Techmeme
December 25, 2024, 9:00 PM

Top News

Gleb Bryanski / Reuters:
Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments to counter Western sanctions  —  Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments following legislative changes …
Bloomberg:
Taiwan's FTC blocks Uber's $950M acquisition of Delivery Hero's Foodpanda, arguing it would decrease competition as their combined market share would be 90%+  —  - Fair Trade Commission concerned deal would limit competition  — Uber had sought Delivery Hero's Foodpanda unit in Taiwan
Qwen:
Alibaba's Qwen unveils QvQ-72B-Preview, an experimental research model focused on “enhancing visual reasoning capabilities”, built upon Qwen2-VL-72B  —  Language and vision intertwine in the human mind, shaping how we perceive and understand the world around us.
Jody Godoy / Reuters:
Filing: Apple asks to participate in the remedial phase of Google's US antitrust case, saying it can't rely on Google to defend their revenue-sharing agreements  —  Apple (AAPL.O) has asked to participate in Google's upcoming U.S. antitrust trial over online search, saying it cannot rely …
The Block:
Analysis: Coinbase International saw its total trading volume grow 124% week-over-week to $119B+ this past week; it averaged just $2.5B per day in November 2024  —  - The weekly total is 124% higher than the previous week's total.  — The following is an excerpt from The Block's Data and Insights newsletter.
Politico:
Examining Biden's tech legacy and the CHIPS Act, as the White House says $446B has been announced for chips and electronics manufacturing since he took office  —  President Joe Biden had just a single term to try to transform the nation's approach to energy, climate change, technology and jobs.
Martin Matishak / The Record:
President Biden signs the $895B 2025 defense policy bill, including $3B for the FCC's “rip and replace” program to get rid of Chinese networking equipment  —  The annual defense policy bill signed by President Joe Biden Monday evening allocates $3 billion to help telecom firms remove …
Bloomberg:
Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace approves lifting its ban on “certain widely used foreign platforms”, naming WhatsApp and Google Play as the first two apps  —  - Allowing WhatsApp and Google Play may placate opponents  — Major social networking sites have been blocked for years
Dylan Patel / SemiAnalysis:
Benchmarking AMD's MI300X and Nvidia's H100 and H200; in theory, AMD's GPU has advantages in specs and total cost of ownership, but software bugs hold it back  —  Intro  —  SemiAnalysis has been on a five-month long quest to settle the reality of MI300X.  In theory, the MI300X …

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Earlier Picks

Isaac Schorr / Mediaite:
Sheldon Reback / CoinDesk:
Pranshu Verma / Washington Post: