Techmeme
January 20, 2024, 1:55 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Microsoft says Russia-linked group Midnight Blizzard hacked some employee emails beginning in November 2023; the same group breached SolarWinds as early as 2019  —  - Nation-state spies previously conducted cyber-espionage on US  — Targeted breaches hit Microsoft executives, cyber team
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple opens pre-orders for the Vision Pro, which has an M2 chip with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory, and 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage options  —  Apple today finally shared additional tech specs for its Vision Pro headset following the start of pre-orders in the United States.
More: Apple on YouTube, AppleInsider, Ars Technica, Wired, MacRumors, MacRumors, AppleInsider, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Supercharged, Road to VR, MacDailyNews, The Verge, TechSpot, Brian Solis, MacRumors, Mashable, MacRumors, On my Om, Appleosophy, Cult of Mac, MacRumors, Tom's Hardware, CNBC, iMore, Wccftech, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Notebookcheck, and Fortune
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Elon Musk's xAI secured $500M in commitments out of $1B and is aiming for a $15B to $20B valuation; source: X investors are invited to invest in xAI  —  - Grok maker aims for valuation of at least $15 billion  — Investors in X, formerly Twitter, getting priority in round
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Dave Mills, who created the Network Time Protocol in 1985 to synchronize time across different computer systems and networks, died at age 85 on January 17  —  Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.  —  On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Sam Altman has held talks to raise billions, including $8B to $10B from Abu Dhabi-based G42, to set up a network of factories to manufacture chips  —  - Push reflects concern about potential semiconductor shortage  — Project would involve working with major chipmaking companies
Theo Wayt / The Information:
Flexport raised $260M from Shopify, one of its biggest shareholders; Shopify sold its money-losing logistics unit to Flexport in exchange for equity in May 2023  —  Flexport is raising $260 million from e-commerce software giant Shopify, one of its biggest shareholders …
Piotr Lipinski / Reuters:
The EU Commission is seeking feedback on concessions Apple offered, including opening its Tap to Pay tech to third-party wallets for 10 years, to settle a probe  —  The European Commission is seeking feedback from rivals and customers on concessions Apple (AAPL.O) offered …
Joy Lo Dico / Financial Times:
How urban planners in Barcelona and others are using supercomputers and AI to create digital twins of their cities to address issues like traffic congestion  —  Digital city-building has become a legitimate part of urban planning, helping to mirror the present — and map the future
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
Stability AI releases Stable LM 2 1.6B, which the company says outperforms other small AI language models on most benchmarks, including Microsoft's Phi-2  —  Size certainly matters when it comes to large language models (LLMs) as it impacts where a model can run.

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