Techmeme
January 20, 2024, 1:45 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Microsoft says Russia-linked group Midnight Blizzard hacked some employee emails beginning in November 2023; the same group breached SolarWinds as early as 2019  —  - Nation-state spies previously conducted cyber-espionage on US  — Targeted breaches hit Microsoft executives, cyber team
Bloomberg:
Sources: Elon Musk's xAI secured $500M in commitments out of $1B and is aiming for a $15B to $20B valuation; source: X investors are invited to invest in xAI  —  - Grok maker aims for valuation of at least $15 billion  — Investors in X, formerly Twitter, getting priority in round
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Dave Mills, who created the Network Time Protocol in 1985 to synchronize time across different computer systems and networks, died at age 85 on January 17  —  Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.  —  On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced …
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple opens pre-orders for the Vision Pro, which has an M2 chip with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory, and 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB storage options  —  Apple today finally shared additional tech specs for its Vision Pro headset following the start of pre-orders in the United States.
More: Engadget, Apple on YouTube, Ars Technica, AppleInsider, Tom's Guide, TechRadar, MacRumors, MacRumors, AppleInsider, MacRumors, iThinkDifferent, 9to5Mac, Mashable, Appleosophy, TechSpot, Supercharged, Brian Solis, The Verge, Road to VR, MacRumors, MacDailyNews, MacRumors, Tom's Hardware, CNBC, iMore, Wccftech, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Notebookcheck, MacRumors, and Bloomberg
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Sam Altman has held talks to raise billions, including $8B to $10B from Abu Dhabi-based G42, to set up a network of factories to manufacture chips  —  - Push reflects concern about potential semiconductor shortage  — Project would involve working with major chipmaking companies
Kia Kokalitcheva / Axios:
After two failed attempts, a bipartisan effort is being made to remedy the issues caused by US tax law Section 174, which forces amortization of software labor  —  The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is impacting some startups' tax bills, thanks to a provision that changes how R&D costs are deducted.
Josh Sisco / Politico:
Sources: the US DOJ and FTC are discussing which agency can investigate the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership and which can probe companies for scraping web content  —  One of the most high-profile tech partnerships in years has drawn scrutiny from regulators, who currently can't pursue an investigation.
More: Gizmodo, Neowin, and Reuters
Threads: @carnage4lifeMastodon: @carnage4life@mas.toX: @aifray
Sean Michael Kerner / VentureBeat:
Stability AI releases Stable LM 2 1.6B, which the company says outperforms other small AI language models on most benchmarks, including Microsoft's Phi-2  —  Size certainly matters when it comes to large language models (LLMs) as it impacts where a model can run.

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Earlier Picks

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Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Piotr Lipinski / Reuters: