Techmeme: Counterpoint: companies sold ~16M foldable phones in 2023, or just 1.3% of all 1.2B smartphones, as foldables start to gain traction in the US and China (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

January 2, 2024, 4:25 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:

Sources: ASML canceled shipments of some of its machines to China at the US' request, weeks before export bans on the high-end chipmaking equipment took effect — - ASML canceled shipments of a liminted number of devices — Biden is cracking down on Beijing's semiconductor industry

More: Engadget, Reuters, SiliconANGLE, TweakTown, and ASML

X: @cagankoc, @dnystedt, and @tphuang

John Kruzel / Reuters:

In his year-end report, SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts says AI is a mixed blessing for the legal field, urging “caution and humility” when adopting the tech — Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts …

More: Supreme Court of the United States, The Hill, Silicon Republic, CNN, SiliconANGLE, CryptoSlate, Cryptopolitan, New York Post, Associated Press, USA Today, Politico, Livemint, New York Times, The Messenger, and Bloomberg

Threads: @carnage4life. X: @stevenmazie, @stevenmazie, @lawrencehurley, @baseballcrank, @josephpatrice, and @tribelaw. Forums: Slashdot

Dan Primack / Axios:

Filing: Fidelity marks down the value of its X stake, estimating the company is worth ~28% of the $44B that Elon Musk paid, down from 33% in May 2023 — Fidelity has again marked down the value of its shares in X Holdings, which the mutual fund giant helped Elon Musk buy for $44 billion when the company was known as Twitter.

More: Business Post, The Verge, Reuters, Bloomberg, TimesNow, Fox Business, New York Post, Breitbart, The Information, The Edge Malaysia, Globe and Mail, Telegraph, and Business Insider

Threads: @tonyserrata, @u.s.dhuga, and @edcarson1971. Mastodon: @AdditionalQuench@c.im

Bluesky: @andrewkjennings.com and @lolgop.bsky.social. X: @mountainvet45

Mohar Chatterjee / Politico:

A look at AI chatbots modeled on real experts, like US psychologist Martin Seligman, that are often created without permission, highlighting a policy gray area — New AI-generated digital replicas of real experts expose an unnerving policy gray zone. Washington wants to fix it, but it's not clear how.

Threads: @rufustheruse. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @tonyromm, @moharchat, @jasoncolavito, @pauldemko, and @bruneelections. LinkedIn: Rafael Brown

J. Edward Moreno / New York Times:

The lawsuits against tech companies could shape what copyright means for AI, or simply serve as leverage for plaintiffs to secure more favorable licensing deals — The use of content from news and information providers to train artificial intelligence systems may force a reassessment of where to draw legal lines.

More: Axios, Cryptopolitan, The Economic Times, Marcus on AI, and Analytics India Magazine

Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. X: @sarthakgh, @ceciliazin, @loudmouthjulia, @martyswant, @walterisaacson, and @random_walker

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Equals:

Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.

Zoho:

App Spotlight: Grow Payments for Zoho CRM — App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools. Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:

How tech workers actually feel about AI in 2026 | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Big Technology Podcast:

OpenAI Finally Ships Its Superapp, Meta's AI Price War, ChatGPT Cheating At Brown

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.

The Upstarts Podcast:

Radical AI's Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The 'Waymo' Lab For New Materials

Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.

Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.

Hard Fork:

Do Social Media Bans Work? + A Conversation About A.I. Consciousness + Tool Time

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:

The AI writing app fighting AI slop

A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.

Subscribe to Access.

Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:

Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin

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.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:25 AM ET, January 2, 2024.

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

New York Times:

Sources: the White House directed FBI director Kash Patel to personally oversee the probe into NYT reporting about Air Force One, before subpoenas were issued

Jake Kanter / Deadline:

BBC Director General Matt Brittin says he will review BBC's foreign content acquisition strategy amid criticism over outbidding rivals for shows like Scooby-Doo

Scott Roxborough / The Hollywood Reporter:

Q&A: Banijay CEO Marco Bassetti on the All3Media merger, plans to expand beyond TV into live events and sports, preserving flexible company culture, and more

Upcoming Tech Events

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked media event

Earnings: MSFT, AAPL, Samsung Electronics, RDDT, LG Electronics, RBLX

Earnings: DASH, SHOP, APP, XYZ, GFS

Aug 6

Earnings: ABNB, NTDOY, U

Made By Google "The next generation of Pixel" media event

New York

Aug 25-27

VIRTUAL: The Six Five Summit: AI Unleashed 2026 Featuring Marc Benioff & Enterprise AI Leaders REGISTER FOR FREE

WSJ Tech Live California

More News

Joan Westenberg:

With its emphasis on user privacy, Apple is one of the few tech companies that could develop new AI data usage paradigms, setting much-needed industry standards

Threads: @parkert, @rstephens, @joanwestenberg, @joanwestenberg, @parkerortolani, @justinfineberg_, and @hi.im.vijay. X: @andrewchen

Michael Koziol / IEEE Spectrum:

A look at Wi-Fi 7, slated for certification in Q1 2024, with multi-link operations that allow devices to spread a data stream across multiple frequency bands

More: Android Police and Help Net Security

Mastodon: @dsilverman@mastodon.social. X: @laffer1 and @ieeespectrum

Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot

Justin Garrison / Justin Garrison:

An AWS developer claims Amazon is “silently sacking” staff by pushing them to take a different role that they would quit later, to avoid the need for severance

More: Business Insider. Threads: @alkalinegarrett and @carnage4life

Mastodon: @glinden@sigmoid.social, @glinden@sigmoid.social, @paco@infosec.exchange, and @jamie@zomglol.wtf

Bluesky: @janety.bsky.social, @gregpoirier.bsky.social, @justingarrison.com, and @justingarrison.com

X: @eigenseries, @cbarrett, @nickhudkins, @astuyve, @nickhudkins, @vaughan_in_aus, @_avahgar_, @mistwire, @thebriangraf, @johncodezzz, @rothgar, @susanpotter, @miadabrin, @steveeypips, @quorumneeded, @mike_julian, @nikovirtala, @satpandalai, and @l1quid1ty

LinkedIn: Erik Pupo and Justin Garrison. Forums: Hacker News

Brendan Bordelon / Politico:

How effective altruism, which some say has morphed into an AI doomsday-obsessed cult, influences how the White House, Congress, and think tanks approach AI

More: Business Insider and Cryptopolitan

Threads: @carnage4life, @justcodeculture, and @arunsees

X: @ylecun, @patrickc, @8teapi, @scholars_stage, @vkhosla, @patrickc, @pmarca, @jgebbia, @pmarca, and @_timobrien. LinkedIn: Andrew Lang

Anil Dash / Rolling Stone:

In 2024, the internet could see the biggest reshuffling of power in 25 years, due to a resurgent “human web” and regulators forcing tech giants to open up

Earlier Picks

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:

A look at the rise of AI-generated virtual influencers, with some charging thousands of dollars to promote products, leading to concerns from human influencers

More: Business Insider and OSnews

Mastodon: @digichelle@hachyderm.io, @librarianshipwreck …, and @parvXtl@tech.lgbt

X: @alexisgoncalves, @gunblaze1969, @jaroslawmarciuk, @jimharris, @rizstanford, and @brianroemmele

LinkedIn: Kelvin Low and Professor Christopher …. Forums: Slashdot