Techmeme
December 5, 2024, 10:25 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Trump says David Sacks will be the “White House AI and crypto czar” to “work on a legal framework so the crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for”  —  - New post will help Trump put imprint on developing industries  — Venture capitalist Sacks helped Trump make inroads with tech
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pro, a $200/month plan with unlimited access to o1, GPT-4o, and more, plus an o1 version that uses more compute for better responses  —  OpenAI is creating a new, more expensive tier for its flagship chatbot ChatGPT, and is bringing its “reasoning” model series out of preview with an update.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
OpenAI launches o1 out of preview for ChatGPT Plus and Team users, bringing image upload support, faster responses, and 34% fewer major errors for hard problems  —  OpenAI has officially launched its o1 model, transitioning out of preview to become a core feature of the ChatGPT platform.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says it is not “necessarily true” that Bluesky will always be ad-free; ads could be “user intent-driven”, like running in search results  —  Bluesky has blown up this year thanks to a vibrant community of posters, user customization choices …
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Google releases new Android features, including “expressive” video captions, improvements to the Pixel Screenshots app, a Spotify extension for Gemini, and more  —  If you're a Pixel user, you can look forward to even more enhancements.  —  If you're an Android user …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google unveils PaliGemma 2 models, which can analyze images and generate captions describing “actions, emotions, and the overall narrative of the scene”  —  Google says its new AI model family has a curious feature: the ability to “identify” emotions.
CNBC:
Waymo says it will expand its fleet into Miami in 2025 with human safety drivers and plans to open up paid rides to local users via its Waymo One app by 2026  —  Waymo is setting its sights on its next location: the Sunshine State.  —  The Alphabet-owned company announced Thursday that it will be hitting the roads in Miami.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Microsoft rolls out Copilot Vision in preview, which can analyze text and images on webpages and answer queries, available to some Copilot Pro users in the US  —  Microsoft's AI can now read your screen — or rather, the websites you're browsing.  —  On Thursday, the company began rolling out a limited …
Tom Mitchelhill / Cointelegraph:
Viral influencer Haliey Welch's Hawk Tuah memecoin sparks outrage across social media after pumping to a $490M market cap and then dumping 90%+ in three hours  —  Haliey Welch's memecoin HAWK has plunged 90% since its launch, though Welch has denied any insider sales from herself or her team.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta tests letting Threads users see metrics for their individual posts, including views, likes, and replies, as part of changes to Threads' Insights feature  —  Threads is testing the ability for users to see how well their individual posts performed on the social network.
Reuters:
Sources: TSMC is in discussions with Nvidia to make its Blackwell AI chips at TSMC's new Arizona plant starting in early 2025, expanding on production in Taiwan  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) is in discussions with Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) to produce its Blackwell artificial …
Reuters:
Meta plans to invest $10B to build an AI data center in Louisiana, in what would be its largest data center in the world, and expects work to start in December  —  Facebook-parent Meta (META.O) said on Wednesday it plans to invest $10 billion to set up an AI data center in Louisiana …
Jillian Deutsch / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA clears the £15B Vodafone-Three deal after a 10-month inquiry, subject to investing £11B in UK digital infrastructure, creating the UK's biggest telco  —  - CMA approved the merger with Three in UK on Thursday  — Europe's telcos have spent years lobbying for consolidation
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
Meta teams up with James Cameron's Lightstorm Vision to bring “live sports and concerts, feature films, and TV series featuring big-name IP” to Quest headsets  —  The multiyear deal will make Meta Quest the exclusive mixed reality headset of Lightstorm, and is meant to turbocharge 3D content development.
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Oura rolls out Symptom Radar, a feature that tries to detect early signs of sickness using biometrics like heart rate variability, to Oura Ring Gen 3 and 4  —  At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, many wearable companies rushed to see if their devices could detect early signs of the disease.

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The Information:
Jordyn Holman / New York Times:

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: