Techmeme
December 6, 2023, 4:50 PM

Top News

Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google unveils Gemini, an AI model with Ultra, Pro, and Nano tiers, and plans a paid chatbot version in 2024; Google says Gemini Ultra beats GPT-4 on most tests  —  Starting today, Gemini is running on Bard and Google's Pixel 8 Pro phones.  The company says it blows OpenAI out of the water.
More: The Keyword, Google on YouTube, Google on YouTube, MIT Technology Review, Android Police, TechCrunch, ZDNet, The Guardian, Associated Press, Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica, CRN, Tech.co, TestingCatalog, TechRadar, Voicebot.ai, CNBC, TechRepublic, CryptoSlate, Stack Diary, Chrome Unboxed, Newser, Mashable, Android Headlines, Google on YouTube, TIME, TechStartups, Google on YouTube, TechEBlog, Google on YouTube, Google on YouTube, and Business Insider
Forums: r/OpenAI and Beehaw
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google updates Bard to use its Gemini Pro model, which the company says represents Bard's “biggest and best upgrade yet” and can match and even exceed ChatGPT  —  While OpenAI's ChatGPT has become a worldwide phenomenon and one of the fastest-growing consumer products ever …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google adds Gemini Nano, its native, local-first LLM, to the Pixel 8 Pro, powering Gboard's Smart Reply and Recorder's auto-summarize, before an Android launch  —  Gemini may be the biggest, most powerful large language model, or LLM, Google has ever developed, but it's better suited to running in data centers than on your phone.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Q&A with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Gemini, digital agents, changing search's UX, the pace of AI development, coding, and more  —  CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis talk to Platformer about the promise — and product roadmap — of their answer to GPT-4
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google announces its Cloud TPU v5p, an updated version of its Cloud TPU v5e, consisting of 8,960 chips at 4,800 Gpbs/chip interconnect, and available by request  —  Google today announced the launch of its new Gemini large language model (LLM) and with that, the company also launched its new Cloud TPU v5p …
Mat Honan / MIT Technology Review:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Apple and Google say the US government prevented them from detailing governments' push notification spying, and will now share info after Ron Wyden's letter  —  Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans a revamped iPad Pro with an OLED screen, iPad Airs with 10.9" and 12.9" screens, 13" and 15" MacBook Airs with M3, and more for early 2024  —  - New models follow an unprecedented drought in iPad releases  — Vision Pro, larger iPhones and new AirPods also coming in 2024
Jonny Evans / Computerworld:
Apple's machine learning research team quietly releases MLX, an array framework to train and deploy ML models on Apple silicon, available on GitHub  —  Apple's machine learning (ML) teams quietly flexed their muscle with the release of a new ML framework developed for Apple Silicon.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Meta debuts Imagine with Meta, a standalone text-to-image generator on the web powered by its Emu model that generates four images per prompt, free for US users  —  Not to be outdone by Google's Gemini launch, Meta's rolling out a new, standalone generative AI experience on the web …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: the EU leans toward a DMA carve out for iMessage as the app is not popular enough with business users, as part of an investigation ending in February  —  - EU tentatively finds it doesn't warrant being covered by DMA  — New antitrust law imposes raft of Big Tech dos and don'ts
Wall Street Journal:
New Mexico sues Meta, alleging the company let Facebook and Instagram “become a marketplace for predators in search of children”, and blames Mark Zuckerberg  —  State investigators' test accounts with AI-generated photos were deluged with sexual propositions and adult sex content …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers unveil LogoFAIL, an attack that defeats UEFI boot protections in nearly all Windows and Linux computers and can be remotely executed in many cases  —  UEFIs booting Windows and Linux devices can be hacked by malicious logo images.  —  Hundreds of Windows and Linux computer models …
TIME:
Interviews with Sam Altman and 20+ people in his circle reveal a complicated portrait of being brilliant but slippery, as Time names him CEO of the Year 2023  —  It was a strange Thanksgiving for Sam Altman.  Normally, the CEO of OpenAI flies home to St. Louis to visit family.
Aaron Klotz / Tom's Hardware:
Intel publishes and then removes “Core Truths”, a document calling AMD products “snake oil” for using the older Zen 2 architecture in new Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs  —  Look in the mirror Intel  —  Intel recently published a new playbook titled “Core Truths” …
Jordan Fragen / VentureBeat:
Twitch plans to shut down in South Korea on February 27, 2024, saying the country was “prohibitively expensive” to operate in despite working to reduce costs  —  Games livestreaming platform Twitch is shutting down its business operations in South Korea February 27, 2024.
Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security:
The internet enabled mass surveillance, and AI will enable mass spying, once limited by human labor, by making troves of data searchable and understandable  —  Spying and surveillance are different but related things.  If I hired a private detective to spy on you, that detective could hide …
Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph:
Coinbase updates Wallet, available in 170+ countries, to let users send crypto via any app where they can share a link, including email, social, and messaging  —  Recipients need to download a Coinbase Wallet to receive the funds, but the crypto exchange says they've simplified the process for less tech-savvy users.

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