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Techmeme
January 28, 2025, 9:00 PM
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Top News

Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Sources: the highest ranks of the US Office of Personnel Management now include former employees of Elon Musk's companies, including xAI and the Boring Company  —  Sources tell WIRED that the OPM's top layers of management now include individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers detail two Apple silicon side-channel attacks that could leak secrets: SLAP, affecting M2, A15, and newer chips, and FLOP, affecting M3, M4, and A17  —  Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information …
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.
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Doc: Google's maps unit reclassified the US as a “sensitive country”, reserved for states with strict governments or border disputes, after Trump's map changes  —  Google's maps division on Monday reclassified the U.S. as a “sensitive country,” a designation it reserves for states …
Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg:
David Sacks says there's “substantial evidence” that DeepSeek “distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models and I don't think OpenAI is very happy about this”
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.
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
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
Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET:
Block introduces an on-device, open-source AI agent called Goose, which allows developers to choose their preferred LLM to automate engineering tasks  —  Whether for developer needs or mundane tasks, the artificial intelligence (AI) tide appears to be turning in favor of open-source solutions.
@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
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”
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.
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
Jonathan Greig / The Record:
MGM Resorts agrees to pay $45M to settle 14 class action lawsuits related to a data breach in 2019 and a ransomware attack the company experienced in 2023  —  MGM Resorts International agreed to pay $45 million to settle multiple class action lawsuits related to a data breach in 2019 …
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.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Arm China picks Chen Feng, an ex-executive at China-based chipmaker Rockchip Electronics, as its CEO; Liu Renchen and Eric Chen will resign as co-CEOs  —  - SoftBank-backed unit taps former Rockchip executive Chen Feng  — Chip designer's China arm navigating global tech protectionism
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 …

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From Mediagazer

New York Times:
White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia was forced out of her role on Friday, after five days on the job and hosting only one press briefing

Washington Post:
Israeli settlers attacked WaPo photographer Heidi Levine, who wore a “PRESS” vest, in the West Bank, kicking her repeatedly and taking her cameras and phone

Page Six:
Sources: Bela Bajaria was “blindsided” by her firing and only found out at 5pm on Wednesday after Netflix had repeatedly reassured her that her job was secure

More News

Earlier Picks

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
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
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
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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