Techmeme
December 14, 2023, 10:00 PM

Top News

Forbes:
Google confirms that it will no longer respond to geofence warrants after making changes to the way Maps stores users' location data  —  “Geofence warrants,” which allow law enforcement to get location data across a wide area, have become commonplace in recent years.
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel 5th-Gen Xeon Platinum 8592+ review: the $11,600 64-core chip outperforms AMD's 64-core EPYC Genoa in several benchmarks, particularly in AI workloads  —  The sun shines brighter for Intel. … Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products …
Gavin Bonshor / AnandTech:
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Ben Horowitz / Andreessen Horowitz:
Andreessen Horowitz says “we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values” for technology  —  As software has eaten the world, it has become integral to every industry and nearly every endeavor in our society.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Email: Cruise lays off 900 staff, or ~24% of its workforce, targeting non-engineering jobs, as part of a plan to slash costs and attempt to revamp the company  —  Cruise, the embattled GM self-driving car subsidiary, is laying off 900 employees, or about 24% of its workforce …
Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:
Google DeepMind's FunSearch model cracks the unsolved cap set problem in pure mathematics, the first time an LLM has solved a long-standing scientific puzzle  —  They had to throw away most of what it produced but there was gold among the garbage.  —  Google DeepMind has used a large language model …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Meta launches Threads in the European Union, following the US, the UK, and 100+ other countries, and adds a way for EU users to browse Threads without a profile  —  Meta's Twitter competitor, Threads, is now available in the European Union, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced.
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
The US DOJ announces an indictment for four people, two of whom have been arrested, in an alleged international pig butchering crypto scam costing victims $80M+  —  - Los Angeles federal prosecutors said four indictments and two arrests had been made in an international “pig butchering” scheme.
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: Google plans to use Gemini across nearly its entire line of products and in Pixie, an upcoming AI assistant that will be exclusive to its Pixel devices  —  For Google, it was a moment to savor its apparent triumph over the doomsayers.  —  Last week, the company released the first version …
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Google plans to test Tracking Protection and blocking third-party cookies on January 4 for ~1% of Chrome users globally, ahead of a phased rollout in H2 2024  —  Google is about to launch its grand plan to block third-party cookies in Chrome that many websites use to track your activity across the web for profit.
Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch:
Amazon validates Project Kuiper's optical inter-satellite links, which use infrared lasers to move data around 30% faster than terrestrial fiber optical cables  —  Amazon's Project Kuiper successfully validated key technology that will increase throughput and reduce latency for customers using …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google launches a Pixel Diagnostic App and repair manuals in English in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and European countries where Pixel devices are sold  —  Besides the new Repair Mode introduced with Android 14 QPR1 and the December Feature Drop, Google is widely launching …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
People's confusion whether Dropbox data will be used as training data for OpenAI resembles the conspiracy theory that Meta spies on users through microphones  —  Dropbox added some new AI features.  In the past couple of days these have attracted a firestorm of criticism.
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Guthrie Scrimgeour / Wired:
A look at Koolau Ranch, Mark Zuckerberg's 1,400-acre, $270M+ compound in Kauai, Hawaii, with a 5,000 sq. ft. underground shelter, a project shrouded in secrecy  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a sprawling, $100 million compound in Hawaii—complete with plans for a huge underground bunker.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Sources: LinkedIn shelves its effort, announced in 2019, to relocate its data centers out of its physical facilities and into Azure, a setback for Microsoft  —  - LinkedIn called off a plan to move technology to Microsoft Azure, a setback for its parent company, which is chasing Amazon Web Services.
Will Knight / Wired:
OpenAI details how its Superalignment research team is exploring ways to control stronger AI models like GPT-4 using weaker supervisor models like GPT-2  —  The “superalignment” team led by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has devised a way to guide the behavior of AI models as they get ever smarter.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Instagram launches a generative AI background editing tool in the US, letting users change the background for their Stories using text prompts  —  Instagram introduced its generative AI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users Wednesday.  —  Meta's lead for generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle posted …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26  —  Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Zoho:
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control  —  Picture this: It's Monday morning.  You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's 2026 Priority, Disney's AI Play, Datacenter Buildout Trouble
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
Australia Kicks Kids Off Social Media + Is the A.I. Water Issue Fake? + Hard Fork Wrapped
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Access:
Why the next AI frontier is phone calls, with Beside CEO Maxime Germain
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Great Chat:
So what happens after AGI?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He's a Must-Read Media Gossip.
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:00 PM ET, December 14, 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.

More News

Bloomberg:
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Subrat Patnaik / Bloomberg:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
AJ Vicens / CyberScoop: