Techmeme
January 4, 2024, 6:30 PM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils a Copilot keyboard key, shipping in new PCs and laptops from its partners, the first major change to the PC keyboard layout in nearly 30 years  —  Microsoft wants 2024 to be “the year of the AI PC,” and it's kicking things off with a significant change to the keyboard on new laptops and PCs.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Hackers are hijacking X accounts of governments and businesses marked with gold and gray checkmarks, including Google's Mandiant, to promote crypto scams  —  Hackers are increasingly targeting verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) belonging to government and business profiles and marked …
Liam Proven / The Register:
Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, who devised nine programming languages and won the Turing Award in 1984, dies at 89  —  Evangelist of lean software and devisor of 9 programming languages and an OS was 89  —  OBIT Swiss computer scientist Professor Niklaus Wirth died …
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Memo: OpenAI plans to launch its GPT store next week; the store was originally slated to open in November 2023, but was delayed after OpenAI's leadership crisis  —  OpenAI is planning to launch its “GPT store” next week, according to a memo to developers seen by The Information.
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Qualcomm announces the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, an update to the XR2 Gen 2 used in the Meta Quest 3, offering 4.3K resolution at 90fps per eye, up from 3K per eye  —  The new chipset is designed as a step up from the XR2 Gen 2 in the Meta Quest 3, capable of rendering high-resolution visuals like the ones promised by Apple's Vision Pro.
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Perplexity, which offers an AI-based “answer engine” with ~10M MAUs to compete with Google, raised $74M at a $520M valuation from IVP, Jeff Bezos, and others  —  Perplexity, with a fraction of Google's users, raised the largest sum by an internet search startup in recent years
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
Dell announces the $1,299+ XPS 13, the $1,699+ XPS 14, replacing the XPS 13 Plus, and the $1,899+ XPS 16, offering Intel Core Ultra 7 and 9 and up to a 4TB SSD  —  This might not be the biggest shake-up of the Dell XPS lineup ever, but between some bigger laptops and a total revamping of the XPS portfolio, it feels like a big deal.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
LastPass now requires users to set a master password with a minimum of 12 characters, after enforcing the requirement for new accounts or resets in April 2023  —  LastPass notified customers today that they are now required to use complex master passwords with a minimum of 12 characters to increase their accounts' security.
Wall Street Journal:
As Google restricts third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users, marketers, adtech companies, and publishers say Google has not done enough to prepare the market  —  Search giant plans to remove a technology seen as critical to the digital-ad industry  —  Google is going forward …
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI offered some media firms $1M to $5M per year to license news articles for model training; Apple offers more but wants to use content more widely  —  OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles …
Sarah Martin / The Guardian:
The CEO of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse, introduced to investors in 2021, doesn't appear to exist; Chainalysis: consumers lost $1.3B to HyperVerse in 2022  —  Exclusive: Steven Reece Lewis was introduced to investors with an impressive list of qualifications and achievements, but no organisation cited can find any record of him
Brendan McCord / Cosmos Institute:
A look at the current AI philosophy landscape of existential pessimism vs. accelerationism, and the need for a balanced, enterprising optimism as the third way  —  We need a balanced, enterprising optimism—an ambitious and clear vision for what constitutes the good in technology, coupled with the awareness of its dangers
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
The White House awards $162M in federal grants to Arizona-based Microchip Technology to expand its Oregon and Colorado facilities, the second CHIPS Act award  —  The Biden administration said its second grant under a new program would help Microchip Technology expand its facilities in Oregon and Colorado.

Sponsor Posts

Meta:
Open Source AI: Available to all, not just the few  —  Meta's open source AI enables small businesses, start-ups, students, researchers and more to download and build with our models at no cost.
Zoho:
The crossroads of AI and SaaS  —  Enabling businesses of all sizes to build products in-house and disqualifying SaaS tools that are not AI-powered.  In a span of just two years, AI has made a name for itself as the key driver for innovation.
Genesys:
Executive Insights: The Era of Contact Center AI Copilots  —  How AI copilots are transforming customer experience and agent performance.
Tribe AI:
Build AI products that matter  —  Tribe AI helps organizations rapidly deploy AI solutions that have real business impact.  We bring together world class AI talent and tooling to drive differentiated results.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 12/20 - Gemini Flash Thinking
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:30 PM ET, January 4, 2024.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Paul Sandle / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Todd Shields / Bloomberg:
Stephen Nellis / Reuters: