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Techmeme
January 28, 2025, 5:10 PM
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Top News

Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov, built for US government use, and says 90K+ government employees have generated 18M+ prompts within ChatGPT since the start of 2024  —  OpenAI on Tuesday announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout.  It's called ChatGPT Gov and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Sam Altman says DeepSeek's R1 is an “impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price” and OpenAI “will pull up some releases”  —  OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman welcomed the debut of DeepSeek's R1 model in a post on X late on Monday.
@yishan:
The “DeepSeek moment” is like in 2004 when Google detailed using distributed algorithms to build a supercomputer, and unlike Sputnik, when Russia shared little  —  I think the Deepseek moment is not really the Sputnik moment, but more like the Google moment. If anyone was around in ~2004, you'll know what I mean, but more on that later. I think everyone is over-rotated on this because Deepseek came out of China. Let me try to un-rotate
Financial Times:
SemiAnalysis: DeepSeek spent “well over $500M on GPUs”; TechInsights says DeepSeek isn't “a big hit to Nvidia” but “a bigger problem for companies like OpenAI”  —  Short sellers profit as US chipmaker loses nearly $600bn in market value on Monday
Bloomberg:
DeepSeek says it used Nvidia H800 chips, available in China until October 2023, to train R1, suggesting US export controls could be a problem for future models
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
DeepSeek challenges the “bigger is better” narrative driving the AI arms race in recent years and suggests that we may see more investment into smaller startups  —  A new A.I. model, released by a scrappy Chinese upstart, has rocked Silicon Valley and upended several fundamental assumptions about A.I. progress.
Bloomberg:
DeepSeek highlights some of China's key advantages: a deep pool of skilled software engineers, a vast domestic market, and government support via subsidies
Wired:
DeepSeek's privacy policy shows broad data collection and says content that users give to its models, like text, audio, and files, is stored on servers in China
Hugh Son / CNBC:
X announces X Money Account, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments service with Visa as its launch partner, debuting “later this year”  —  Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday announced the launch of a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments services provided by Visa.
Bloomberg:
The UK CMA provisionally finds that competition in the cloud services market isn't working for consumers; AWS and Azure each control ~40% of the UK market  —  - CMA publishes provisional views in cloud services study  — Intervention comes as UK government seeks to spur growth
Wall Street Journal:
A profile of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, a math geek who in 2015 founded hedge fund High-Flyer and who some compare to quant investing pioneer Jim Simons  —  The Chinese engineer built the AI company after founding a successful hedge-fund  —  Some call him China's Sam Altman.
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Garmin smartwatch users report their devices are bricking after starting any activity that uses GPS; Garmin says it is looking into the issue  —  It's not just you.  Several users are reporting their watches are crashing while displaying the ‘blue triangle of death.’  —  It's not just you.
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
An ex-OpenAI safety researcher says he's “terrified” by AI development's pace and that labs racing to AGI can cut corners on alignment, pushing all to speed up  —  Steven Adler expresses concern industry taking ‘very risky gamble’ and raises doubts about future of humanity
Ankush Khardori / Politico:
Trump and the DOJ have been flouting a bipartisan law to shut down TikTok since his inauguration, and Republicans and Democrats seem to be doing little about it  —  Trump's TikTok bailout is worse than it looks.  —  For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok.
Forums: r/politics
Bloomberg:
When asked if Microsoft is in discussions to acquire TikTok US from ByteDance, Donald Trump told reporters “I would say yes”; Microsoft declined to comment  —  “I would say yes,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if Microsoft is in discussions to purchase the app.
Jem Aswad / Variety:
Spotify says it paid out a record $10B to the music industry in 2024, up from a then-record $9B in 2023, taking its total to nearly $60B since its 2006 founding  —  Spotify paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 — some $1 billion more than last year, the previous record …
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch:
Fusion reactor startup Helion, which has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028, raised a $425M Series F, valuing the company at $5.245B  —  Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion.  The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:10 PM ET, January 28, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Trump says Stephen Colbert is a “pathetic trainwreck” and “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW”, after CBS aired a Late Show rerun in which Colbert mocked Trump

Alex Ritman / Variety:
In Channel 4's 2025 Alternative Christmas Message, Jimmy Kimmel said “tyranny is booming” in the US and, on his ABC suspension, “We won, the president lost”

Henry Blodget / Regenerator:
Bari Weiss' 60 Minutes decision may have been a way to both signal that she's serious about shifting CBS' sensibility to the right and “improve” a story

More News

Earlier Picks

Benjamin Breen / Res Obscura:
Three case studies using GPT-4o, OpenAI o1, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet for historical research show that the models are now good enough for PhD-level analysis
Marques Brownlee / Marques Brownlee on YouTube:
Hands-on with Samsung's Project Moohan headset: resembles the Apple Vision Pro, Gemini integration shines, runs Android XR with mobile and tablet apps, and more
Reece Rogers / Wired:
Hands-on with DeepSeek's free chatbot: the R1 model is powerful, but suffers from rampant hallucinations and lacks some ChatGPT tools like the memory feature
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google says it will change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America on Maps when “official government sources” are updated, after Trump signed an EO changing the name
Bloomberg:
Donald Trump vows to put tariffs on foreign chips “in the very near future” and calls DeepSeek's AI progress “a positive” and “a wake-up call” for US industries
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Google open sources PebbleOS, paving the way for new third-party hardware; Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky aims to develop a new smartwatch, without VC funding
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple releases iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS 15.3, enabling Apple Intelligence by default on supported devices but disabling AI summaries for news apps
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