Techmeme
March 20, 2024, 9:50 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
The US awards Intel $8.5B in CHIPS Act funding and $11B in loans to expand in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon; Intel plans to spend $100B over five years  —  Preliminary agreement under US Chips Act also includes $11bn loan as company expands capacity in Arizona and other states
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Microsoft hires DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to run consumer AI, reporting to Satya Nadella, and brings on most staff from his Inflection AI startup  —  Suleyman and his team will join from OpenAI rival Inflection AI  —  Microsoft Corp. has named Mustafa Suleyman head …
Satya Nadella / The Official Microsoft Blog:
Inflection:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Business Insider:
Sources: OpenAI plans to release GPT-5 in mid-2024, likely during the summer, and some enterprise customers have recently received demos of the latest model  —  - OpenAI's main product is the popular generative AI tool ChatGPT.  — Since its last major model upgrade to GPT-4, the tool has run into performance issues.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
SteamDB: after releasing its massive 1.6 update, Stardew Valley hit 146,159 concurrent players on Steam, a new record and above Palworld's stats this week  —  The cozy farming simulator hit 146,159 concurrent players on Steam according to SteamDB data, smashing the game's previous record …
Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica:
Glassdoor users complain after the service added their real names to their profiles without their consent; Glassdoor cross-populates data between its services  —  Anonymous review site Glassdoor now consults public sources to identify users.  —  Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
In a brief demo, Meta shows how Threads could handle turning on fediverse sharing, including waiting five minutes before sending a Threads post to the fediverse  —  Threads is coming to the fediverse — and we just got our first official look at how that might work from Meta itself.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Trend Micro researchers detail Earth Krahang, a China-linked APT campaign that is potentially linked to I-Soon and has breached 70 organizations in 23 countries  —  A sophisticated hacking campaign attributed to a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group known as 'Earth Krahang …
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
France fines Google €250M for failing to broker deals with media outlets over content linking and using press content to train AI, after a €500M fine in 2021  —  - Firm also accused of breaking other commitments in news case  — Watchdog levies €250 million penalty in latest escalation
Ash Parrish / The Verge:
How Sweet Baby, a small video game narrative development company, became the focus of Gamergate 2.0, a harassment campaign against “forced” diversity in gaming  —  A group of gamers has mobilized a harassment campaign against a story consultant company, marginalized developers …
Kate Irwin / PCMag:
Fitbit is working with Google Research to create an LLM based on Gemini to provide Fitbit mobile app users with personalized data and health recommendations  —  Google is training Gemini on health data, and it's creating a new AI model for the Fitbit app that can give advice tailored to your needs.
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google's Pixel 8a will have a 6.1" 120Hz OLED display, Tensor G3 chip, DisplayPort output support, and the same camera sensor as the Pixel 7a  —  The Pixel 8a's major upgrades will make it even more competitive, but raise further questions over the vanilla Pixel 8.
Financial Times:
Sources: Canada and the UAE have lobbied leading European and UK AI startups, including Aleph Alpha, Synthesia, and Stability AI, to move their headquarters  —  Canada and UAE lobby companies amid global competition over developing cutting-edge technology  —  Leading European …
Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek:
Researchers say misconfigured Firebase instances exposed 125M+ users' records, including plaintext passwords, email addresses, and messages, across 900 websites  —  A weakness in a Firebase implementation allowed researchers to gain access to names, phone numbers, email addresses, plaintext passwords, confidential messages, and more.

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 9:50 AM ET, March 20, 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

Earlier Picks

Mike Rogoway / Oregonian:
New York Times:
Michael Peel / Financial Times:
Harry McCracken / Fast Company: