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December 19, 2024, 9:00 AM
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Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Apple says Meta has made 15 interoperability requests under the EU's DMA, more than any other company, and that these could affect users' privacy and security  —  Apple (AAPL.O) on Wednesday hit out at Meta Platforms (META.O), saying its numerous requests to access the iPhone maker's software tools …
Bloomberg:
Document: the EU Commission pressed Apple to rework iOS so that the OS is more compatible with competitors' smartwatches, earbuds, headsets, and other devices  —  - Apple cites concerns that Meta access may undermine privacy  — EU watchdog has pressed company to rework iOS operating system
Kiyoshi Takenaka / Reuters:
Sony buys ~$320M of shares in Japanese media powerhouse Kadokawa, which owns FromSoftware, taking its stake to ~10% and becoming Kadokawa's top shareholder  —  Sony Group (6758.T) said on Thursday it will invest about 50 billion yen ($320 million) to acquire new shares of Kadokawa (9468.T) …
Reuters:
Sources: Apple is in early-stage talks with Tencent and ByteDance about integrating their AI models into iPhones sold in China; ChatGPT is unavailable in China  —  Apple (AAPL.O) is in talks with Tencent (0700.HK) and TikTok owner ByteDance about integrating their artificial intelligence models …
Will Judd / Eurogamer.net:
Sony details the PS5 Pro's specs, including an AMD RDNA 2 GPU and ray tracing improvements, and announces a long-term machine learning partnership with AMD  —  Plus: what this all means for future PlayStation hardware.  —  When Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro, it did so in a very different manner …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic demonstrates “alignment faking” in Claude 3 Opus to show how developers could be misled into thinking an LLM is more aligned than it may actually be  —  AI models can deceive, new research from Anthropic shows.  They can pretend to have different views during training …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
GitHub offers Copilot in VS Code for free 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 …
Deadline:
Two Tencent-appointed Epic board directors resigned after the DOJ expressed antitrust concerns; Tencent also gave up its right to appoint future Epic directors  —  Two board members of Epic Games have resigned amid Justice Department concerns over antitrust concerns.
Jef Feeley / Bloomberg:
Arm v. Qualcomm: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon described Arm's Nuvia license cancellation and demand for Qualcomm to destroy IP after buying Nuvia as “outrageous”  —  - Tech firms are sparring in weeklong jury trial in Delaware  — Closing arguments are expected Thursday in federal court
Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI debuts a way to talk to ChatGPT by dialing 1-800-CHATGPT for 15 minutes of free access per month in the US or messaging the number 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 …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple halts work on a project to build an iPhone hardware subscription service, which had been in development since 2022 and was set to launch then  —  - Much-delayed program had been in development since around 2022  — Company also shut down Pay Later offering earlier this year
S.E. Smith / The Verge:
A look at the quickly disappearing web, as digital decay and link rot erase all kinds of media; a Pew study says 38% of webpages accessible in 2013 are now gone  —  The internet is forever.  But also, it isn't.  What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random?
IDC:
Global shipments of wrist-worn wearables hit 139M units in the first nine months of 2024, down 1% YoY; China was the largest market with 45.8M units, up 20% YoY  —  , the global wrist-worn device market shipped 139.0 million units in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decline of 1.0% …
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
Intel unveils the first updates to address Arrow Lake's gaming performance issues, fixing four of the five root causes, and plans a final update in January 2025  —  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 in December, up from a $3B valuation in June 2024  —  The company's valuation has tripled since June. … The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners and completed earlier this month …
Ian King / Bloomberg:
Micron reports Q1 revenue up 84% YoY to $8.71B, in line with est., and a Q2 revenue forecast below est. due to sluggish phone and PC demand; MU drops 15%+  —  - Strong AI growth isn't offsetting a slowdown in PCs, phones  — Micron CEO cites weakness in consumer-oriented markets
Washington Post:
Congress approves $3B in funding for a project to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from US networks nationwide; Trump's FCC started the initiative in 2020  —  Legislative and executive branch actions highlight concerns that phone and internet networks are vulnerable to Beijing-sponsored hackers.
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.
Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review:
An analysis of nearly 4,000 public datasets finds that over 90% of AI training datasets came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa  —  AI is all about data.  Reams and reams of data are needed to train algorithms to do what we want, and what goes into the AI models determines what comes out.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:00 AM ET, December 19, 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

Sara Fischer / Axios:
Source: Bari Weiss is planning to create a masthead for CBS News as part of a broader overhaul of standards and procedures

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Comcast extends Mike Cavanagh's contract through January 1, 2029, and grants a ~$35M performance-based stock package; he's set to become co-CEO in January 2026

Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
A US judge denies WBD's bid to block Sling TV from selling short-term offerings that let users sign up for access to its bundles for as little as one day

More News

Joel Khalili / Wired:
A look at Truth Terminal, an AI bot on X that was created to spark debate about AI alignment, as its crypto wallet swells to ~$40M after boosting memecoins

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Appfigures: global consumer spending in mobile apps on the App Store and Google Play rose 15.7% YoY to $127.3B in 2024, but app downloads dropped 2.3% to 109.7B
Vince Dioquino / Decrypt:
El Salvador plans to scale back its bitcoin efforts under an IMF deal for a $1.4B loan; bitcoin acceptance will no longer be mandatory for the private sector
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Threads rolls out a way to reshare photos and videos without quote posting, but still crediting the original poster; users can turn off the resharing feature
Harry McCracken / Fast Company:
Flipboard launches Surf, an app for creating custom feeds from Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, RSS, podcasts, and YouTube, in beta for Android, iOS, and iPadOS
Bloomberg:
Sources: Amazon delayed RTO dates for some staff in at least seven cities, like Austin, Dallas, and Phoenix, by up to four months, citing a lack of office space
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