Techmeme
December 18, 2024, 12:30 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: US officials are investigating Chinese router maker TP-Link, which has an estimated 65% US market share, and could ban the sale of its routers in 2025  —  TP-Link is the bestselling router on Amazon—and has been linked to Chinese cyberattacks  —  U.S. authorities are investigating whether …
Melissa Quinn / CBS News:
SCOTUS says it will hear a challenge on January 10 to a new law that could lead to a TikTok ban in the US, ahead of the law taking effect on January 19  —  Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will take up a challenge to a new law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in the U.S.
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
A look at Microsoft's risky Xbox strategy, where exclusives are the exception; sources say Microsoft is working on cross-platform Xbox interface Project Rainway  —  Microsoft's strategy has Xbox's core fans upset about the future of console hardware.  Today, we're going to analyze the strategy …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
After a rough year, Intel says its $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” GPU, which received near-universal praise from reviewers, has already sold out in most retailers  —  While we haven't managed to review it ourselves due to a fluke issue, the $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” …
Financial Times:
Omdia estimates Microsoft bought 485K of Nvidia's Hopper GPUs in 2024, ByteDance and Tencent bought ~230K each, Meta bought 225K, and Tesla/xAI bought ~200K  —  OpenAI's biggest backer buys nearly half a million GPUs this year in global race to build artificial intelligence systems
Avram Piltch / Tom's Hardware:
Nvidia unveils Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a $249 compact AI development board that promises 67 TOPS, compared to 40 TOPS of the $499 last-gen kit  —  The Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit will be available later this month and comes with 8GB of RAM.
Google DeepMind:
Google introduces FACTS Grounding benchmark for evaluating the factuality of LLMs, and announces a leaderboard that ranks Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental on top  —  Our comprehensive benchmark and online leaderboard offer a much-needed measure of how accurately LLMs ground their responses …
Ernie Smith / Tedium:
Bluesky using domains to verify users has led to cybersquatting and impersonation, as domains don't offer enough social proof for the average person  —  Bluesky, until now, has had a reputation as being a more moderation-friendly alternative to X, Threads, Mastodon, and other social networks.
Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
Amazon unveils new packaging for its Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV products, including removing plastic, less paper and ink, and using more recycled fibers  —  Some boxes delivered by Amazon will have the same look on the inside as they do on the outside as devices from the company are being packaged …
More: About Amazon
Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Apple updates Apple Maps on the web to add support for Look Around, which is Apple's version of Google Street View  —  Apple in June introduced a beta version of Apple Maps on the web, allowing users of other platforms such as Windows PCs to access its map service directly from a web browser.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI adds o1 to its API, but only for certain developers to start, announces new versions of GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini as part of its Realtime API, and more  —  OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers, to start.
Financial Times:
A profile of 114-year-old Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, whose market cap recently hit $100B after becoming an industrial software and hardware provider  —  New chief executive takes over streamlined conglomerate with most of its revenues and employees overseas
Myles McCormick / Financial Times:
The NERC, overseen by the FERC, warns soaring US electricity demand from data centers to power AI could strain US and Canadian grids, risking blackouts  —  Surging demand from tech sector could overwhelm generation capacity, report says  —  North America's electricity grid faces …

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