Techmeme
December 12, 2024, 11:45 AM

Top News

Victoria Song / The Verge:
Google unveils Android XR, a mixed reality OS with Gemini built in for headsets and smart glasses, and plans a 2025 launch with Samsung's Project Moohan headset  —  I demoed Google's new Android XR platform, Samsung's Project Moohan, and prototype smart glasses.  I felt as close to Tony Stark in a controlled demo as I'll ever be.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Hands-on with Samsung's Project Moohan headset: lighter than the Vision Pro, Android XR is highly reminiscent of visionOS, Gemini is the killer app, and more  —  - Google aims to mimic phone success with Android XR software  — Samsung headset coming next year with Vision Pro-like features
Wall Street Journal:
Meta donates $1M to President-elect Trump's inaugural fund; sources say Mark Zuckerberg gifted Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to Trump at Mar-a-Lago on November 27  —  President-elect had blasted the tech tycoon during the presidential campaign, but ties have been improving
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 2.0 Flash LLM early impressions: spatial reasoning performance is impressive, and its new streaming API is one of those “we live in the future” moments  —  Huge announcment from Google this morning: Introducing Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era.
Bloomberg:
Nic Fildes / Financial Times:
Australia plans a levy on tech companies like Meta with $250M+ in local revenue to force them to pay publishers for journalism, after Meta quit the prior deal  —  Move is designed to close loophole after Meta walked away from existing deal to use media content
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says Russia-backed hacking group Secret Blizzard targeted Ukraine's military using other cybercriminals' tools, “to make attribution more difficult”  —  A Russian-government backed hacking group targeted Ukraine's military using tools and infrastructure developed by cybercriminals, according to new research.
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Telefónica, one of the world's largest carriers, plans to preinstall the Epic Games Store on every new compatible Android phone it sells, including Samsung's  —  Telefónica, one of the largest carriers in the world serving the UK, Spain, Germany, and Latin America with the O2 …
Matt Yoder / Awful Announcing:
YouTube tells customers that the monthly price for YouTube TV's base plan will jump from $73 to $83 in January 2025, after raising it from $65 to $73 in 2023  —  YouTube TV logo  —  Streaming services became a popular alternative to cable and satellite television because they were available …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
GM pulling the plug on Cruise's robotaxi experiment in favor of “privately owned” driverless cars is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles  —  Eight years and $10 billion later, GM has decided to pull the plug on its grand robotaxi experiment.
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:
Binance and Circle partner to promote USDC; Binance plans to list more crypto trading pairs denominated in USDC and hold USDC for its own corporate treasury  —  - Circle faces increased challenges in the stablecoin market  — Binance will support more USDC usage on its platform
SemiAnalysis:
A deep dive into AI scaling laws, including an outline of the old pre-training scaling trend and the new scaling trends for post-training and inference time  —  In our pursuit of becoming a better full service research firm, we've moved off Substack.  For any questions please read https://semianalysis.com/faq/ #substack
Sheena Vasani / The Verge:
Google rolls out two updates to Android's unknown tracker alerts feature, letting users pause location updates from their phone and pinpoint unfamiliar trackers  —  Google is rolling out two new updates to its unknown tracker alerts feature that should make it easier for Android device owners …
Matt Day / Bloomberg:
Amazon delayed the deployment of Microsoft 365 for its 1.5M employees for a year to resolve security concerns about Microsoft's Midnight Blizzard hack  —  - Companies teamed up to make sure cloud-based product is secure  — Amazon employees were expected to receive software this year
X: @seanmcgintyForums: Slashdot
John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
The Information: Apple this past summer canceled the development of a high-performance Mac chip to let some engineers in Israel work on its first AI server chip  —  Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, in a piece today for The Information (paywalled up the wazoo, sadly), “Apple Is Working on AI Chip With Broadcom”:
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
An interview with Evan Williams on his new app Mozi, which raised $6M and aims to foster in-person connections as a return to social media's original intention  —  Evan Williams's new app, Mozi, is aimed at fostering in-real-life connections.Carolyn Fong for The New York Times

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:
Instagram marketing strategies for 2025  —  If you're reading this blog, you probably use Instagram.  Statistics say that of everyone who has access to the Internet, at least 25% of them have an Instagram account …
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:
Elon Wants To Buy OpenAI
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Invest Like the Best:
Marc Andreessen - The Battle For Tech Supremacy
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Sen. Ron Wyden is here to stop Elon Musk
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Grit:
Former CEO Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick w/ Bing Gordon: Change the Game
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
OpenAI researcher on why soft skills are the future of work | Karina Nguyen (Research at OpenAI, ex-Anthropic)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
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.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:45 AM ET, December 12, 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

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer: