Techmeme
January 1, 2025, 12:40 PM

Top News

Raquel Coronell Uribe / NBC News:
The US Treasury sanctions Iranian and Russian entities over attempted election interference, including a Moscow entity that directed the creation of deepfakes  —  The Treasury Department said Iran and Russia sought to divide Americans through targeted disinformation campaigns in the 2024 elections.
Matt Simons / Courthouse News Service:
A judge blocks parts of California's SB 976, finding it may infringe on First Amendment rights, but allows a provision banning “addictive feeds” for minors  —  Parts of the law will still take effect Wednesday.  —  SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday barred …
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Some 2024 LLM takeaways: multimodal vision became common, LLM prices crashed, overall environmental impact worsened despite efficiency gains, and slop arrived  —  A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024.  Here's a review of things we figured …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
St. Louis-based tech services company World Wide Technology agrees to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in an all-cash deal valuing Softchoice at ~CA$1.8B  —  One last mega-deal closed out an eventful 2024.  —  On Tuesday, World Wide Technology (WWT), a tech services company based in St. Louis …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Researchers find 4.5M “stars” on GitHub repos they suspect are fake; in July, Check Point found a network of inauthentic users starring repos containing malware  —  GitHub has a problem with inauthentic “stars” used to artificially inflate the popularity of scam …
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
The US arrests a US Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, who sold sensitive customer call records stolen from AT&T and Verizon in the Snowflake hack  —  Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m …
Kanishka Singh / Reuters:
The US DOJ files a complaint and announces a civil enforcement action against fintech startup Dave and CEO Jason Wilk, replacing an FTC complaint from November  —  The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint and announced a civil enforcement action on Monday against financial technology company Dave Inc …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Alibaba cuts prices on its visual language model Qwen-VL by up to 85%, after cutting Qwen prices by as much as 97% in May, amid growing AI competition in China  —  Alibaba is cutting prices on its large language models by up to 85%, the Chinese tech giant announced Tuesday.
New York Times:
An investigation details how predatory men engage in the grooming of child influencers on Instagram under the guise of working as social media professionals  —  Photographers and other men offer to build online followings for young girls, but some are pedophiles who work with parents to sexualize them.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payments network, providing relief to Google Pay and PhonePe  —  India has once again pushed back a contentious plan to limit big technology companies' control of the nation's digital payments system …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
Codegen:
Ship with AI: The Future of Coding is Here  —  Use natural language in Slack to trigger real PRs, docs, dashboards, infra & more.  Codegen connects GitHub, Linear, Notion, and beyond.
Zoho:
How AI is redefining BGV inside Zoho Recruit  —  Background checks still rely on manual document reviews, repetitive data entry, and back-and-forth emails.  The process works, but it's slow, error-prone …
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

Lenny's Podcast:
How to build a team that can "take a punch": A playbook for building resilient, high-performing teams | Hilary Gridley (Head of Core Product, Whoop)
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.
Invest Like the Best:
Dinakar Singh - A Father's Call To Action
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Omnibus 06/09
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Talk Show With John Gruber:
'Live From WWDC 2025', With Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel
The director's commentary track for Daring Fireball. Long digressions on Apple, technology, design, movies, and more.
Subscribe to The Talk Show With John Gruber.
Hard Fork:
Meta Bets on Scale + Apple's A.I. Struggles + Listeners on Job Automation
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
How Chris Degnan Built Snowflake's Sales Org From Scratch
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:40 PM ET, January 1, 2025.

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

Reuters: