Techmeme
January 4, 2024, 6:30 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils a Copilot keyboard key, shipping in new PCs and laptops from its partners, the first major change to the PC keyboard layout in nearly 30 years  —  Microsoft wants 2024 to be “the year of the AI PC,” and it's kicking things off with a significant change to the keyboard on new laptops and PCs.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Hackers are hijacking X accounts of governments and businesses marked with gold and gray checkmarks, including Google's Mandiant, to promote crypto scams  —  Hackers are increasingly targeting verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) belonging to government and business profiles and marked …
Liam Proven / The Register:
Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, who devised nine programming languages and won the Turing Award in 1984, dies at 89  —  Evangelist of lean software and devisor of 9 programming languages and an OS was 89  —  OBIT Swiss computer scientist Professor Niklaus Wirth died …
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Memo: OpenAI plans to launch its GPT store next week; the store was originally slated to open in November 2023, but was delayed after OpenAI's leadership crisis  —  OpenAI is planning to launch its “GPT store” next week, according to a memo to developers seen by The Information.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, an update to the XR2 Gen 2 used in the Meta Quest 3, offering 4.3K resolution at 90fps per eye, up from 3K per eye  —  The new chipset is designed as a step up from the XR2 Gen 2 in the Meta Quest 3, capable of rendering high-resolution visuals like the ones promised by Apple's Vision Pro.
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Perplexity, which offers an AI-based “answer engine” with ~10M MAUs to compete with Google, raised $74M at a $520M valuation from IVP, Jeff Bezos, and others  —  Perplexity, with a fraction of Google's users, raised the largest sum by an internet search startup in recent years
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
Dell announces the $1,299+ XPS 13, the $1,699+ XPS 14, replacing the XPS 13 Plus, and the $1,899+ XPS 16, offering Intel Core Ultra 7 and 9 and up to a 4TB SSD  —  This might not be the biggest shake-up of the Dell XPS lineup ever, but between some bigger laptops and a total revamping of the XPS portfolio, it feels like a big deal.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
LastPass now requires users to set a master password with a minimum of 12 characters, after enforcing the requirement for new accounts or resets in April 2023  —  LastPass notified customers today that they are now required to use complex master passwords with a minimum of 12 characters to increase their accounts' security.
Wall Street Journal:
As Google restricts third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users, marketers, adtech companies, and publishers say Google has not done enough to prepare the market  —  Search giant plans to remove a technology seen as critical to the digital-ad industry  —  Google is going forward …
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI offered some media firms $1M to $5M per year to license news articles for model training; Apple offers more but wants to use content more widely  —  OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles …
Sarah Martin / The Guardian:
The CEO of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse, introduced to investors in 2021, doesn't appear to exist; Chainalysis: consumers lost $1.3B to HyperVerse in 2022  —  Exclusive: Steven Reece Lewis was introduced to investors with an impressive list of qualifications and achievements, but no organisation cited can find any record of him
Brendan McCord / Cosmos Institute:
A look at the current AI philosophy landscape of existential pessimism vs. accelerationism, and the need for a balanced, enterprising optimism as the third way  —  We need a balanced, enterprising optimism—an ambitious and clear vision for what constitutes the good in technology, coupled with the awareness of its dangers
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
The White House awards $162M in federal grants to Arizona-based Microchip Technology to expand its Oregon and Colorado facilities, the second CHIPS Act award  —  The Biden administration said its second grant under a new program would help Microchip Technology expand its facilities in Oregon and Colorado.

Sponsor Posts

Command Line:
Bringing local models and sandboxed tools to Windows and GitHub Copilot  —  GitHub Copilot will soon determine when a task is best handled by on-device AI and when it needs cloud-scale models.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting.  Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach.  —  Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
Zoho Books now supports CT600 & Final Accounts Filing as an add-on in the FREE plan  —  Managing end-of-year filing for limited companies in the UK is often expensive and multi-layered.
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.

Featured Podcasts

Sources:
Qualcomm's CEO on the coming AI phone supercycle
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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Great Chat:
The launch industrial complex
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Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let's Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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Google's AI Infrastructure Chief, Amin Vahdat, on the Physics & Economics of Frontier AI
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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