Techmeme
December 12, 2024, 4:35 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Google debuts Gemini 2.0 and plans to test the model in search and AI Overviews, saying it enables “agents that can think, remember, plan, and even take action”  —  Company expects AI assistants will follow its users around the web  —  Google debuted a new version …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Ina Fried / Axios:
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple launches Apple Intelligence outside of the US for the first time, making it available in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, and South Africa  —  Apple Intelligence is officially launching outside of the U.S. for the first time today, as a result of the features gaining expanded language support.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple adds Layered Recordings to the Voice Memos app in iOS 18.2 for the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, after bringing audio transcriptions to Voice Memos in iOS 18  —  Alongside the release of a host of new AI features, Apple is also updating the Voice Memos app in iOS 18.2.
Wes Davis / The Verge:
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
Wall Street Journal:
Meta donates $1M to president-elect Trump's inaugural fund; sources: Mark Zuckerberg gifted Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses to Trump at Mar-a-Lago on November 27  —  President-elect had blasted the tech tycoon during the presidential campaign, but ties have been improving
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says Russia-backed hacking group Secret Blizzard targeted Ukraine's military using other cybercriminals' tools, in order to make attribution harder  —  A Russian-government backed hacking group targeted Ukraine's military using tools and infrastructure developed by cybercriminals, according to new research.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Meta says it is “99% of the way” to resolving a global outage that hit Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, starting at approximately 12:40pm ET  —  Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp suffered a massive worldwide Wednesday afternoon, with services impacted in varying degrees based on user's region.
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:
Binance and Circle partner to promote USDC; Binance plans to list more crypto trading pairs denominated in USDC and hold USDC for its own corporate treasury  —  - Circle faces increased challenges in the stablecoin market  — Binance will support more USDC usage on its platform
Shoya Okinaga / Nikkei Asia:
Honda plans to dissolve a self-driving vehicle partnership with GM after GM announced plans to exit robotaxi development; Honda had invested $852M in Cruise  —  TOKYO — Honda Motor will dissolve a self-driving vehicle partnership with General Motors after the U.S. automaker said it would pull …
More: TechCrunch
Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Sheena Vasani / The Verge:
Google rolls out two updates to Android's unknown tracker alerts feature, letting users pause location updates from their phone and pinpoint unfamiliar trackers  —  Google is rolling out two new updates to its unknown tracker alerts feature that should make it easier for Android device owners …
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Adobe reports Q4 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.61B, vs. $5.54B est., Digital Media revenue up 12%, forecasts FY 2025 revenue below est.; ADBE drops 8%+  —  - Fiscal year sales, profit forecasts fall short of estimates  — Software maker plans a new higher-priced tier for AI tools
The Information:
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Harvard releases a high-quality dataset of ~1M public-domain books, created with funding from Microsoft and OpenAI, to help train LLMs and AI tools  —  The project's leader says that allowing everyone to access the collection of public-domain books will help “level the playing field” in the AI industry.
Forums: Slashdot
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says ChatGPT, API, and Sora traffic has largely recovered after a multi-hour outage, and that it is monitoring the situation to ensure full resolution  —  OpenAI says ChatGPT, Sora, and its developer-facing API experienced a major outage starting at around 3pm PT on Wednesday, according to the company's status page.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
Are you ready for the era of agentic AI?  —  Tech leaders are always talking about what's next, and right now, agentic AI is dominating the discourse.  Equip yourself with the info you need in this recorded webinar.
Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
Zoho:
Goodbye Skype!  What's next for your chats?  —  Hi5, Orkut, MySpace, Geocities... Do these names ring a bell?  Do you remember chatting with your friends on MSN Messenger in the late '90s?
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Techmeme Ride Home:
It's Already Starting...
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Spotlight On:
Corelight's Brian Dye on What He's Learned About Scaling
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Ovitz - Turning Potential into Prominence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
UiPath CEO Daniel Dines on AI agents replacing our jobs
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Grit:
Brex 3.0: Inside the Radical Turnaround with Pedro Franceschi
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:35 AM ET, December 12, 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

Ari Levy / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Katie Robertson / New York Times:
Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg:
Alexander Maxham / Android Headlines:
Greg Stohr / Bloomberg: