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Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is working on a foldable device the size of two iPad Pros for 2028, a Magic Mouse revamp, and an AirTag with triple the range of the current one  —  Apple's new vision for the future of computing is a giant, iPad-like foldable device.  Also: The company rethinks the mouse …

John Towfighi / CNN: How Sony turned itself around by innovating its games business beyond consoles and making acquisitions to expand its IP and original entertainment content  —  The last time Sony was worth this much on the stock market, Bill Clinton was president and the PlayStation 2 was about to debut on American store shelves.

Andrew Lawrence / The Guardian: Sports stars promoting crypto coins and exchanges with little knowledge highlight the lack of mechanisms for consumers to distinguish opportunities from scams  —  Sports stars are rushing to promote coins and exchanges.  But they are stepping into a world of which they often have scant knowledge

John Beck / Rest of World: The White Helmets, UNHCR, UNRWA, and other volunteer organizations describe how apps like WhatsApp have transformed communication in conflict and disaster zones  —  Meta's messaging app has transformed communication in conflict and crisis areas.  —  Fidaa Maksour, a dispatcher with the White Helmets …

New York Times: While businesses frequently try to get on an incoming president's good side, the past week's frenzy of tech leaders to woo Trump stood out from other industries  —  It was a week of frenzied activity, as Silicon Valley billionaires and their companies brandished checks and compliments for the President-elect.

Pieter Haeck / Politico: The EC pledges €750M of the €1.5B planned investment to fund AI-optimized supercomputers across seven sites to help EU startups compete with global rivals  —  BRUSSELS — The European Union has committed hundreds of millions of euros to help startups catch up in the global artificial intelligence race.

Eliza Strickland / IEEE Spectrum: Q&A with Fei-Fei Li on her NeurIPS talk “Ascending the Ladder of Visual Intelligence”, her startup World Labs, giving machines 3D spatial intelligence, and more  —  Stanford University professor Fei-Fei Li has already earned her place in the history of AI.

Harrison Smith / Washington Post: Donald Bitzer, the plasma screen's co-inventor and the father of PLATO, a computer-based network that sparked messaging apps and more, died on December 10 at 90  —  He helped shape cyberculture as the father of PLATO, a computer-based educational network that sparked the development of plasma screens and digital messaging.

Aimee Ortiz / New York Times: Officials say hackers possibly accessed personal data of hundreds of thousands Rhode Island residents, with a “high probability” that sensitive info was stolen  —  An “international cybercriminal group” harvested the personal data of potentially hundreds of thousands of people …

Financial Times: Sources say it makes no sense for Elon Musk to target OpenAI with onerous regulation as co-chair of DOGE, given his remit is to find ways to slash regulation  —  Tesla chief's influence over Donald Trump encourages ChatGPT-maker into patriotic pitch to incoming administration

Dylan Martin / CRN: Qualcomm stated Snapdragon X PC return rates are “within industry norm”, after interim Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus claimed large ARM PC return rates  —  Qualcomm provided the statement in response to a claim made by interim Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus …

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Researchers find a yearlong ongoing supply-chain attack targeting malicious and benevolent security personnel and stealing over 390K WordPress credentials  —  A sophisticated and ongoing supply-chain attack operating for the past year has been stealing sensitive login credentials from both malicious …

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security: An investigation finds Cryptomus, registered in Vancouver, is a payment processor for dozens of Russian crypto exchanges and sites hawking cybercrime services  —  A financial firm registered in Canada has emerged as the payment processor for dozens of Russian cryptocurrency exchanges …

Lillian Perlmutter / Rest of World: Mexico's Yucatán state says AI-powered app MeMind contributed to a 9% drop in suicides over the past two years by connecting 10,000 at-risk people to treatment  —  MeMind has connected 10,000 at-risk people with mental health treatment, contributing to a 9% drop in suicides.

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: An analysis of App Store rankings shows how market saturation for AI-based creative apps is making it harder to find good apps that use AI in more focused ways  —  Many high-ranking AI apps feel like an attempted cash grab, and it's not easy to spot the trash from the treasure.

Politico: Donald Trump plans to appoint Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes to lead the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees the US intelligence community  —  Nunes is CEO of Truth Social and will continue leading Trump Media & Technology Group, a public company with a nearly $8 billion market cap.

Nicola Jones / Nature: AI companies, running out of conventional training datasets from the web, may be forced to shift from big, all-purpose LLMs to smaller, more specialized models  —  By -  The Internet is a vast ocean of human knowledge, but it isn't infinite.  And artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have nearly sucked it dry.

Katie Tarasov / CNBC: A look at TSMC's $20B Arizona fab, which the company says is “dang near back on the original schedule” and is set to produce 4nm chips at 20K wafers per month  —  WATCH NOW  —  TSMC says first advanced U.S. chip fab ‘dang near back’ on schedule.  Here's an inside look.

Reuters: Document: Trump's transition team seeks to repeal a crash-reporting rule opposed by Tesla and other car makers and “liberalize” autonomous vehicle regulation  —  The Trump transition team wants the incoming administration to drop a car-crash reporting requirement opposed by Elon Musk's Tesla …

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: Evinced, which helps companies build accessible websites and apps, raised a $55M Series C led by Insight Partners, bringing its total funding to $112M  —  Making sure your software is accessible is fast becoming a must rather than a nice-to-have, and Evinced is one of a wave of startups helping make that happen.

Daniel Kuhn / The Block: Justin Sun's BiT Global, which recently became a key stakeholder in the wBTC ecosystem, sues Coinbase for planning to delist wBTC after launching rival cbBTC  —  - Justin Sun's BiT Global is suing Coinbase for delisting wBTC and launching a competing product.

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: How Viam, founded in 2020 by MongoDB co-founder Eliot Horowitz, uses AI to help companies make anything “smart”, including pizza buffets and bathroom lines  —  Entrepreneur Eliot Horowitz, who founded $22 billion database company MongoDB, is betting on artificial intelligence in the physical world

Financial Times: Duolingo has bucked edtech's post-pandemic blues, with its stock price more than tripling from its 2021 IPO price of $102, giving the company a ~$15B market cap  —  The language learning app sees big growth opportunities ahead  —  Education technology companies became sought after properties during …

Ryan Naraine / SecurityWeek: Tel Aviv-based Astrix Security, which helps firms secure non-human identities like API keys and service accounts, raised a $45M Series B led by Menlo Ventures  —  Tel Aviv company building software to secure non-human identities banks a $45 million funding round led by Menlo Ventures.