Techmeme: OpenAI debuts a way to talk to ChatGPT by dialing 1-800-CHATGPT for 15 minutes of free access per month in the US or messaging the number via WhatsApp globally (Hayden Field/CNBC)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:

Apple says Meta has made 15 interoperability requests under the EU's DMA, more than any other company, and that these could affect users' privacy and security — Apple (AAPL.O) on Wednesday hit out at Meta Platforms (META.O), saying its numerous requests to access the iPhone maker's software tools …

More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, Digital Markets Act, and Digital Markets Act

Forums: Hacker News, r/apple, and MacRumors Forums

The European Commission has pressed Apple to rework iOS so that it's more compatible with smartwatches, earbuds, headsets, and other devices from competitors — - Apple cites concerns that Meta access may undermine privacy — EU watchdog has pressed company to rework iOS operating system

More: Apple, AppleInsider, and 9to5Mac

Bluesky: @quinnypig.com. Threads: @carnage4life. Forums: r/apple

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: the US is investigating Chinese router maker TP-Link, which has a ~65% US market share in homes and SMBs, and could ban the sale of its routers in 2025 — TP-Link is the bestselling router on Amazon—and has been linked to Chinese cyberattacks — U.S. authorities are investigating whether …

More: New York Post, The Daily Upside, Ars Technica, The Verge, TechSpot, The Record, KVIA-TV, BleepingComputer, ZDNET, The Register, Bloomberg, SiliconANGLE, Neowin, iTnews, New York Times, CBS News, AppleInsider, Cord Cutters News, PCMag, Cult of Mac, Barron's Online, Guru3D, Forbes, Tom's Hardware, iPhone in Canada Blog, TechPowerUp, Digital Trends, Engadget, Fortune, and PCWorld

Bluesky: @sambiddle.com, @sambiddle.com, @shiraovide, @shiraovide, and @metacurity.com

Threads: @pkedrosky and @dsilverman

X: @rgb_lights, @laughing_mantis, @kate_okeeffe, @matrosov, @kate_okeeffe, @laraseligman, @verambergen, @tomcottonar, @jsrailton, @ericgeller, @dnvolz, @jsrailton, @joellthayer, @thomasgermain, @dnvolz, and @jsrailton. LinkedIn: Jason Livingood

Forums: Hacker News, r/homelab, r/privacy, r/TpLink, r/TPLink_Omada, Beehaw, and Ars OpenForum

Hayden Field / CNBC:

OpenAI debuts a way to talk to ChatGPT by dialing 1-800-CHATGPT for 15 minutes of free access per month in the US or messaging the number via WhatsApp globally — OpenAI on Wednesday rolled out a new way to talk to its viral chatbot: 1-800-CHATGPT. — By dialing the U.S. number …

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

GitHub offers Copilot in VS Code for free with 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month; GitHub now has 150M developers, up from 100M in early 2023 — Microsoft-owned GitHub today announced a free version of its popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool …

Will Judd / Eurogamer.net:

Sony details PS5 Pro specs, including its GPU based on AMD RDNA 2 with 16.7TF of performance and ray tracing improvements, and announces a partnership with AMD — Plus: what this all means for future PlayStation hardware. — When Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro …

More: PlayStation on YouTube, PlayStation.Blog, The Verge, IGN, Digital Foundry on YouTube, Engadget, Cryptopolitan, Eurogamer.net, PlayStation LifeStyle, Comic Book, Digital Foundry on YouTube, Wccftech, TweakTown, TweakTown, and Push Square

Bluesky: @usebomswisely and @luigiblood

X: @digitalfoundry, @okami13_, @nib95_, @chillbandit, @playstation, @ballmatthew, @deeketweak, and @deeketweak

Forums: r/PS5, r/Games, and r/Amd

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:

Source: Perplexity raised $500M led by Institutional Venture Partners at a $9B valuation earlier this month, up from a $3B valuation in June — The company's valuation has tripled since June. … The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners and completed earlier this month …

More: Financial Times, PYMNTS.com, The Information, GeekWire, and TechCrunch

X: @aravsrinivas and @perplexity_ai. Forums: r/artificial

Paul Alcorn / Tom's Hardware:

Intel announces the first updates to address Arrow Lake gaming performance issues, fixing four of five root causes, and plans a new update for January — Time to test. — Intel announced that its first wave of updates to address the gaming performance issues plaguing the Arrow Lake processors is now available.

More: Intel Community, The Verge, TechPowerUp, Thurrott, XDA Developers, Windows Central, HotHardware on YouTube, HotHardware, KitGuru, Tom's Guide, Wccftech, Forbes, PC Gamer, OC3D, and [H]ard|Forum

X: @aschilling and @ghost_motley. Forums: r/hardware

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Sources: Apple has halted work on a project to build an iPhone hardware subscription service, which had been in development since around 2022 — - Much-delayed program had been in development since around 2022 — Company also shut down Pay Later offering earlier this year

More: PYMNTS.com, The Verge, XDA Developers, Engadget, Gizmodo, PhoneArena, SlashGear, AppleInsider, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Cult of Mac, Digital Trends, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, BGR, and Notebookcheck

Bluesky: @filmgirl. Threads: @markgurman. X: @markgurman. Forums: r/apple, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums

Ian King / Bloomberg:

Micron reports Q1 revenue up 84% YoY to $8.71B, in line with est., Q2 revenue forecast below est. due to sluggish phone and PC demand; MU drops 13%+ after hours — - Strong AI growth isn't offsetting a slowdown elsewhere — Micron CEO cites weakness in consumer-oriented markets

More: The Information, Investor's Business Daily, Reuters, Proactive, Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Benzinga, CNBC, Micron Technology, Inc., Sherwood News, and Yahoo Finance

X: @thetranscript_, @beth_kindig, @microntech, @thetranscript_, @danielnewmanuv, @thetranscript_, and @beth_kindig

Harry McCracken / Fast Company:

Flipboard launches Surf, an app to create custom feeds from Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, RSS, podcasts, and YouTube, in beta on iOS, Android, and iPadOS — Fourteen years ago, when the iPad was new and bursting with unfulfilled promise, an app called Flipboard debuted.

More: TechCrunch, The Verge, and Engadget

Bluesky: @surf.social, @davidimel.com, @jejord, @quillmatiq.com, @harrymccracken.com, @mattnavarra.com, @davidpierce.xyz, and @thinkyparts. Mastodon: @mike@flipboard.social

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:

Data center operator Vultr raised $333M led by LuminArx, with participation from AMD and others, at a $3.5B valuation, its first outside funding round — AMD's investment is part of how the chip giant plans to make a dent in the artificial intelligence chip market dominated by Nvidia

More: SiliconANGLE, Vultr, Financial Times, Refresh Miami, CNBC, and Crunchbase News

X: @hassankhan. Forums: Hacker News and r/AMD_Stock

SandboxAQ, which aims to apply quantum tech and techniques to AI, raised $300M from Alger, Yann LeCun, and others at a $5.6B valuation to recruit more engineers — - Former Alphabet division focuses on quantum and AI tech — CEO Jack Hidary staffing up with more Ph.D.s and engineers

More: HPCwire, PYMNTS.com, The Quantum Insider, FinSMEs, SiliconANGLE, and Invezz

LinkedIn: Gregg Hill, Suzannah Radack, Christina Gavrishov, and JB Norcott

Sean Hollister / The Verge:

After a rough year, Intel says its $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” GPU, which received near-universal praise from reviewers, has already sold out in most retailers — While we haven't managed to review it ourselves due to a fluke issue, the $250 Arc B580 “Battlemage” …

More: Tom's Hardware, Club386, HotHardware, TipRanks Financial, ExtremeTech, Digital Foundry on YouTube, PC Gamer, and TechSpot

Mastodon: @jeffkibuule@sfba.social. X: @rogeeroger, @ancientgameplay, and @niktekofficial. LinkedIn: Hannah S.

Forums: r/intel, r/pcgaming, r/pcmasterrace, and r/IntelArc

Sources: Amazon recently pushed back RTO dates for some staff in Austin, Dallas, and Phoenix by as much as four months, citing a lack of office space — - Company is struggling to find space in at least seven cities — Start dates are being pushed back as much as four months

More: Nashville Business Journal, Ars Technica, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, TechSpot, GeekWire, Gizmodo, CNBC, and TechRadar

Bluesky: @mattmday, @ianpatterson.com, @carnage4life, and @davecl

Mastodon: @drahardja@sfba.social and @cdarwin@c.im. LinkedIn: Spencer Soper. Forums: r/wallstreetbets

Omdia estimates Microsoft bought 485K of Nvidia's Hopper GPUs in 2024, ByteDance and Tencent bought ~230K each, Meta bought 225K, and Tesla/xAI bought ~200K — OpenAI's biggest backer buys nearly half a million GPUs this year in global race to build artificial intelligence systems

More: TechCrunch, Windows Central, PC Gamer, Wall Street Pit, DatacenterDynamics, and TipRanks Financial

X: @ft. LinkedIn: Mathew George. Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot

Emma Roth / The Verge:

Threads rolls out a way to reshare photos and videos without quote posting the original post, while crediting the original poster; users can disable the feature — Threads is rolling out a new feature that lets you share someone's photos and videos without including the original post.

More: Engadget and TechCrunch

Threads: @mosseri, @raychelsanner, @peggykolm, @dimitrymakphoto, @thebrianpenny, @lonnie.bruton, @ivisonphoto, @stephen_hinterlands, and @bryanhansel

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

India's commerce minister says that Shein will operate in India purely as a tech partner, with Reliance Retail having full ownership and control of operations — Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail …

More: Business Today, Inc42 Media, and The Verge

Jez Corden / Windows Central:

A look at Microsoft's risky Xbox strategy, where exclusives are the exception; sources say Microsoft is working on cross-platform Xbox interface Project Rainway — Microsoft's strategy has Xbox's core fans upset about the future of console hardware. Today, we're going to analyze the strategy …

More: The Information, GamesIndustry.biz, TheGamer, Kotaku, KitGuru, Pure Xbox, Video Games Chronicle, and Forbes

Bluesky: @carnage4life and @danielrubino.com

X: @stephentotilo, @tomwarren, @jezcorden, @knoebelbroet, @chikocash, @anthonydaytv, @getfitwithjared, @whereisaaron, @jezcorden, and @windowscentral

Forums: r/gaming, r/Games, and r/xbox

Decoder with Nilay Patel:

Google DeepMind:

Google introduces FACTS Grounding benchmark for evaluating the factuality of LLMs, and announces a leaderboard that ranks Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental on top — Our comprehensive benchmark and online leaderboard offer a much-needed measure of how accurately LLMs ground their responses …

More: Hackster.io, Kaggle, Kaggle, WinBuzzer, Kaggle, and Google

Bluesky: @bmeson.lucyparsonslabs.com and @laserdragons

Forums: r/singularity and r/LocalLLaMA

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 PM ET, December 18, 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.

From Mediagazer

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

A look at CBS' bet on its massive overhaul of the Evening News, with greater emphasis on in-depth reporting on the ground from places beyond NYC, DC, and LA

Yun Li / CNBC:

Newsmax shares fell 77.5% on Wednesday after a 2,230% surge in its first two days on the NYSE; NMAX rose 5%+ on Thursday

Bron Maher / Press Gazette:

The Independent says it hired seven people for its AI-written summarization service, Bulletin, and that the stories often outperform the human-written originals

More News

Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:

Amazon unveils new packaging for its Echo, Kindle, and Fire TV products, including removing plastic, less paper and ink, and using more recycled fibers

More: About Amazon and iPhone in Canada Blog

Threads: @panospanay. Forums: r/Seattle and r/SeattleWA

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:

Q&A with Microsoft Chief Product Officer of Responsible AI Sarah Bird on generative AI, its impact on work, Copilots, OpenAI, AGI, AI agents, bias, and more

More: Financial Times

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters:

Bureau, which offers tools to prevent user identity fraud, raised a $30M Series B led by Sorenson Capital, a source says at a ~$150M valuation

More: Forbes, PYMNTS.com, Bureau, Axios, SiliconANGLE, Entrackr, SecurityWeek, The Economic Times, VCCircle, and Moneycontrol

Aisha Counts / Bloomberg:

eMarketer expects Instagram to hit $32B in US ad revenue in 2025, or 50% of Meta's ad sales; filings: Instagram was ~30% of Meta's global business in early 2022

More: Android Police, Adweek, Benzinga, Wall Street Pit, PYMNTS.com, TipRanks Financial, Invezz, and Reuters. LinkedIn: Aisha Counts

Analysis: as uncertainty looms over Japan's China-dependent chipmaking stocks, Sony, Nintendo, and Capcom have seen double-digit returns since Trump's victory

A look at Huawei subsidiary Yinwang, which sells hardware and software to carmakers, has a $16B valuation, and more than doubled its revenue to ~$655M in 2023

More: Semafor

Yvonne Lau / Rest of World:

Experts say national security and immigration policies could deprive US companies of AI talent from China, which had 47% of the top AI researchers in 2022

Sky News:

The UK Gambling Commission blocks eight illegal casinos using Roblox to lure children into online gambling, following a news investigation into the casinos

More: Futurism, The Sun, Sky News on YouTube, Sky News on YouTube, Dexerto, and GamesIndustry.biz

Earlier Picks

A profile of 114-year-old Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, whose market cap recently hit $100B after becoming an industrial software and hardware provider

LinkedIn: Tomoko Sasaki

Ben Sherry / Inc:

A profile of Tyler Denk, co-founder of newsletter platform Beehiiv, which raised a $33M Series B in April 2024 and generates $1.6M to $1.75M in monthly revenue

LinkedIn: Ben Sherry

Eliot Brown / Wall Street Journal:

Masayoshi Son's $100B AI investment pledge to Trump would require a massive fundraising effort, new debt, or selling some of SoftBank's holdings to raise cash

Sam Bradley / Digiday:

A look at Reddit's growth in sports fan communities; internal data: Reddit recorded a 35% YoY increase in engagement in 1,000+ sports-themed Subreddits in 2024

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

MobiKwik's shares surged as much as 82% on their trading debut, after the Indian digital payments firm, which claims to have 161M users, raised $69M in its IPO

More: Times Now, The Economic Times, India Today, The Indian Express, and Times of India. X: @bseindia

Kioxia's shares rose 6%+ on its first day of trading in Tokyo, giving the chipmaker a ~$5.2B market cap; a group led by Bain had paid $18B for Kioxia in 2018

More: Nikkei Asia and CNBC

Myles McCormick / Financial Times:

The NERC, overseen by the FERC, warns soaring US electricity demand from data centers to power AI could strain US and Canadian grids, risking blackouts

More: TechCrunch, The Guardian, 9to5Mac, Tech Xplore, DatacenterDynamics, Semafor, Gizmodo, America's Electric …, Reuters, NERC, NERC, NERC on YouTube, NERC, and Bloomberg

X: @nrecanews, @nerc_official, and @centrus_energy

Forums: r/unitedkingdom, r/technews, and r/technology