Techmeme
April 13, 2024, 5:35 PM

Top News

Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Elon Musk's xAI previews Grok-1.5 Vision, its first multimodal model, and says the AI model will be available soon to “early testers and existing Grok users”  —  Elon Musk's OpenAI rival has introduced its first multimodal model.  Not only can it understand text …
augment:
An experiment to see how a Threads feed would work on Mastodon, using lists and testing third-party clients, which shows the bright future of the fediverse  —  This is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences …
More: Engadget, CNET, and Business Today
Threads: @jasongraphixMastodon: @Flipboard@flipboard.socialForums: Hacker News
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft starts testing ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 in the Insider builds in the US, and says the app promotions can be disabled in Settings  —  Microsoft says it's starting to test ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11.  The software maker will use the Recommended section of the Start menu …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Bluesky says it is now allowing heads of state to sign up, and adds features including hashtags in profile bios and the ability to long press a link to share  —  Bluesky is apparently ready for a bigger challenge.  It says it's allowing heads of state to sign up now, a little over two months after it opened for general signups.
Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
A look at the book The Anxious Generation, as some say author Jonathan Haidt falls short in showing that social media is causing a teen mental health crisis  —  Jonathan Haidt wrote a best-selling book about teens and social media.  Not everyone buys its thesis  —  I.
More: Vox, Washington Post, and Cryptopolitan
Threads: @crumblerX: @derekeb, @binarybits, and @mausellmoliLinkedIn: Bob Gower
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Airchat, Naval Ravikant's social media app built around audio recordings, which the app transcribes, relaunches on iOS and Android; it is currently invite-only  —  Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.”  —  A previous version of Airchat was released last year …
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
Palo Alto Networks alerts customers that hackers are exploiting a zero-day in its popular GlobalProtect VPN product and promises a patch by April 14  —  Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks is alerting customers that a zero-day vulnerability in its firewall tool is being exploited by hackers.
Nikkei Asia:
Huawei unveils the new MateBook X Pro, its first AI PC, running on HarmonyOS and powered by Intel Core Ultra 9, available in China from April 18 for up to ~$2K  —  MateBook X Pro features HarmonyOS and Pangu LLM, both developed in-house  —  TAIPEI — China's Huawei Technologies …
Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of NYC-based Nanotronics, which has raised $162M and is making modular chipmaking plants that can be assembled on site and be functional within a year  —  From New York City, Nanotronics is building small, modular chip plants designed to be shipped anywhere

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More News

Steven Levy / Wired:
More: CNBCMastodon: @ppatel@mstdn.socialX: @levie, @stevenlevy, and @kevinbankston
Forums: r/OpenAI and r/technology

Earlier Picks

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Jamie Grierson / The Guardian:
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter: