~techmeme | Bookmarks (997)

Jennifer Elias / CNBC: A look at Google's pressure-filled 2024 under Sundar Pichai, notching some AI wins with new Gemini models and navigating product mishaps, layoffs, and more  —  Google's blowout earnings report in April, which sparked the biggest rally in Alphabet shares since 2015 and pushed …

Clara Murray / Financial Times: Analysis: mentions of deepfakes or AI-made content in X's Community Notes were more correlated with new image generation model releases than elections in 2024  —  The panic over AGI disinformation in this year's political cycle seems to have been overblown  —  Around this time last year …

Wall Street Journal: What to expect in 2025: increased hype around AI agents, new generative AI-powered gadgets, better weather forecasts due to Google DeepMind's GenCast, and more  —  Weather forecasts will get smarter, EVs could get pricier, crypto will be for everyday investors and AI will be everywhere

Bloomberg: Analysis: 50%+ of the US households showing highly-distorted power readings from February to October were within 20 miles of significant data center activity  —  AI data centers are multiplying across the US and sucking up huge amounts of power.  New evidence shows they may also be distorting …

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: Four districts in southern China formed a pilot framework to mutually recognize qualifications and open roads for autonomous robotaxis to travel across cities  —  After having registered and been certified in one area, autonomous-driving cars can travel on open roads in other regions

Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget: Microsoft acknowledges that Xbox Cloud Gaming has been experiencing issues with launching games for more than a day, with the problems yet to be resolved  —  Games take an unusually long time to load if they don't disconnect first.  —  If you've tried to use Xbox Cloud Streaming …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Oracle's shares are up ~63% in 2024, lifting Larry Ellison's net worth to $217B+, as the company enjoyed its biggest stock rally since 1999 and the dot-com boom  —  It's been a good year for Larry Ellison.  —  Oracle's co-founder has gained roughly $75 billion in paper wealth as the software company …

Callum Booth / The Verge: A look at the EU's common charging regulations, which come into force on Dec. 28 and cover USB-C ports, fast charging, unbundling of charging bricks, and more  —  The common charging standard brings USB PD support, improved labelling, and less e-waste.

Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal: A profile of Tron founder Justin Sun, who wants to be the “Elon Musk of the crypto world” and advises the Trump-backed crypto project World Liberty Financial  —  The Tron blockchain entrepreneur courts attention, and backs the president-elect  —  President-elect Donald Trump's newest ally …

Angrej Singh / Axios: Some conservative critics of Elon Musk allege censorship and claim they were stripped of their X verification badges after challenging his views on H-1B visas  —  - Since Musk purchased Twitter and implemented sweeping staff cuts, it's often been difficult to get answers as to whether …

Greg Stohr / Bloomberg: Filing: Trump asks SCOTUS to pause the law that could ban TikTok, saying the court should give him time to “pursue a political resolution” of the dispute  —  - Biden administration says Chinese control of app is threat  — TikTok says law infringes rights of 170 million Americans

Mohar Chatterjee / Politico: OpenAI is tripling the size of its DC policy team to 12 and beefing up its lobbying as it tries to promote a sweeping plan for cheaper energy to data centers  —  The AI industry wants Trump's Washington to embrace it as a bulwark against China.  OpenAI is trying to lead the pack.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: DeepSeek-V3 sometimes identifies itself as ChatGPT when asked which model it is; some speculate that its training datasets may contain text generated by ChatGPT  —  Earlier this week, DeepSeek, a well-funded Chinese AI lab, released an “open” AI model that beats many rivals on popular benchmarks.

Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: Bookkeeping startup Bench, which raised $100M+ including from Shopify, closes down effective immediately; several employees say Bench also laid off staff  —  Bench, a Vancouver, Canada-based bookkeeping startup that had raised more than $100 million from well-known venture capital firms …

Todd Spangler / Variety: Eight free-speech groups, including the EFF, and three members of Congress file briefs with SCOTUS in support of TikTok's appeal against the divest-or-ban law  —  Groups alleging China's government has engaged in human-rights violations argue U.S. Constitution does not protect TikTok as “an unregistered foreign agent”

Reuters: Experts say hackers compromised several companies' Chrome browser extensions, including Cyberhaven's, in a series of intrusions dating back to mid-December  —  Hackers have compromised several different companies' Chrome browser extensions in a series of intrusions dating back to mid-December …

Greg Otto / CyberScoop: The US says it has identified a ninth telecom company impacted by the Salt Typhoon hacks, and the number of individuals directly impacted is “less than 100”  —  In an update Friday, the White House says nine telecom companies were impacted by the Chinese espionage effort.  —  Learn more.

Shivaune Field / Forbes Australia: Sydney-based Sitemate, which offers no-code software tools for industries like infrastructure and utilities, raised a AU$27.5M Series A at a ~AU$150M valuation  —  Sydney-founded Sitemate is making an impact on solar renewable sites in New Zealand, nuclear projects in Switzerland, and electric vehicle production in Detroit.

Financial Times: Meta expects AI-generated characters to “generate and share content” and “over time, exist on our platforms”, similarly to regular accounts  —  US tech group is rolling out a range of artificial intelligence tools to drive engagement

New York Times: Japan Airlines halts ticket sales after a cyberattack hit its network equipment, causing delays to more than 40 flights and says flight safety was not impacted  —  The airline also temporarily stopped selling tickets for flights departing Thursday, but said that there was no impact on flight safety.

Richard Deitsch / New York Times: Netflix's first livestream of NFL games avoided major buffering and freezing issues that plagued the Tyson-Paul fight for the most part, after early glitches  —  If you believe in omens, Netflix appeared to be in for a very long day on Wednesday.  As the streaming giant began …

J. Clara Chan / Wired: A look at Toontown Rewritten, an unofficial recreation of Disney's Toontown Online game that shut down in 2013; Toontown Rewritten now has 10K DAUs and 50K MAUs  —  Thanks to a bunch of game-makers who were still teens when Toontown Online disappeared, the beloved online world lives on as Toontown Rewritten.

Politico: Examining Biden's tech legacy and the CHIPS Act, as the White House says $446B has been announced for chips and electronics manufacturing since he took office  —  President Joe Biden had just a single term to try to transform the nation's approach to energy, climate change, technology and jobs.

Qwen: Alibaba's Qwen unveils QvQ-72B-Preview, an experimental research model focused on “enhancing visual reasoning capabilities”, built upon Qwen2-VL-72B  —  Language and vision intertwine in the human mind, shaping how we perceive and understand the world around us.