d]
• A Delaware jury awards Qualcomm $2 in nominal damages after finding Arm breached its architectural license agreement and sought to disrupt Qualcomm's business (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters) [24d]