Techmeme: Microsoft debuts Phi-3 Mini, a small 3.8B-parameter model about as capable as GPT-3.5, and plans Phi-3 Small and Phi-3 Medium models with 7B and 14B parameters (Emilia David/The Verge)

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April 23, 2024, 2:20 PM

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Emilia David / The Verge:

Microsoft debuts Phi-3 Mini, a small 3.8B-parameter model about as capable as GPT-3.5, and plans Phi-3 Small and Phi-3 Medium models with 7B and 14B parameters — Microsoft launched the next version of its lightweight AI model Phi-3 Mini, the first of three small models the company plans to release.

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:

Microsoft took down its WizardLM 2 LLM after it reportedly missed “toxicity testing”, but people already downloaded and re-uploaded it to GitHub, Hugging Face

Threads: @travis.lee.13. Mastodon: @Laukidh@infosec.exchange. X: @josephfcox

Ming-Chi Kuo:

Survey: Apple cut 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400K-450K units, vs. a 700K+ market consensus, and US demand has “fallen sharply beyond expectations” — My latest survey is as follows: — Apple has cut its 2024 Vision Pro shipments to 400-450k units (vs. market consensus of 700-800k units or more).

More: MacRumors, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Supercharged, and iClarified

X: @mingchikuo. Forums: Hacker News, r/hardware, r/apple, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums

Victoria Song / The Verge:

Meta rolls out multimodal AI in early access for the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, mainly to help identify objects, translate signs, and write Instagram captions — When the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses launched last fall, they were a pretty neat content capture tool and a surprisingly solid pair of headphones.

More: Meta, Android Headlines, WABetaInfo, and Gadgets & Wearables

Threads: @futurefasterplz. X: @electrik_dreams

Victoria Song / The Verge:

Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses get support for video calling via WhatsApp and Messenger, hands-free Apple Music controls, and a new frame style — Meta just announced a slew of new updates for its Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg just dropped an Instagram reel showing off …

More: Engadget, UploadVR, ZDNet, 9to5Mac, CNET, Meta, iPhone in Canada Blog, Redmond Pie, BroBible, MSPoweruser, MIXED Reality News, The Shortcut, TechRadar, Tech Times, and New York Magazine

Threads: @roccobasilico. Instagram: Mark Zuckerberg. X: @jetscott

Counterpoint Research:

iPhone sales in China fell 19.1% YoY to a 15.7% share in Q1 2024; Vivo fell 0.4% YoY to 17.4%, Honor rose 11.5% YoY to 16.1%, and Huawei rose 69.7% YoY to 15.5% — - China's smartphone sales grew 1.5% YoY and 4.6% QoQ in Q1 2024, marking the second consecutive quarter of positive YoY growth.

Washington Post:

Google fires ~20 more staff the company says participated in protests denouncing an Israeli cloud contract; an activist workers' group says the total is now 50+ — Some employees protested the tech giant's contract with the Israeli government. They've been let go.

More: The Hill, Associated Press, UPI, Axios, Mercury News, Quartz, Forbes, Livemint, and Business Today

Mastodon: @polotek@social.polotek.net. X: @notechapartheid, @gokul_sahni, @rmnth, @carnage4life, @thomaspogge, and @kenmoriyasu

Forums: Hacker News and r/technology

Quentyn Kennemer / The Verge:

Apple schedules a “special Apple Event” for May 7 at 10am ET, where new iPads are expected; rumors suggest the iPad Pro will get an OLED display and an M3 chip — After kicking off 2024 with the launch of the Vision Pro, the next act in Apple's 2024 script is a May product launch event.

More: PCMag, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Appleosophy, Bloomberg, Hindustan Times, Ars Technica, ZDNet, AppAdvice, Macworld, CNET, Livemint, Engadget, AppleInsider, Thurrott, Shacknews, Mashable, KnowYourMobile, OS X Daily, Game Rant, How-To Geek, TechRadar, iDownloadBlog.com, Pocketnow, Digital Trends, PetaPixel, Laptop Mag, The Shortcut, iMore, Benzinga, KitGuru, Supercharged, Cult of Mac, Wccftech, The Apple Post, and Pocket-lint

Threads: @chancehmiller, @joannastern, @viticci, and @bzamayo. Bluesky: @jayabe2.bsky.social

X: @tim_cook, @saranbyte, @basicappleguy, @zollotech, @markgurman, @markgurman, @markgurman, and @mike_wuerthele

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:

Perplexity AI, which offers an AI chatbot that summarizes search results, raised ~$63M led by Daniel Gross at a $1B+ valuation, up from $520M in January 2024 — Perplexity's valuation has doubled in three months in a clear sign of investor enthusiasm for the company's artificial intelligence chatbot.

More: VentureBeat, Fortune, SiliconANGLE, Axios, Fast Company, and Benzinga

X: @aravsrinivas and @ariannahuff

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Sources: AI search engine Perplexity is raising $250M+ at a $2.5B to $3B valuation; previous backers NEA and IVP are among those looking to invest

More: Crunchbase News and Analytics India Magazine

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:

Adobe adds AI tools powered by its new Firefly Image 3 model to Photoshop, including Reference Image to inspire the AI's output, available in beta on desktop — Adobe is adding some new generative AI tools to its Photoshop creative software that aim to give users additional ways to control the designs they generate.

Reuters:

Analysis: 10 Chinese entities acquired advanced Nvidia chips embedded in Supermicro, Dell, and Gigabyte products from November 20, 2023, to February 28, 2024 — Chinese universities and research institutes recently obtained high-end Nvidia (NVDA.O) artificial intelligence chips through resellers …

More: DatacenterDynamics, PCMag, Tom's Hardware, Quartz, TechPowerUp, Gizmochina, TechRadar, ExtremeTech, TipRanks Financial, TechSpot, Windows Report, Cryptopolitan, Benzinga, and Investing.com

X: @kenli729, @sino_market, and @donal888

The Citizen Lab:

Analysis of pinyin keyboard apps from Baidu, Honor, Huawei, iFlytek, OPPO, Samsung, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi: flaws reveal keystrokes to network eavesdroppers — We urge users to install the latest updates to their keyboard apps and that they keep their mobile operating systems up to date.

More: The Citizen Lab. Mastodon: @w7voa@journa.host. X: @citizenlab and @citizenlab

Dave Lee / Bloomberg:

As Congress' TikTok bill moves ahead, US lawmakers must show on what grounds they are forcing a sale or ban of the popular and culturally significant platform — Congress must show the evidence to gain Americans' support for its proposed sale or ban of one of the world's most popular social networks.

More: Axios, Tech Policy Press, Forbes, MediaPost, TweakTown, Florida Politics, Business Insider, The Debrief, ClearanceJobs, TechCentral.ie, The Guardian, NBC News, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth, Financial Times, and Mercury News

Financial Times:

A look at Jeff Yass' Susquehanna International Group, which has a ~15% ByteDance stake worth ~$40B and has invested $3.5B+ into 350+ China startups since 2005

X: @henryjfoy

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:

Spotify reports Q1 revenue up 20% YoY to €3.6B, MAUs up 19% YoY to 615M, below 617.9M est., subscribers up 14% YoY to 239M, and a €168M operating income — - Subscribers to paid Spotify tiers jumped 14% to 239 million — Swedish audio-streaming company posted record operating profit

Brian Heater / TechCrunch:

Repairable laptop maker Framework Computer raised a $17M Series A-1, after an $18M Series A in early 2022, to expand into new product categories — Framework Computer was ahead of the curve. The company was founded in 2019, as 20 U.S. states began exploring potential right to repair bills.

More: Framework Blog, eeNews Europe, and Phoronix

X: @frameworkputer and @frameworkputer

Chris Morris / Fortune:

Taylor Swift's new album smashed streaming records; Spotify says it had 300M+ streams on launch day and became 2024's most-streamed album within just 12 hours — Never bet against Swifties. — Taylor Swift's loyal fan base not only sent the singer's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department …

More: NPR

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From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:

Arkansas PBS severs ties with the PBS network, the first state public TV system to do so since Congress cut CPB funds, citing the annual $2M+ membership cost

Financial Times:

OpenAI hopes the Disney deal boosts Sora, which has high costs and limited traction; Sensor Tower: users average 13 minutes per day on Sora vs. 90 on TikTok

Sam Roberts / New York Times:

Arthur L. Carter, who started a Connecticut newspaper in 1981, bought and sold The Nation, and founded the New York Observer in 1987, has died at 93

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Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:

Meta, Google, OpenAI, child safety group Thorn, nonprofit All Tech Is Human, and other AI groups sign on to an initiative to add new child safety measures

More: GZERO, Teleperformance, Thorn, The Keyword, Microsoft On the Issues, Civitai, OpenAI, Meta, and LBC

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Sonos updates its Android and iOS apps, rebuilding them to become more reliable, and plans to discontinue its Windows and macOS apps in favor of web apps

More: Thurrott, The Ambient, CNET, AppleInsider, MobileSyrup, Tech Advisor, Engadget, 9to5Mac, T3, TechRadar, iPhone in Canada Blog, BGR, and Mashable

Bluesky: @marypcbuk.bsky.social. Forums: r/sonos

Austin Weinstein / Bloomberg:

Sources: two SEC lawyers resigned after a US federal judge sanctioned and sharply rebuked the SEC for “gross abuse” of power in crypto platform DEBT Box's case

More: Bitcoinist.com, Watcher Guru, Milk Road, Inside Bitcoins, Cryptopolitan, CryptoPotato, Blockworks, and Unchained

X: @arrington, @eleanorterrett, @leomschwartz, @cryptolawus, and @iamdcinvestor. Forums: r/ethtrader

Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:

Kaiko: in the past year, Binance's bitcoin trading share outside the US fell from 81.3% to 55.3%, OKX's rose from 3% to 7.3%, and Bybit's rose from 2% to 9.3%

More: CoinGape, crypto.news, and Coinspeaker

Mike Cherney / Wall Street Journal:

Elon Musk criticizes Australia's order to remove a video of a religious leader's stabbing, after the eSafety commissioner took X to court and the PM weighed in

More: The Guardian, Washington Post, New York Post, Reuters, Fortune, Financial Times, Australian Financial Review, ABC, The Register, Benzinga, and Associated Press

X: @elonmusk and @elonmusk

Forums: r/JoeRogan, r/australia, and r/neoliberal

Bloomberg:

French electrical equipment maker Legrand agrees to acquire Dutch health software company Enovation from PE firm Main Capital Partners, sources say for €500M+

More: Silicon Republic, Silicon Canals, and nltimes.nl

Financial Times:

Q&A with BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer, who says the consulting firm expects 20% of its 2024 revenue and 40% of its 2026 revenue to come via helping integrate AI

X: @tanarrowz and @sundeep. Forums: r/consulting

Akila Quinio / Financial Times:

Revolut plans an ad sales push, expects to derive a “proper chunk” of its revenue from targeted ads, and hires an ex-TikTok executive to lead its media strategy

More: Proactiveinvestors UK, Finance Magnates, City A.M., and Finextra

X: @rodolfor, @eric_seufert, @carnage4life, @_modwyer, and @emilyjnicolle

Earlier Picks

Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:

Nominal, which offers tools for data analysis, testing, and more to startups building advanced hardware like drones, emerges from stealth with $27.5M in funding

More: FinSMEs. X: @zebulgar, @bznotes, and @graceisford

LinkedIn: Cameron McCord and Evan Loomis

TechCrunch:

TabaPay, which offers instant payment services, agrees to acquire assets of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse, after Synapse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

More: American Banker, Fintech Business Weekly, Synapse, and TabaPay, Inc.

X: @pitdesi, @sytaylor, @mikulaja, and @rohitdotmittal

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Amazon ends drone deliveries in Lockeford, California, which began in 2022, and plans to expand them to Tolleson, Arizona, in 2024 and other US regions in 2025

More: Inc.com, PCMag, Hackaday, Electrek, Benzinga, Engadget, and TechCrunch

X: @ajassy, @pradeep24, and @scobleizer. LinkedIn: Matt McCardle. Forums: r/phoenix

Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:

HR software company Rippling raised a $200M Series F led by Coatue at a $13.5B valuation, up from $11.25B in March 2023, and a separate $590M tender offer

More: SiliconANGLE, FinTech Global, Silicon Republic, FinSMEs, and Rippling

X: @parkerconrad, @johncoogan, @contrary_res, @ccheever, @paulg, @austen, @rippling, @joshsteinvc, @bling0, @bedrock, @mrrazzi17, @waitin4agi_, @rachelhaot, @ycombinator, and @davj

Nilay Patel / The Verge:

Newsletter service Ghost says it plans to add ActivityPub support in 2024; rival service Buttondown also plans ActivityPub support

More: We Distribute, Mashable, and Spyglass

Threads: @chris, @johnonolan, @lilkioko, @quillmatiq, @ghost, @timothyjchambers, @buttondownemail, and @crumbler

Mastodon: @johnonolan@mastodon.xyz, @jezlyn@mastodon.social, @ellane@pkm.social, @jonah@mastodon.neat.computer, @quillmatiq@mastodon.social, @cliffwade@allthingstech …, @drrjv@vmst.io, and @Gargron@mastodon.social. X: @remkusdevries. Forums: Hacker News