Techmeme
February 14, 2024, 6:30 AM

Top News

Alex Heath / The Verge:
In a video, Mark Zuckerberg shares his thoughts on the Vision Pro, saying Quest 3 “is the better product, period”, highlighting Apple's tradeoffs, and more  —  Now that it can be strapped to our faces and worn in strange places, opinions about Apple's Vision Pro are flying left and right.
The Information:
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, leaves the company; Karpathy was developing a product that he described as an AI assistant  —  Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, has left the company, a spokesperson confirmed.
David Pierce / The Verge:
OpenAI starts testing a “memory” feature that is on by default and lets ChatGPT and custom GPTs remember info about users and their conversations over time  —  Talking to an AI chatbot can feel a bit like Groundhog Day after a while, as you tell it for the umpteenth …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple's longest-serving senior industrial designer, Bart Andre, told colleagues this month that he is retiring; Andre joined in 1992 alongside Jony Ive  —  - Bart Andre retiring after three decades on design team  — Departure marks near-complete turnover of group since Ive era
Alison Snyder / Axios:
Cohere's nonprofit research lab releases its open-source multilingual LLM Aya, which the lab says can follow instructions in more than 100 languages  —  A new open-source generative AI model can follow instructions in more than 100 languages. … - It covers more than twice as many languages …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Walmart is in talks to buy smart TV manufacturer Vizio for $2B+, as the company looks to bolster its advertising business in its battle with Amazon  —  Retail giant discussing a more than $2 billion deal that would boost its advertising business in battle with Amazon
Bloomberg:
Sony reports Q3 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$25.11B, operating income up 10% YoY to ~$3.1B, meeting est., and 8.2M PS5s sold, roughly 1M units lower than projected  —  - Company reversing course after taking the unit private in 2020  — Underwhelming PlayStation 5 sales led to sales outlook cut
Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch:
Waymo has issued a software fix for its cars, its first recall, after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix in December 2023  —  Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December.
More: Waymo, Silicon Republic, Benzinga, Engadget, and NBC Bay Area
X: @sokane1LinkedIn: Sean O'KaneForums: Slashdot
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
In a research paper, Apple researchers detail a new AI tool called Keyframer, which uses LLMs to animate static images through natural language prompts  —  Apple researchers have unveiled a new AI tool called “Keyframer,” which harnesses the power of large language models (LLMs) …
Alistair Barr / Business Insider:
A typo in Lyft's Q4 release mistakenly forecast a 500 BPS of EBITDA margin improvement for 2024, causing a stock surge, before the error was corrected to 50 BPS  —  - Lyft mistakenly forecast 500 basis points of margin improvement for 2024, causing a stock surge.
Antonia Mufarech / Bloomberg:
Tom Dotan / Wall Street Journal:
Copilot for Microsoft 365 testers question the $30/seat price and find Copilot the most useful in Teams and the least in Excel; Dow and others plan big rollouts  —  Artificial-intelligence aide handles email, meetings and other things, but its price and limited use have some skeptical
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia releases an early version of Chat with RTX, an app that lets users run an AI chatbot on a PC powered by an RTX 30- or 40-series GPU with 8GB+ of VRAM  —  Nvidia is releasing an early version of Chat with RTX today, a demo app that lets you run a personal AI chatbot on your PC.
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Sydney-based quantum computing startup Diraq extends its Series A to $35M led by Quantonation, taking its total funding to $120M+, to build quantum processors  —  Australian quantum computing startup Diraq Pty Ltd. said today it has closed on a $15 million capital raise that will be used …
More: Diraq
Cagan Koc / Bloomberg:
ASML CFO Roger Dassen says the chip market “has now reached the lowest point of the dip” and “the recovery is nascent”; ASML's top client spent €8.78B in 2023  —  - ‘Recovery is nascent,’ CFO Dassen says in firm's annual report  — Demand for ASML products is a bellwether for chip industry
More: Reuters
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Instacart reports Q4 revenue up 6% YoY to $803M, vs. $804M est., and plans to cut ~250, or ~7%, of its staff; three top execs are leaving for personal reasons  —  - Instacart on Tuesday announced it would lay off about 250 employees, or roughly 7% of the company, alongside reporting fourth-quarter earnings …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Sources: Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in its VPN, Relay, its Online Footprint Scrubber, and mozilla.social, shut down Hubs, and cut ~60 employees  —  After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser …
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:
Foundry Group, an 18-year-old VC firm with nearly $3.5B in assets under management, has quietly decided to wind down and not raise any more funds  —  Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds.

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