Techmeme
December 20, 2024, 5:30 AM

Top News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, an experimental “reasoning” model that “explicitly shows its thoughts” and can use them to strengthen its reasoning  —  Google has released what it's calling a new “reasoning” AI model — but it's in the experimental stages …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Researchers unveil Genesis, an open-source generative physics engine that trains robots in simulated reality 430K times faster than in the real world  —  On Thursday, a large group of university and private industry researchers unveiled Genesis, a new open source computer simulation system …
Bloomberg:
Sony's shares in Japan surged 50%+ from an August low to reach its new all-time high since 2000 last week, as investors are bullish on its gaming growth in 2025  —  - Next year ‘one of the greatest’ for video games: Smithers  — M&A and good management boost stock's appeal: Janus Henderson
Kiyoshi Takenaka / Reuters:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
YouTube plans to start a crackdown on “egregious clickbait”, or videos where the titles or thumbnails make claims the videos don't back up, beginning in India  —  A lot of YouTube videos have flashy, misleading titles and thumbnails, such as “BREAKING NEWS” or “The president steps down …
Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Q&A with Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant on what led to the country's under-16 social media ban, enforcement, unintended consequences, more  —  Australia passed one of the strictest internet crackdowns in the world last month, banning children under 16 from being on social media or opening new accounts.
Bluesky: @mmasnick
Bloomberg:
SAP promoted a team lead accused by five female staff of targeting female subordinates, raising concerns about company culture and workplace discrimination  —  Women who worked for a team lead at the tech giant's Signavio unit say that the company failed to address complaints of bullying and discrimination.
Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
Crypto executives worry that the EU's MiCA, which puts stringent conditions on crypto exchanges to list stablecoins like USDT, will drain liquidity from markets  —  - Executives are concerned that removing USDT will sap liquidity  —  European Union cryptoasset regulations set to take full force …
Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider:
Apple researchers say the company's open-source ReDrafter method on Nvidia GPUs led to a 2.7x speed increase in generated tokens per second for greedy encoding  —  Apple's latest machine learning research could make creating models for Apple Intelligence faster, by coming up with a technique …
New York Times:
In 150+ X posts, Elon Musk led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by sharing misinfo, which may lead to a government shutdown over Christmas  —  The world's richest man led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by promoting false and misleading claims about it.
More: Politico, The Hill, Wired, The Wrap, Business Insider, Forbes, The Daily Beast, Politico, Gizmodo, Wall Street Journal, Scripps News, The Atlantic, No More Mister Nice Blog, Associated Press, CNN, The Moderate Voice, Black Wall Street Times, Rolling Stone, El País, New Republic, Alternet.org, The Guardian, NBC News, Daily Kos, CBS News, WNYW-TV, and Bloomberg

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Shopify's new AI commerce stack  —  Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI and tech.
Zoho:
Connecting, collaborating, and growing: Zoho Mail 2025 wrap-up  —  Your inbox has been home to a lot this year—quick updates, long threads, approvals, reminders, and the occasional late-night draft you weren't sure about.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

BG2 Pod:
AI Enterprise - Databricks & Glean
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Great Chat:
The stories we told ourselves in 2025
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Grit:
How Brands Stay Visible When AI Decides | Profound CEO James Cadwallader
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
The coming AI security crisis (and what to do about it) | Sander Schulhoff
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Potential, Google's Speedy Model, Copilot Hits Turbulence
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ted Sarandos: Netflix and how tech changed storytelling
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:30 AM ET, December 20, 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.

More News

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Allyson Versprille / Bloomberg:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Robert Booth / The Guardian:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Chainalysis:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Deadline: