Techmeme
December 18, 2024, 1:17 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: US officials are investigating Chinese router maker TP-Link, which has an estimated 65% US market share, 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 …
Melissa Quinn / CBS News:
SCOTUS says it will hear a challenge on January 10 to a new law that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US, ahead of the law taking effect 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.
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 …
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” …
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.
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 …
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
Avram Piltch / Tom's Hardware:
Nvidia unveils Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a $249 compact AI development board that promises 67 TOPS, compared to 40 TOPS of the $499 last-gen kit  —  The Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit will be available later this month and comes with 8GB of RAM.
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  —  Bluesky, until now, has had a reputation as being a more moderation-friendly alternative to X, Threads, Mastodon, and other social networks.
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
Amazon unveils new packaging for its Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV products, including removing plastic, less paper and ink, and using more recycled fibers  —  Some boxes delivered by Amazon will have the same look on the inside as they do on the outside as devices from the company are being packaged …
More: About Amazon
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Apple updates Apple Maps on the web to add support for Look Around, which is Apple's version of Google Street View  —  Apple in June introduced a beta version of Apple Maps on the web, allowing users of other platforms such as Windows PCs to access its map service directly from a web browser.
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) …

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More News

Eliot Brown / Wall Street Journal:
Myles McCormick / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

John Voorhees / MacStories:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Financial Times: