Techmeme
January 4, 2025, 2:00 PM

Top News

Mike Allen / Axios:
Sources: Tim Cook will personally donate $1M to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee in the spirit of unity; Apple is not expected to donate  —  The company is not expected to give.  — Cook, with a consistent presence in Washington, has made it clear over the years …
Aroon Deep / The Hindu:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
After a backlash, Meta says newly viral AI-generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram were created in 2023 in “an early experiment”, and it is deleting them  —  Earlier this week, Meta executive Connor Hayes told the Financial Times that the company is going to roll …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Samsung and Google plan to enable Eclipsa Audio, a new open-source 3D audio standard, on some YouTube videos later in 2025 via Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars  —  Samsung and Google are ready to push a new standard, Eclipsa Audio. … Over the years, Samsung notably hasn't supported Dolby Vision HDR …
Max Woolf / Max Woolf's Blog:
In a test, iteratively asking Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write better code” improved the code's features and speed, but aggressive prompt engineering introduced bugs  —  In November 2023, after OpenAI added the ability for ChatGPT to generate images from DALL-E 3 within the ChatGPT web interface …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it is on track to invest ~$80B in FY 2025 to build out datacenters to train AI and deploy AI and cloud apps, with 50%+ of the spending in the US  —  Microsoft expects to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 on the construction of data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads …
Eli Tan / New York Times:
Religious leaders are experimenting with AI, spurring an industry of faith-based tech companies that offer AI tools to do theological research and write sermons  —  Rabbi Josh Fixler at Congregation Emanu El in Houston worked with a data scientist to create his experimental “Rabbi Bot.”
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
The US sanctions Beijing-based cybersecurity company Integrity Technology Group over its alleged links to attacks by China-backed hacking group Flax Typhoon  —  The U.S. government has sanctioned a Beijing-based cybersecurity company over its alleged links to a China government-backed hacking group, tracked as Flax Typhoon.
The Block:
The GMCI Meme index, which tracks leading memecoins by market cap, delivered 320% returns in 2024, outpacing AI at 91% and the top 30 cryptocurrencies at 88%  —  - The GMCI Meme index represents broader market trends rather than specific token performance.  — The following is an excerpt …

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More News

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:

Earlier Picks

Molly White / Citation Needed:
Bloomberg:
More: Reuters and The Information
Bluesky: @siscoX: @davidclinchnews and @unusual_whalesLinkedIn: Paul MelcherForums: Slashdot
Victoria Song / The Verge: