Open Links In New Tab
Mobile Archives Advertise
Techmeme
December 19, 2024, 3:40 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter

Top News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, an experimental “reasoning” model that “explicitly shows its thoughts” and can use them to strengthen its reasoning  —  Google has released what it's calling a new “reasoning” AI model — but it's in the experimental stages …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Meta teases an AI editing tool powered by Movie Gen AI in Instagram that can change outfits, backgrounds, and more in videos using a text prompt, coming in 2025  —  Instagram is planning to introduce a generative AI editing feature next year that will allow users to “change nearly any aspect of your videos.”
S.E. Smith / The Verge:
A look at the quickly disappearing web, as digital decay and link rot erase many media formats; a Pew study says 38% of webpages accessible in 2013 are now gone  —  The internet is forever.  But also, it isn't.  What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random?
New York Times:
In 150+ X posts, Elon Musk led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by sharing misinfo, which may lead to a government shutdown over Christmas  —  The world's richest man led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by promoting false and misleading claims about it.
Reuters:
Sources: Apple is in early-stage talks with Tencent and ByteDance about integrating their AI models into iPhones sold in China; ChatGPT is unavailable in China  —  Apple (AAPL.O) is in talks with Tencent (0700.HK) and TikTok owner ByteDance about integrating their artificial intelligence models …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic demonstrates “alignment faking” in Claude 3 Opus to show how developers could be misled into thinking an LLM is more aligned than it may actually be  —  AI models can deceive, new research from Anthropic shows.  They can pretend to have different views during training …
Kiyoshi Takenaka / Reuters:
Sony buys ~$320M of shares in Japanese media powerhouse Kadokawa, which owns FromSoftware, taking its stake to ~10% and becoming Kadokawa's top shareholder  —  Sony Group (6758.T) said on Thursday it will invest about 50 billion yen ($320 million) to acquire new shares of Kadokawa (9468.T) …
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Apple says Meta has made 15 interoperability requests under the EU's DMA, more than any other company, and that these could affect users' privacy and security  —  Apple (AAPL.O) on Wednesday hit out at Meta Platforms (META.O), saying its numerous requests to access the iPhone maker's software tools …
Bloomberg:
Document: the EU Commission pressed Apple to rework iOS so that the OS is more compatible with competitors' smartwatches, earbuds, headsets, and other devices
Chainalysis:
In 2024, hackers stole $2.2B in crypto across 303 hacks, up from $1.8B across 282 hacks in 2023; in H1 2024, $1.58B had been stolen, but the pace slowed in H2  —  The Chainalysis 2025 Crypto Crime Report  —  Crypto hacking remains a persistent threat, with four years in the past decade individually seeing …
Jef Feeley / Bloomberg:
Arm v. Qualcomm: Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon described Arm's Nuvia license cancellation and demand for Qualcomm to destroy IP after buying Nuvia as “outrageous”  —  - Tech firms are sparring in weeklong jury trial in Delaware  — Closing arguments are expected Thursday in federal court
New York Times:
Sources: the US' proposed AI chip rules would block adversaries entirely, and give others quotas based on their US alignment, threatening Nvidia's expansion  —  The chipmaker expects more than $10 billion in foreign sales this year, but the Biden administration is advancing rules that could curb that growth.
Robert Booth / The Guardian:
A coalition of newspapers, writers, movie producers, and others rejects UK's plans to create a copyright exemption for AI companies to train their models  —  Exclusive: Coalition of musicians, photographers and newspapers insist existing copyright laws must be respected
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Decart, which helps organizations train AI models at scale, raised a $32M Series A, sources say at a $500M+ valuation, after a $21M seed in October 2024  —  A young startup that emerged from stealth less than two months ago with big-name backers and bigger ambitions is returning to the spotlight.
More: SiliconANGLE and FinSMEs
Bloomberg:
Sources: Insight Partners, which bought Dotmatics for around $629M in 2021, is exploring options for the R&D software maker, including selling it for $5B+  —  - Dotmatics expected to draw interest from strategic suitors  — Scientists use the company's software in drug research
IDC:
Global shipments of wrist-worn wearables hit 139M units in the first nine months of 2024, down 1% YoY; China was the largest market with 45.8M units, up 20% YoY  —  , the global wrist-worn device market shipped 139.0 million units in the first three quarters of 2024, a year-over-year decline of 1.0% …
Allyson Versprille / Bloomberg:
The US FAA prohibits drone flights over several parts of New Jersey, as public hysteria over sightings of possible drone activity continues to persist  —  The US Federal Aviation Administration prohibited drone flights over several parts of New Jersey as public hysteria over sightings continues to persist.
Joel Khalili / Wired:
A look at Truth Terminal, an AI bot on X that was created to spark debate about AI alignment, as its crypto wallet swells to ~$40M after boosting memecoins  —  Truth Terminal started as a techno-modernist art project meant to invite discussion about the applications and potential dangers of autonomous AI agents.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
The brand supporting the biggest brands in tech  —  Deliver memorable experiences throughout the customer journey with customer experience support from TELUS Digital.  Scale quickly, automate efficiently and win decisively.
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
8 must-have assets in every recruiter's work folder  —  Car mechanics can teach us an important lesson.  They always carry a handy toolbox with everything they need to troubleshoot common auto problems.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
 Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO)
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.
Techmeme Ride Home:
 A Look At LibGen
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Sponsor this podcast
Hard Fork:
 A.I. Action Plans + The College Student Who Broke Job Interviews + Hot Mess Express
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
 Eric Yuan (CEO, Zoom): What Zoom's AI Strategy Can Teach Every Operator
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Add your postcast here
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:40 PM ET, December 19, 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.

From Mediagazer

David Folkenflik / NPR:
VOA journalists, their unions, and Reporters Without Borders sue USAGM, acting CEO Victor Morales, and Kari Lake, alleging their moves to close VOA are unlawful

Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide:
IFPI: global music streaming revenues hit a record $20.4B in 2024, driven by paid subscription revenues of $15.15B, up 9.5% YoY; paid subscribers reached 752M

Bloomberg:
Sources: Apollo is exploring a sale of Cox Media, including TV and radio stations, at a possible $4B valuation; Nexstar and Gray Media are potential buyers

More News

Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review:
An analysis of nearly 4,000 public datasets finds that over 90% of AI training datasets came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa

Earlier Picks

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Appfigures: global consumer spending in mobile apps on the App Store and Google Play rose 15.7% YoY to $127.3B in 2024, but app downloads dropped 2.3% to 109.7B
Vince Dioquino / Decrypt:
El Salvador plans to scale back its bitcoin efforts under an IMF deal for a $1.4B loan; bitcoin acceptance will no longer be mandatory for the private sector
Deadline:
Two Tencent-appointed Epic board directors resigned after the DOJ expressed antitrust concerns; Tencent also gave up its right to appoint future Epic directors
Will Judd / Eurogamer.net:
Sony details the PS5 Pro's specs, including an AMD RDNA 2 GPU and ray tracing improvements, and announces a long-term machine learning partnership with AMD
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
Home River Leaderboards About Events Newsletter