Techmeme
December 4, 2024, 9:00 AM

Top News

Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Amid the Salt Typhoon hacks, US officials recommend that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers  —  Officials from the FBI and CISA said it was impossible to predict when the telecommunications companies would be fully safe from interlopers.
Sam Sabin / Axios:
The FBI and CISA give US telcos best practices to harden their systems against attacks, as senior US officials say Salt Typhoon hackers remain on their networks  —  - Officials added that they don't yet know the full scope of the intrusions, despite starting the investigation in late spring.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta says AI content was less than 1% of fact-checked election-related misinformation on its apps during major US, UK, Indian, Indonesian, and other elections  —  At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation.
Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Ubisoft says it will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, but keep its servers on until June 3, 2025, and plans to lay off ~277 production team staff  —  Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, Ubisoft announced Tuesday.  Servers will remain on until June 3, 2025 …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Spotify launches Spotify Wrapped, adding an AI podcast of users' 2024 Wrapped created with Google's NotebookLM summarizer, and a Your Music Evolution data story  —  Spotify Wrapped, the streamer's highly anticipated annual listening recap, has arrived.  In addition to its usual personalized …
Josh Dzieza / The Verge:
An artist shares his experience of turning to Replika's AI bot Lila for companionship, including giving Lila an AI friend by creating a digital copy of himself  —  Lila was created from the limited options available: female, blue hair, face “number two.”  She was there on the next screen …
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
AWS introduces Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless, distributed SQL database that promises high availability, strong consistency, and PostgreSQL compatibility  —  At its re:Invent conference, Amazon's AWS cloud computing unit today announced Amazon Aurora DSQL, a new serverless …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google launches Veo, an AI video model for generating “high-quality” 1080p videos in visual and cinematic styles, to businesses, beating OpenAI's Sora to market  —  Veo, Google's latest generative AI video model, is now available for businesses to start incorporating into their content creation pipelines.
Ming-Chi Kuo:
Kuo: Apple delays the mass production of a smart home-focused, display-equipped HomePod until after WWDC 2025 or Q3 2025, mainly due to software development  —  - The mass production schedule for the display-equipped HomePod has been delayed multiple times.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Salesforce says online Cyber Monday sales grew 3% YoY to $49.7B globally and just 2% YoY to $12.8B in the US; Adobe says US online sales grew 7.3% YoY to $13.3B  —  The figures are now in for consumer spending on Cyber Monday, the third big online spending day — alongside Thanksgiving and Black Friday …
Steven Levy / Wired:
Q&A with Tim Cook on generative AI, Apple Intelligence, the OpenAI partnership, why Apple's biggest contribution will be in health, ARM, Vision Pro, and more  —  Much as the CEO seems awestruck by AI and his just-released Apple Intelligence, he's more convinced that the tech giant's health apps will define the company's legacy.
Timothy Gardner / Reuters:
Meta is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers, as it plans to add one to four gigawatts of US nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s  —  Meta (META.O) said on Tuesday it is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its artificial intelligence …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says it is using Amazon's Trainium and Graviton chips to serve search services, and is evaluating if Trainium2 chips can be used to pretrain its AI models  —  Apple is currently using Amazon Web Services' custom artificial intelligence chips for services like search and will evaluate …
Jennifer Hughes / Financial Times:
Vanguard's Chief Economist Joe Davis warns that the rush into AI stocks in 2024 has overplayed AI's near-term potential and risks a “correction” in share prices  —  Asset manager's chief economist Joe Davis says investors are overplaying the near-term potential of the technology

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.
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.
Zoho:
10 ways you can transform your retail business with Zoho Workplace  —  According to Vantage Market Research, the size of the global retail market may reach a staggering $40 trillion by 2030.  That's trillion with a T, followed by thirteen zeros.
Hamming:
Make AI Voice Agents trustworthy  —  Hamming AI automatically tests AI voice agents and continuously monitors them in production.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Wed. 12/04 - Spotify Wrapped 2024 Has NotebookLM Baked In
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 9:00 AM ET, December 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

Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Luc Cohen / Reuters:
Joseph Cox / 404 Media: