Techmeme
January 4, 2024, 4:15 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.
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.
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 …
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
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 …
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
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 …
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI offered some media companies $1M to $5M per year to license their news articles for AI model training, a tiny amount even for small publishers  —  OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles for use …
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.
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.
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Route package data: Amazon had 29% of global online order volume in the two weeks before Christmas, up from 21% in the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday  —  - Company's speedy delivery benefited procrastinating shoppers  — Chinese upstarts offer discounts but can't match arrival times

Sponsor Posts

Tribe AI:
Build AI that works  —  Tribe builds tech for top AI companies.  Get in touch to learn how our bench of 500+ engineers and researchers can accelerate your roadmap.
Kulkan Security:
Hire Kulkan as your penetration testing partner  —  Kulkan prioritizes deep-dive manual security reviews, dissecting your software and infrastructure to find issues that once remediated can truly reduce security risk.
Zoho:
How integrating WhatsApp with your CRM leads to better customer interactions  —  This is a guest post by ControHippo.  Timely assistance and post-service support are key to effective customer relations.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
The Kevin Rose Show:
Gavin Purcell & Kevin Pereira, The Future of AI (#55)
Gain unconventional wisdom and insights through conversations with top expert in AI, investing, wellness, technology, and culture.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 05/01 - An Elon Catchup
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:15 PM ET, January 4, 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.

More News

Paul Sandle / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Todd Shields / Bloomberg:
Stephen Nellis / Reuters: