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Techmeme
December 8, 2023, 10:30 AM
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Top News

Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
Google's video demo of Gemini's multimodal AI capabilities wasn't carried out in real time or in voice; the model was shown still images and given text prompts  —  The tech giant's latest AI model is only marginally better than the one from OpenAI that's been out for eight months.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Users say Google's Gemini Pro is loath to comment on potentially controversial news topics, fails to get basic facts right, and struggles with some coding tasks
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: in a first, Apple is working with China's BYD to move iPad product development to Vietnam, with test production set to begin around mid-February 2024  —  China's BYD helps American giant with shift to alternative tech hubs  —  Vietnam is emerging as an increasingly important production hub …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple and its suppliers aim to make 50M+ iPhones annually in India in two to three years, which would account for a quarter of global iPhone production  —  Supplier Foxconn plans to build more factories and give India a production role once limited mostly to China
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Tata plans to build one of India's largest iPhone plants, employing 50,000 workers within two years, and expects operations to begin in 12 to 18 months  —  - New plant would speed up Apple's diversification beyond China  — Tata wants more Apple business after buying one iPhone factory
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
A look at Meta's technical issues when developing E2EE for Messenger, including creating an encrypted storage protocol and re-architecting chat features  —  Mark Zuckerberg personally promised that the privacy feature would launch by default on Messenger and Instagram chat.
Wall Street Journal:
The US and UK governments jointly accuse Russia's FSB of orchestrating a wide-ranging, global hacking campaign since 2015 to interfere in British elections  —  The cyberattacks also allegedly took aim at U.S. energy networks and American spies  —  LONDON—The U.S. and U.K. governments …
Bloomberg:
The UK CMA is considering whether Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership should be called in for a merger probe, and asks for comments from interested parties  —  - CMA seeking views on whether the relationship should be probed  — Move is less than two months since watchdog cleared Activision
Jessica Lyons Hardcastle / The Register:
A researcher says a years-old Bluetooth authentication flaw lets attackers inject keystrokes to run arbitrary commands on Apple, Android, and some Linux devices  —  Issue has been around since at least 2012  —  A years-old Bluetooth authentication bypass vulnerability allows miscreants to connect to Apple …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google launches the Gemini Pro-powered NotebookLM, demoed at I/O 2023 as an “AI-first notebook” that pulls information from users' documents, in the US  —  At I/O 2023 in May, Google demoed an “AI-first notebook” that was originally called Project Tailwind.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Mobile network companies have backed themselves into a corner by racing to roll out 5G, taking on piles of debt with few returns to show for their investments  —  Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything.  But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found …
Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge:
A look at Grok responses Elon Musk has highlighted on X shows an AI chatbot whose unfunny, “edgy”, pointlessly offensive humor feels forced and try-hard  —  Fine.  Let's talk about xAI, which is getting funded to the tune of $1 billion or whatever.
Maxwell Zeff / Gizmodo:
X rolls out xAI's snarky, “anti-woke” chatbot Grok to X Premium+ users; X CEO Linda Yaccarino describes Grok as “the ultimate ride or die”
Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch:
Anthropic researchers find adding pleas to a prompt that tell its Claude 2 model not to be biased could reduce discrimination based on race, gender, and more  —  The problem of alignment is an important one when you're setting AI models up to make decisions in matters of finance and health.
More: Anthropic
Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:
Amazon sues an “international fraud organization” for allegedly stealing millions of dollars in merchandise from the company through a series of refund scams  —  - Shoppers took gaming consoles, smartphones, tires and gold  — Scammers live in US, five other countries, according to suit
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Spotify says CFO Paul Vogel plans to leave on March 31, 2024, and launches a search for a successor; Daniel Ek wants a CFO “with a different mix of experiences”  —  Spotify said chief financial officer Paul Vogel will leave the company next year and that it has launched a search to find a replacement.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
A US federal judge rules Binance founder Changpeng Zhao cannot return to the UAE before his sentencing, set for February 2024, after his release on a $175M bond  —  Zhao pleaded guilty to a federal charge last month.  —  Register Now  —  Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 10:30 AM ET, December 8, 2023.

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From Mediagazer

Bloomberg:
The US stock market briefly surged on April 7 after CNBC, Reuters, and others picked up an erroneous X post that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on tariffs

New York Times:
A majority of 300+ WaPo tech workers sign union cards and plan to formally request recognition, WaPo's first public union drive since Bezos' 2013 acquisition

Tatiana Siegel / Variety:
Sources: Evan Gershkovich is not cooperating on WSJ's documentary and book about his imprisonment, and plans his own film and book, sparking tensions

More News

Kaya Yurieff / The Information:
TikTok forms a task force to tackle hate speech and plans to open its research API to civil society groups, after complaints about viral Israel-Hamas war videos
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta rolls out tags on Threads, offering support for multiple words and spaces, and no # symbol; posts can only have one tag and the tag view is the search view

Earlier Picks

Wall Street Journal:
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner says the “goal in firing Sam [Altman] was to strengthen OpenAI”, but declines to say why she and others voted to fire him
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
Block opens preorders for its self-custodial Bitcoin hardware wallet Bitkey in 95+ countries, coming to the US in early 2024 for $150, after a beta in June 2023
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Meta announces Purple Llama, an initiative to promote responsible AI development by offering tools and evaluations for safely building open generative AI models
Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft says Russia-aligned propagandists duped at least seven Western celebrities via Cameo into recording videos used to attack Ukraine's President Zelensky
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:
Apple's guidelines now say that US law enforcement can obtain a push notification token's associated Apple ID “with a subpoena”; Google requires a court order
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