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December 8, 2023, 9:15 AM
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Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
Google's Gemini video demo of its multimodal capabilities wasn't carried out in real time or in voice; the model was shown still images and given text prompts  —  The tech giant's latest AI model is only marginally better than the one from OpenAI that's been out for eight months.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Users say Google's Gemini Pro is loath to comment on potentially controversial news topics, fails to get basic facts right, and struggles with some coding tasks
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: in a first, Apple is working with China's BYD to move new iPad product development to Vietnam, with test production set to begin around early 2024  —  China's BYD helps American giant with shift to alternative tech hubs  —  Vietnam is emerging as an increasingly important production hub …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple and its suppliers aim to make 50M+ iPhones annually in India in the next 2-3 years, and a quarter of global iPhones by the end of the decade  —  Supplier Foxconn plans to build more factories and give India a production role once limited mostly to China
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Tata plans to build one of India's largest iPhone plants, employing 50,000 workers within two years, and expects operations to begin in 12-18 months  —  - New plant would speed up Apple's diversification beyond China  — Tata wants more Apple business after buying one iPhone factory
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
A look at Meta's technical issues when developing E2EE for Messenger, including creating an encrypted storage protocol and re-architecting chat features  —  Mark Zuckerberg personally promised that the privacy feature would launch by default on Messenger and Instagram chat.
Wall Street Journal:
The US and UK governments jointly accuse Russia's FSB of orchestrating a wide-ranging, global hacking campaign since 2015 to interfere in British elections  —  The cyberattacks also allegedly took aim at U.S. energy networks and American spies  —  LONDON—The U.S. and U.K. governments …
Jessica Lyons Hardcastle / The Register:
A researcher says a years-old Bluetooth authentication flaw lets attackers inject keystrokes to run arbitrary commands on Apple, Android, and some Linux devices  —  Issue has been around since at least 2012  —  A years-old Bluetooth authentication bypass vulnerability allows miscreants to connect to Apple …
Bloomberg:
The UK's CMA is considering whether Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership should be called in for a merger probe, and asks for comments from interested parties  —  - CMA seeking views on whether the relationship should be probed  — Move is less than two months since watchdog cleared Activision
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:
X rolls out xAI's snarky, “anti-woke” chatbot Grok to X Premium+ users; X CEO Linda Yaccarino describes Grok as “the ultimate ride or die”
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Anthropic researchers find adding pleas to a prompt that tell its Claude 2 model not to be biased could reduce discrimination based on race, gender, and more  —  The problem of alignment is an important one when you're setting AI models up to make decisions in matters of finance and health.
More: Anthropic
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Mobile network companies have backed themselves into a corner by racing to roll out 5G, taking on piles of debt with few returns to show for their investments  —  Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything.  But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found …
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon sues an “international fraud organization” for allegedly stealing millions of dollars in merchandise from the company through a series of refund scams  —  - Shoppers took gaming consoles, smartphones, tires and gold  — Scammers live in US, five other countries, according to suit
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Spotify says CFO Paul Vogel plans to leave on March 31, 2024, and launches a search for a successor; Daniel Ek wants a CFO “with a different mix of experiences”  —  Spotify said chief financial officer Paul Vogel will leave the company next year and that it has launched a search to find a replacement.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
A US federal judge rules Binance founder Changpeng Zhao cannot return to the UAE before his sentencing, set for February 2024, after his release on a $175M bond  —  Zhao pleaded guilty to a federal charge last month.  —  Register Now  —  Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao …
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
Micron strikes a labor deal to hire 3,700 union workers for its $15B chip plant in Boise, Idaho, potentially giving the company an edge for federal chip funds  —  - Union workers to fill majority of 3,700 construction jobs  — Commerce Department prefers unionized sites for Chips funds

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:15 AM ET, December 8, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
FCC filing: Paramount says the merged Paramount-WBD will be 49.5% owned by foreign investors, with ~38.5% of the equity held by a trio of Middle Eastern funds

Zack Sharf / Variety:
President Trump says “Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC” over Kimmel's joke about Melania Trump

Reuters:
Bertelsmann agrees to combine BMG with Concord in a cash-and-stock deal giving it a 67% stake; Concord shareholders will receive a 33% stake and $1.16B in cash

More News

Kaya Yurieff / The Information:
TikTok forms a task force to tackle hate speech and plans to open its research API to civil society groups, after complaints about viral Israel-Hamas war videos
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta rolls out tags on Threads, offering support for multiple words and spaces, and no # symbol; posts can only have one tag and the tag view is the search view
Wall Street Journal:
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner says the “goal in firing Sam [Altman] was to strengthen OpenAI”, but declines to say why she and others voted to fire him

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Montenegro Justice Minister Andrej Milovic has privately said he plans to extradite Do Kwon to the US rather than South Korea to face criminal charges
Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE:
Microsoft announces a major security leadership reshuffle as part of its Secure Future Initiative, replacing Bret Arsenault with Igor Tsyganskiy as Global CISO
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
Block opens preorders for its self-custodial Bitcoin hardware wallet Bitkey in 95+ countries, coming to the US in early 2024 for $150, after a beta in June 2023
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Meta announces Purple Llama, an initiative to promote responsible AI development by offering tools and evaluations for safely building open generative AI models
Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft says Russia-aligned propagandists duped at least seven Western celebrities via Cameo into recording videos used to attack Ukraine's President Zelensky
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Apple's guidelines now say that US law enforcement can obtain a push notification token's associated Apple ID “with a subpoena”; Google requires a court order
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