~techmeme | Bookmarks (997)

Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider: Apple researchers say the company's open-source ReDrafter method on Nvidia GPUs led to a 2.7x speed increase in generated tokens per second for greedy encoding  —  Apple's latest machine learning research could make creating models for Apple Intelligence faster, by coming up with a technique …

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Researchers unveil Genesis, an open-source generative physics engine that trains robots in simulated reality 430K times faster than in the real world  —  On Thursday, a large group of university and private industry researchers unveiled Genesis, a new open source computer simulation system …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Charlotte, NC-based Aiwyn, which provides automation software for accounting firms, raised $113M led by KKR and Bessemer, bringing its total funding to $127M  —  Accounting firms are struggling to adopt high-tech solutions.  That's according to a survey earlier this year from Rightsworks …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: YouTube plans to start a crackdown on “egregious clickbait”, or videos where the titles or thumbnails make claims the videos don't back up, beginning in India  —  A lot of YouTube videos have flashy, misleading titles and thumbnails, such as “BREAKING NEWS” or “The president steps down …

Bloomberg: A look at Frank McCourt's efforts to acquire TikTok and the obstacles he faces, as he lobbies Congress and Trump's team and recruits former TikTok executives  —  - TikTok hopes Supreme Court will halt ban at final hour  — McCourt is pitching his bid to Congress, Trump's team

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: Backflip, which is building AI models that can generate 3D designs using text, sketches, or photos as prompts, raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and a16z  —  What if it were as easy to generate a usable 3D design as prompting ChatGPT?  That's the mission of Backflip …

Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information: Anthropic, whose CEO, Dario Amodei, has vocally opposed Donald Trump, and OpenAI look to hire more people with ties to Trump and the GOP for their policy teams  —  Lately, AI developer Anthropic has been riding high, with its models' impressive performance on tasks like code generation helping …

New York Times: Sources: the US' proposed AI chip framework 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.

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.

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 …

Allyson Versprille / Bloomberg: The US FAA publishes 22 temporary flight restrictions for drones over parts of New Jersey, as public hysteria over sightings of possible drone activity persists  —  The US Federal Aviation Administration prohibited drone flights over several parts of New Jersey as public hysteria over sightings continues to persist.

Myles McCormick / Financial Times: NERC, overseen by FERC, warns soaring electricity demand from sources including data centers to power AI could strain US and Canadian grids, risking blackouts  —  Surging demand from tech sector could overwhelm generation capacity, report says  —  North America's electricity grid faces …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India's commerce minister says that Shein will operate in India purely as a tech partner, with Reliance Retail having full ownership and control of operations  —  Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail …

Google DeepMind: Google introduces FACTS Grounding benchmark for evaluating the factuality of LLMs, and announces a leaderboard that ranks Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental on top  —  Our comprehensive benchmark and online leaderboard offer a much-needed measure of how accurately LLMs ground their responses …

Ernie Smith / Tedium: Bluesky's use of domains to verify users has led to cybersquatting and impersonation, as domains don't offer enough social proof for the average person  —  An apparent extortion scheme involving famous writers and entrepreneurs lit up Bluesky the other night.

Richard Waters / Financial Times: NYC-based Precision Neuroscience, a maker of brain-computer interfaces, raised a $102M Series C led by General Equity Holdings at a ~$500M post-money valuation  —  Precision Neuroscience, maker of a ‘brain-computer interface’, has raised more than $100mn in latest investment round

Avram Piltch / Tom's Hardware: Nvidia unveils Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a $249 compact AI development board that promises 67 TOPS, compared to 40 TOPS of the $499 last-gen kit  —  The Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit will be available later this month and comes with 8GB of RAM.

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: Apple Maps on the web adds support for Look Around, Apple's version of Google Street View  —  Apple in June introduced a beta version of Apple Maps on the web, allowing users of other platforms such as Windows PCs to access its map service directly from a web browser.

Blake Brittain / Reuters: The US ITC says smartphones made by Lenovo's Motorola infringe on Ericsson's 5G patents, which could lead to an import ban; a final ruling is set for April 2025  —  The U.S. International Trade Commission said on Tuesday that smartphones made by Lenovo's (0992.HK) Motorola Mobility infringe patents owned …

John Voorhees / MacStories: Game emulator Delta adds an in-app link to pay outside of the App Store, via Patreon, likely the first US app to use Apple's External Purchase Link Entitlement  —  Delta, the MacStories Selects App of the Year, received an important update today that allows users of the game emulator to support …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI adds o1 to its API, but only for certain developers to start, announces new versions of GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini as part of its Realtime API, and more  —  OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers, to start.

Todd Spangler / Variety: CAA partners with YouTube to help CAA clients identify and remove AI-generated content that features their likeness, with a wider rollout planned in early 2025  —  In what's being touted as the first partnership of its kind, CAA is collaborating with YouTube on a program promising to let actors …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Salesforce says it will hire 2,000 people to sell AI agent software, a month after saying it would hire 1,000 for the task and two years after laying off 7,000+  —  Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Amid the AI boom, non-AI startups that raised a Series A 18 months ago are likely facing challenges in securing their Series B, even with decent revenue growth  —  Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies …