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December 18, 2024, 8:10 PM
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Melissa Quinn / CBS News:
SCOTUS says it will hear a challenge from TikTok, ByteDance, and TikTok users on January 10 to the law that could lead to the US banning the app on January 19  —  Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will take up a challenge to a new law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the U.S.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the US is investigating Chinese router maker TP-Link, which has a ~65% US market share in homes and SMBs, and could ban the sale of its routers in 2025  —  TP-Link is the bestselling router on Amazon—and has been linked to Chinese cyberattacks  —  U.S. authorities are investigating whether …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI rolls out a way to talk to ChatGPT by dialing 1-800-CHATGPT for 15 minutes of free access per month in the US or messaging it via WhatsApp globally  —  OpenAI on Wednesday rolled out a new way to talk to its viral chatbot: 1-800-CHATGPT.  —  By dialing the U.S. number (1-800-242-8478) …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub makes its Copilot free in VS Code, with 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month; GitHub now has 150M developers, up from 100M in early 2023  —  Microsoft-owned GitHub today announced a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool …
Will Judd / Eurogamer.net:
Sony details PS5 Pro specs, including its GPU based on AMD RDNA 2 with 16.7TF of performance and ray tracing improvements, and announces a partnership with AMD  —  Plus: what this all means for future PlayStation hardware.  —  When Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro …
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel announces the first updates to address Arrow Lake gaming performance issues, fixing four of five root causes, and plans a new update for January  —  Time to test.  —  Intel announced that its first wave of updates to address the gaming performance issues plaguing the Arrow Lake processors is now available.
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Source: Perplexity raised $500M led by Institutional Venture Partners at a $9B valuation earlier this month, up from a $3B valuation in June  —  The company's valuation has tripled since June. … The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners and completed earlier this month …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has halted work on a project to build an iPhone hardware subscription service, which had been in development since around 2022  —  - Much-delayed program had been in development since around 2022  — Company also shut down Pay Later offering earlier this year
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Flipboard launches Surf, an app to create custom feeds from Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, RSS, podcasts, and YouTube, in beta on iOS, Android, and iPadOS  —  Fourteen years ago, when the iPad was new and bursting with unfulfilled promise, an app called Flipboard debuted.
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Micron reports Q1 revenue up 84% YoY to $8.71B, in line with est., Q2 revenue forecast below est. due to sluggish phone and PC demand; MU drops 13%+ after hours  —  - Strong AI growth isn't offsetting a slowdown elsewhere  — Micron CEO cites weakness in consumer-oriented markets
Bloomberg:
SandboxAQ, which aims to apply quantum tech and techniques to AI, raised $300M from Alger, Yann LeCun, and others at a $5.6B valuation to recruit more engineers  —  - Former Alphabet division focuses on quantum and AI tech  — CEO Jack Hidary staffing up with more Ph.D.s and engineers
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
After a rough year, Intel says its $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” GPU, which received near-universal praise from reviewers, has already sold out in most retailers  —  While we haven't managed to review it ourselves due to a fluke issue, the $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon recently pushed back RTO dates for some staff in Austin, Dallas, and Phoenix by as much as four months, citing a lack of office space  —  - Company is struggling to find space in at least seven cities  — Start dates are being pushed back as much as four months
Financial Times:
Omdia estimates Microsoft bought 485K of Nvidia's Hopper GPUs in 2024, ByteDance and Tencent bought ~230K each, Meta bought 225K, and Tesla/xAI bought ~200K  —  OpenAI's biggest backer buys nearly half a million GPUs this year in global race to build artificial intelligence systems
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Threads rolls out a way to reshare photos and videos without quote posting the original post, while crediting the original poster; users can disable the feature  —  Threads is rolling out a new feature that lets you share someone's photos and videos without including the original post.
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
A look at Microsoft's risky Xbox strategy, where exclusives are the exception; sources say Microsoft is working on cross-platform Xbox interface Project Rainway  —  Microsoft's strategy has Xbox's core fans upset about the future of console hardware.  Today, we're going to analyze the strategy …
Google DeepMind:
Google introduces FACTS Grounding benchmark for evaluating the factuality of LLMs, and announces a leaderboard that ranks Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental on top  —  Our comprehensive benchmark and online leaderboard offer a much-needed measure of how accurately LLMs ground their responses …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:10 PM ET, December 18, 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.

From Mediagazer

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Sky agrees to acquire ITV's TV business for £1.6B, uniting the UK's two largest commercial broadcasters; ITV says shareholders will receive £950M from the deal

Alex Ritman / Variety:
AI-focused studio Particle 6 plans a full-length feature film to be led by the AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, as a hybrid production using film and TV professionals

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sources: Netflix is studying its data to see why viewers quit its shows after S1, with some shows seeing a 30%-70% S2 drop, as it faces a quarter without hits

More News

Earlier Picks

Myles McCormick / Financial Times:
The NERC, overseen by the FERC, warns soaring US electricity demand from data centers to power AI could strain US and Canadian grids, risking blackouts
Ernie Smith / Tedium:
Bluesky using domains to verify users has led to cybersquatting and impersonation, as domains don't offer enough social proof for the average person
Financial Times:
The UK opens a consultation on AI and copyright, aiming to offer an “opt out” exception to copyright law, forcing companies to open models to scrutiny, and more
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