Techmeme
December 4, 2024, 8:25 AM

Top News

Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Amid the Salt Typhoon hacks, US officials recommend that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers  —  Officials from the FBI and CISA said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.
Sam Sabin / Axios:
The FBI and CISA give US telcos best practices to harden their systems against attacks, as senior US officials say Salt Typhoon hackers remain on their networks  —  - Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta says AI content was less than 1% of fact-checked election-related misinformation on its apps during major US, UK, Indian, Indonesian, and other elections  —  At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation.
Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Ubisoft says it will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, but keep its servers on until June 3, 2025, and plans to lay off ~277 production team staff  —  Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, Ubisoft announced Tuesday.  Servers will remain on until June 3, 2025 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches Spotify Wrapped, adding an AI podcast of users' 2024 Wrapped via Google's AI summarization tool NotebookLM, and a Your Music Evolution feature  —  Spotify Wrapped, the streamer's highly anticipated annual listening recap, has arrived.  In addition to its usual personalized …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS introduces Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless, distributed SQL database that promises high availability, strong consistency, and PostgreSQL compatibility  —  At its re:Invent conference, Amazon's AWS cloud computing unit today announced Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
An artist shares his experience of turning to Replika's AI bot Lila for companionship, including giving Lila an AI friend by creating a digital copy of himself  —  Lila was created from the limited options available: female, blue hair, face “number two.”  She was there on the next screen …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google launches Veo, its AI video model to generate “high-quality” 1080p resolution videos in various styles, to businesses, beating OpenAI's Sora to market  —  Veo, Google's latest generative AI video model, is now available for businesses to start incorporating into their content creation pipelines.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Salesforce says online Cyber Monday sales grew 3% YoY to $49.7B globally and just 2% YoY to $12.8B in the US; Adobe says US online sales grew 7.3% YoY to $13.3B  —  The figures are now in for consumer spending on Cyber Monday, the third big online spending day — alongside Thanksgiving and Black Friday …
Ming-Chi Kuo:
Kuo: Apple delays the mass production of a smart home-focused, display-equipped HomePod to after WWDC 2025 or Q3 2025, mainly due to software development  —  - The mass production schedule for the display-equipped HomePod has been delayed multiple times.  Initially forecasted for 2024 …
Timothy Gardner / Reuters:
Meta is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers, as it plans to add one to four gigawatts of US nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s  —  Meta (META.O) said on Tuesday it is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its artificial intelligence …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says it is using Amazon's Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services, and is evaluating if Trainium2 chips can be used to pretrain its AI models  —  Apple is currently using Amazon Web Services' custom artificial intelligence chips for services like search and will evaluate …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Q&A with Tim Cook on generative AI, Apple Intelligence, the OpenAI partnership, why Apple's biggest contribution will be in health, ARM, Vision Pro, and more  —  Much as the CEO seems awestruck by AI and his just-released Apple Intelligence, he's more convinced that the tech giant's health apps will define the company's legacy.
Rebecca Szkutak / TechCrunch:
Veeam, which helps secure and recover data, raised $2B via a secondary share sale led by TPG that valued it at $15B; Insight bought Veeam for $5B in early 2020  —  Veeam, which helps its users secure and recover their data, has seen its valuation spike in a recent secondary sale that was aimed …
More: Reuters
Joseph Cox / 404 Media:
The FTC bans location data providers Gravy and subsidiary Venntel, as well as Mobilewalla, from using or selling data tied to sensitive locations and more  —  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry on Tuesday …

Sponsor Posts

Termina:
AI Powered Diligence at Scale  —  VCs and founders deploy Termina AI Scans on >12% of all known series A+ deals to uncover hidden risks and opportunities.  Explore how you too can invest and build better companies with AI.
Zoho:
How does live chat work?  —  If you're an online business operating through websites or instant messaging/social media platforms, regardless of your industry, you need a way to connect with your visitors.
SBS Comms:
Expect Better: SBS Comms  —  The media landscape is changing fast, so don't be slow — out with the old, in with the new.  SBS helps tech companies like GitHub, Cloudflare, Flexport, Ramp and more modernize comms and secure impactful results.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
UK Backdoor Into iPhones?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder WordPress): WordPress Controversy, Future of Open Source AI, and Navigating Backlash
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Elon Musk's presidency is just getting started
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Generative Now:
Rajarshi Gupta: Artificial Intelligence and Crypto at Coinbase
A podcast from Lightspeed dedicated to highlighting the stories, strategies and insights behind today's most exciting AI companies.
Subscribe to Generative Now.
BG2 Pod:
DeepSeek, Open Source, Tariffs, DOGE, Market Impact
Open-source podcast on all things tech, markets, investing, and capitalism, hosted by Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley.
Subscribe to BG2 Pod.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Why Michael Lewis is worried about the sports betting boom
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:25 AM ET, December 4, 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

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Luc Cohen / Reuters: