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January 23, 2025, 4:25 PM
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Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
OpenAI releases a “research preview” of its Operator AI agent that can automate web-based tasks, launching in the US to subscribers of the $200/month Pro tier  —  OpenAI is releasing a “research preview” of an AI agent called Operator that can “go to the web to perform tasks for you,” according to a blog post.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI partners with DoorDash, Instacart, Priceline, StubHub, and Uber to ensure that Operator respects these businesses' terms of service agreements  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kicked off this year by saying in a blog post that 2025 would be big for AI agents, tools that can automate tasks and take actions on your behalf.
Every:
Hands-on with Operator: limited in what it can browse, can perform repetitive workflows, and can do lengthy tasks on its own with minimal prompting
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Researchers detail Subaru's now-fixed web vulnerabilities that would've let them unlock and start millions of Subarus via Starlink in the US, Canada, and Japan  —  Now-fixed web bugs allowed hackers to remotely unlock and start millions of Subarus.  More disturbingly, they could also access …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI were arguing over Microsoft's ability to fulfill OpenAI's computing needs, in the months leading up to the Stargate announcement  —  The partnership that launched the AI boom has been strained by disagreements over computing resources
The Information:
Sources: Sam Altman told some colleagues that OpenAI and SoftBank will each commit $19B to Stargate, and OpenAI would effectively hold a 40% interest in the JV
Reuters:
Trump signs an EO to create a cryptocurrency working group, which is expected to advise on digital asset policy, help establish a bitcoin reserve, and more  —  U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order to create a cryptocurrency working group, fulfilling a campaign promise …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
The UK CMA opens investigations into Apple's and Google's mobile ecosystems, including OSes, app stores, and browsers, to see the impact on users and businesses  —  LONDON — Britain's competition regulator on Thursday launched an investigation into Apple and Google's huge mobile ecosystems …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Google rolls out the first public beta of Android 16 for Pixel devices, introducing Live Updates, a limited version of Apple's Live Activities, and more  —  Android 16's first public beta will start rolling out later today, bringing with it dynamic lockscreen notifications for ride-sharing and food delivery …
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Epic launches a free games program on mobile and promises to pay the Apple Core Technology Fee for participants in the program on iOS for one year  —  Epic Games is adding nearly 20 third-party games onto its mobile app store worldwide on Android and in the European Union on iOS and launching …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
Q&A with former CISA Director Jen Easterly, appointed in 2021, on leaving the agency, Donald Trump, China's Salt Typhoon, Russia, unfinished business, and more  —  Chinese hacks, rampant ransomware, and Donald Trump's budget cuts all threaten US security.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
CAIS and Scale AI release “Humanity's Last Exam”, which they claim is the hardest- AI test yet, consisting of ~3,000 multiple-choice and short answer questions  —  If you're looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans …
Bloomberg:
ByteDance board member Bill Ford says ByteDance is exploring alternatives to selling TikTok US, including a change to local control to comply with the US law  —  - Firm's options with Trump team include change of control  — Bill Ford runs General Atlantic, which owns stake in ByteDance
Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg:
France says David Balland, a co-founder of French crypto wallet startup Ledger, was kidnapped on January 21 and freed on January 22 after a police operation  —  - A crypto ransom has been partly paid, traced and seized  — Balland's partner was also kidnapped and released on Thursday
Reuters:
ByteDance debuts Doubao-1.5-pro, claiming its latest flagship AI model outperforms OpenAI's o1 in AIME benchmarks, joining DeepSeek in China's AI reasoning push  —  TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model aimed at challenging Microsoft-backed OpenAI's …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google acquihires “some of the HTC VIVE engineering team” in Taiwan with “a proven track record in VR” for $250M in cash, to “accelerate” Android XR development  —  To “accelerate” Android XR development, Google announced this evening that it …
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: India's technology ministry asked Apple, Google, and other smartphone makers to provide Indians direct access to the state-backed GOV.in app store  —  India is trying to pry open the doors of the world's biggest app stores, setting up a likely clash with Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc …
Bloomberg:
At Davos, Trump blasts EU for targeting Apple, Google, and Meta, describing regulatory cases as “a form of taxation”, and references Apple's €13B Irish tax bill  —  - Comments mark start of clash between Trump, EU over tech  — Apple lost case last year over $14.4 billion Irish tax bill
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Perplexity launches Perplexity Assistant in its Android app, which can take “multi-app actions” like hailing a ride, initially free for users in 15 languages  —  AI-powered search engine Perplexity has launched an “agent,” of sorts, called Perplexity Assistant …
Andy Chalk / PC Gamer:
A GDC survey of 3,000+ developers: 80% are currently making PC games, up from 66% in 2024, compared to 38% for the PlayStation 5 and 34% for the Xbox Series X/S  —  Interest in PC game development is higher than ever.  —  It's kind of funny to look back on all the times PC gaming has been declared dead …
New York Times:
How Ross Ulbricht's allies, including crypto investors, libertarian politicians, and his mother Lyn Ulbricht, persuaded Trump to pardon the Silk Road founder  —  Libertarian and crypto allies of Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for distributing drugs on his Silk Road website …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Brave Search rolls out Rerank to let users boost or downgrade domains from their search results through thumbs up or thumbs down buttons  —  Brave Search has introduced a new feature called Rerank, which allows users to define search results ordering preferences and set specific sites rank higher.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:25 PM ET, January 23, 2025.

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From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Sources: WaPo is working on an initiative to publish opinion articles from other US papers, writers on Substack, and eventually nonprofessional writers

John Koblin / New York Times:
Sony says new episodes of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune will be available on Hulu and Peacock the day after they broadcast on TV, starting in September

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
Prime Video names Nicole Clemens, ex-president of Paramount Television Studios, as VP and head of international originals for Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios

More News

Devindra Hardawar / Engadget:
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review: fastest Blender benchmark score ever, DLSS4 frame generation works well, and good cooling but very expensive and power hungry
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI fixes issues that caused a major ChatGPT outage and downtime for its API on January 23, after disruptions in December 2024

Earlier Picks

Muyao Shen / Bloomberg:
Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation back Etherealize, a NYC-based startup to market Ethereum to financial firms, as ether lags behind bitcoin's gains
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Neko Health, a startup co-founded by Daniel Ek that offers AI-based full-body scans, raised a $260M Series B led by Lightspeed, sources say at a $1.7B valuation
Patrick G. Eddington / Cato Institute:
A US district judge rules that the FBI's warrantless “backdoor” searches of FISA's Section 702 databases violate the Fourth Amendment
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