Techmeme
December 6, 2023, 1:00 PM

Top News

Thomas Germain / Gizmodo:
Google unveils Gemini, an AI model with Ultra, Pro, and Nano tiers, and plans a paid chatbot version in 2024; Google says Gemini Ultra beats GPT-4 on most tests  —  Microsoft's Copilot Is Getting a GPT-4 Turbo Boost  —  Science  —  SpaceX May Test Key Technique for Moon Mission on Starship's Third Flight
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google adds Gemini Nano, its native, local-first LLM, to the Pixel 8 Pro, powering Gboard's Smart Reply and Recorder's auto-summarize, before an Android launch  —  Gemini may be the biggest, most powerful large language model, or LLM, Google has ever developed, but it's better suited to running in data centers than on your phone.
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google updates Bard to use its Gemini Pro model, which the company says represents Bard's “biggest and best upgrade yet” and can match and even exceed ChatGPT  —  While OpenAI's ChatGPT has become a worldwide phenomenon and one of the fastest-growing consumer products ever …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Q&A with Google CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Gemini, digital agents, changing search's UX, the pace of AI development, coding, and more  —  CEO Sundar Pichai and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis talk to Platformer about the promise — and product roadmap — of their answer to GPT-4
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Google announces its Cloud TPU v5p, an updated version of its Cloud TPU v5e, consisting of 8,960 chips at 4,800 Gpbs/chip interconnect, and available by request  —  Google today announced the launch of its new Gemini large language model (LLM) and with that, the company also launched its new Cloud TPU v5p …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Raphael Satter / Reuters:
Apple and Google say the US government prevented them from detailing governments' push notification spying, and will now share info after Ron Wyden's letter  —  Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps' push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.
Samuel Stolton / Bloomberg:
Sources: the EU leans toward a DMA carve out for iMessage as the app is not popular enough with business users, as part of an investigation ending in February  —  - EU tentatively finds it doesn't warrant being covered by DMA  — New antitrust law imposes raft of Big Tech dos and don'ts
Jordan Fragen / VentureBeat:
Twitch plans to shut down in South Korea on February 27, 2024, saying the country was “prohibitively expensive” to operate in despite working to reduce costs  —  Games livestreaming platform Twitch is shutting down its business operations in South Korea February 27, 2024.
Wall Street Journal:
New Mexico sues Meta, alleging the company let Facebook and Instagram “become a marketplace for predators in search of children”, and blames Mark Zuckerberg  —  State investigators' test accounts with AI-generated photos were deluged with sexual propositions and adult sex content …
Financial Times:
Sources: Apple tells component suppliers of its preference to source iPhone 16 batteries from Indian factories, as part of plans to diversify away from China  —  Tech giant wants suppliers to build key component in India as part of broader effort to diversify supply chain
Bruce Schneier / Schneier on Security:
The internet enabled mass surveillance, and AI will enable mass spying, once limited by human labor, by making troves of data searchable and understandable  —  Spying and surveillance are different but related things.  If I hired a private detective to spy on you, that detective could hide …
TIME:
Interviews with Sam Altman and 20+ people in his circle reveal a complicated portrait of being brilliant but slippery, as Time names him CEO of the Year 2023  —  It was a strange Thanksgiving for Sam Altman.  Normally, the CEO of OpenAI flies home to St. Louis to visit family.
Aaron Klotz / Tom's Hardware:
Intel publishes and then removes “Core Truths”, a document calling AMD products “snake oil” for using the older Zen 2 architecture in new Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs  —  Look in the mirror Intel  —  Intel recently published a new playbook titled “Core Truths” …
Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph:
Coinbase updates Wallet, available in 170+ countries, to let users send crypto via any app where they can share a link, including email, social, and messaging  —  Recipients need to download a Coinbase Wallet to receive the funds, but the crypto exchange says they've simplified the process for less tech-savvy users.
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
Microsoft plans to offer three additional years of monthly Windows 10 security updates, paid for annually, after the OS' end-of-support date on October 14, 2025  —  Windows 10 gets a version of the program that extended updates for Windows 7.  —  Windows 10's end-of-support date is October 14, 2025.
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon plans to cut its merchant fees on clothing items under $15 to 5% and $15 to $20 items to 10% in January 2024, both down from 17%, to compete with Shein  —  Amazon.com Inc. is sharply cutting fees for merchants selling clothing priced below $20, a sign it's hunkering down for a price war with Chinese fast-fashion upstart Shein.
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
SAG-AFTRA members ratify the union's three-year contract with studios after 78% voted in favor; some members remain dissatisfied with the deal's AI protections  —  The SAG-AFTRA vote formally ends six months of labor strife, though some members were not happy about the contract's artificial intelligence protections.

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Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information:
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Samantha Cole / 404 Media: