Techmeme
March 5, 2025, 2:45 PM

Top News

Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Apple updates the $999+ 13" and $1,199+ 15" MacBook Air with an M4, offering a 10-core CPU and an 8-core GPU, and a blue color option, shipping from March 12  —  Upgrades at a lower cost.  I'll take it. … Apple just updated the MacBook Air with an M4 processor, a new sky blue color option …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Apple updates the Mac Studio with an M4 Max for $1,999+ and an M3 Ultra for $3,999+, with up to 32 cores, including 24 performance cores, shipping from March 12  —  Two generations of Apple silicon, one computer.  —  After over a year and a half, Apple is updating the Mac Studio …
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
After announcing the M3 Ultra, Apple says not every M chip generation will get an Ultra tier, suggesting the company will skip the M4 Ultra  —  It could explain why we're getting an M3 Ultra this deep into the M4 rollout.  —  Apple's first Mac Studio refresh in nearly two years is a welcome update …
Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware:
Apple debuts the M3 Ultra, built from two 3nm M3 Max chips, with Thunderbolt 5, an UltraFusion packaging architecture, an 80-core GPU, and up to 512GB of memory  —  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. … Apple has a new powerhouse computer ready to go.
Jack Greenberg / YouTube Official Blog:
YouTube debuts an $8/month Premium Lite tier in the US, offering most videos ad-free and music with ads, and plans to launch in Thailand, Germany, and Australia  —  Today we'll begin expanding our Premium Lite pilot to users in the US.  Premium Lite gives viewers a new …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Digg co-founder Kevin Rose and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are relaunching Digg, after acquiring the site from Money Group for an undisclosed sum  —  Two decades after creating Digg, a community-focused social message board, Kevin Rose is reviving the site and teaming up with a founder of Reddit.
Cade Metz / New York Times:
Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton win the 2024 Turing Award; their work contributed to the rise of AI, like AlphaGo and ChatGPT  —  Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.
Financial Times:
Turing winners Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton warn over unsafe deployment of AI, saying releasing models “without safeguards is not good engineering practice”  —  Two pioneers of reinforcement learning have won the $1mn prize from the Association for Computing Machinery
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google announces an experimental AI Mode in Search that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions, rolling out to Google One AI Premium subscribers  —  Google is launching a new “AI Mode” experimental feature in Search that looks to take on popular services like Perplexity AI and OpenAI's ChatGPT Search.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
The DOJ charges 12 Chinese nationals, including PRC staff, alleging an espionage campaign hit US state and federal agencies, like the Treasury, and other orgs  —  The Justice Department claims 10 alleged hackers and two eChinese government officials took part in a wave of cyberattacks around …
The Information:
Source: OpenAI told some investors about plans for new agents: $2,000/month for knowledge work, a $10K/month for coding, and $20K/month for PhD-level research  —  OpenAI is betting big on ChatGPT, which is generating at least $4 billion in annualized revenue.
Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:
Microsoft says China-linked hacking group Silk Typhoon was targeting remote management tools and cloud apps in the US and abroad in late 2024  —  - ‘Silk Typhoon’ group previously blamed in Treasury breach  — Attackers hunting for details on US policy, investigations
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg:
While addressing Congress, President Trump calls to “get rid” of the $52B CHIPS and Science Act and use the leftover amount to “reduce debt or any other reason”  —  President Donald Trump called for an end to a landmark $52 billion semiconductor subsidy program that's spurred …
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Sesame's AI speech model demo has many users expressing astonishment at its realism, with some testers reporting an emotional connection to the voice assistant  —  In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film Her imagined a future where people would form emotional connections with AI voice assistants.
Upmanyu Trivedi / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA clears Microsoft's $13B OpenAI investment in 2023, ending 14 months of uncertainty over the deal, but says “Microsoft did acquire material influence”  —  - The 2023 deal did not result in change of control over OpenAI  — CMA's decision comes after 14 months of scrutiny of the tie-up
Tom Warren / The Verge:
AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT review: 16GB of VRAM, FSR 4, and lower power draw than prior Radeon cards, but no AMD reference design and they are bulky cards  —  Nvidia's dominance over the latest generation of graphics cards ends today.  AMD might have surrendered the high end of the GPU market …
Ezra Klein / New York Times:
Q&A with ex-White House AI adviser Ben Buchanan on the Biden administration, AGI, OpenAI's Deep Research, the US labor market, China, hacks, AI labs, and more  —  This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.”  You can listen to the conversation by following …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
A US judge denies Elon Musk's attempt to halt OpenAI's for-profit shift, as he failed to meet the burden of proof, but lets other aspects of the lawsuit proceed  —  A federal judge in California denied Elon Musk's effort to halt OpenAI's transformation into a for-profit entity, according to a filing on Tuesday.
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
A look at the LA Times' AI “Insights”: much of the cited sourcing wouldn't pass scrutiny in a newsroom or a classroom, and the political labels can be confusing  —  The hope: The L.A. Times will appear more “objective” if it presents both sides of an issue, even if one side's written …
Sebastian Sinclair / Decrypt:
Yuga Labs, creator of BAYC NFTs, says the US SEC closed its investigation into the startup without taking enforcement action and that “NFTs are not securities”  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club …

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Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Hugh Son / CNBC: