Techmeme
January 6, 2025, 9:40 PM

Top News

Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Dell rebrands its PCs as Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max, each with Base, Plus, and Premium tiers, killing names like XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, and Precision  —  The PC manufacturer's new laptops, desktops, and monitors will have a simplified naming scheme with labels like ‘Pro’ and ‘Max.’
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Meta elects new board directors: UFC CEO and outspoken Donald Trump supporter Dana White, former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst, and Exor CEO John Elkann  —  - White has been outspoken ally of US President-elect Trump  — Investor Songhurst, Exor CEO Elkann also named as directors
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Disney and Fubo announce a deal wherein Disney will combine Hulu + Live TV with Fubo in a joint venture and Fubo will drop its Venu Sports antitrust lawsuit  —  Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery will pay Fubo $220 million to settle antitrust suit  —  Disney announced a deal …
Lillian Rizzo / CNBC:
Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:
AMD unveils Ryzen AI Max+, laptop chips with a new integrated memory architecture and 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, claiming 84% faster rendering than the MacBook M4 Pro  —  Disruption is a daily thing.  —  AMD announced its ‘Strix Halo’ Ryzen AI Max series laptop processors here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas …
Hassan Mujtaba / Wccftech:
Darragh Murphy / Tom's Guide:
HDMI Forum unveils the HDMI 2.2 spec, with better audio and video sync and 96Gbps bandwidth for resolutions up to 12K at 120Hz, and the required “Ultra96” cable  —  Plus a sneak peek at the new Ultra96 HDMI Cable  —  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Google previews Google TV changes coming in 2025, including adding Gemini, more natural voice commands, improved content search, and deeper YouTube integration  —  Alphabet Inc.'s consumer team will give TV sets running its Google TV operating system an AI upgrade by adding Gemini to its Google Assistant voice-control system.
Sam Altman:
Sam Altman says “we are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it” and that OpenAI is turning its focus to superintelligence  —  The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Jamie Tarabay / Bloomberg:
Sources: Chinese state-sponsored hackers targeted the Philippine president's office and stole sensitive data as part of a yearslong, broad espionage campaign  —  - Some stolen documents related to dispute over South China Sea  — Most of the hacks took place from early 2023 to June 2024
Zoe Kleinman / BBC:
After complaints from BBC, Apple plans an update “in the coming weeks” that will make it clearer to users when Apple Intelligence is summarizing notifications  —  Apple has said it will update, rather than pause, a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature that has generated inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones.
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Meta says it's testing an “Imagine Yourself” feature announced in September that automatically generates AI images of a user and puts them into that user's feed  —  Meta AI put a Redditor into “an endless maze of mirrors” as part of a new AI feature it is testing.
Mayank Parmar / Windows Latest:
Microsoft is showing a Bing search result page that spoofs Google Search's UI when a user searches for “Google” on Bing while signed out of a Microsoft account  —  Microsoft seems to have rolled out a pretty interesting yet controversial change that spoofs Google.com UI when you try to find Google when using Bing.com.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Similarweb: US DAUs of Bluesky's mobile app grew 12% MoM in December vs. 284% MoM in November; Bluesky now has 26.44M+ total users after passing 20M in November  —  Social network and X competitor Bluesky's massive growth slowed in December in the U.S., after having surged from 9+ million …
Bluesky: @mcuban, @mcuban, and @mcubanThreads: @sarahprz
Bloomberg:
Tencent's stock drops 6%+ after the US DoD added it to a blacklist of companies with alleged ties to China's military; it may face delisting or index removals  —  Masayoshi Son's Quest to Become the Next Nvidia  —  The billionaire SoftBank founder promises to invest $100 billion in the US as part of a sweeping redemption plan.
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Samsung schedules its next Galaxy Unpacked event for 10AM PT on January 22 in San Jose, where Galaxy AI updates, the Galaxy S25 lineup, and more are expected  —  After plenty of leaks and rumors, we're officially entering Samsung's lead-up to the Galaxy S25 launch date …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Nvidia unveils Project Digits, a “personal AI supercomputer” with a new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip and says it can run models up to 200B parameters in size  —  At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia unveiled Project Digits, a “personal AI supercomputer” …

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Earlier Picks

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: