Techmeme
January 28, 2025, 7:50 PM

Top News

Hayden Field / CNBC:
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Gov, built for US government use, and says 90K+ government employees have generated 18M+ prompts within ChatGPT since the start of 2024  —  OpenAI on Tuesday announced its biggest product launch since its enterprise rollout.  It's called ChatGPT Gov and was built specifically for U.S. government use.
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researchers detail two Apple silicon side-channel attacks that could leak secrets: SLAP, affecting M2, A15, and newer chips, and FLOP, affecting M3, M4, and A17  —  Apple-designed chips powering Macs, iPhones, and iPads contain two newly discovered vulnerabilities that leak credit card information …
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Doc: Google's maps unit reclassified the US as a “sensitive country”, reserved for states with strict governments or border disputes, after Trump's map changes  —  Google's maps division on Monday reclassified the U.S. as a “sensitive country,” a designation it reserves for states …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
X announces X Money Account, a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments service with Visa as its launch partner, debuting “later this year”  —  Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday announced the launch of a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments services provided by Visa.
Vlad Savov / Bloomberg:
Sam Altman says DeepSeek's R1 is an “impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price” and OpenAI “will pull up some releases”  —  OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman welcomed the debut of DeepSeek's R1 model in a post on X late on Monday.
@yishan:
Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Sources: the highest ranks of the US Office of Personnel Management now include former employees of Elon Musk's companies, including xAI and the Boring Company  —  Sources tell WIRED that the OPM's top layers of management now include individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir.
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
DeepSeek challenges the “bigger is better” narrative driving the AI arms race in recent years and suggests that we may see more investment into smaller startups  —  A new A.I. model, released by a scrappy Chinese upstart, has rocked Silicon Valley and upended several fundamental assumptions about A.I. progress.
Bloomberg:
Victoria Song / The Verge:
Garmin smartwatch users report their devices are bricking after starting any activity that uses GPS; Garmin says it is looking into the issue  —  It's not just you.  Several users are reporting their watches are crashing while displaying the ‘blue triangle of death.’  —  It's not just you.
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
An ex-OpenAI safety researcher says he's “terrified” by AI development's pace and that labs racing to AGI can cut corners on alignment, pushing all to speed up  —  Steven Adler expresses concern industry taking ‘very risky gamble’ and raises doubts about future of humanity
Bloomberg:
The UK CMA provisionally finds that competition in the cloud services market isn't working for consumers; AWS and Azure each control ~40% of the UK market  —  - CMA publishes provisional views in cloud services study  — Intervention comes as UK government seeks to spur growth
Wall Street Journal:
A profile of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, a math geek who in 2015 founded hedge fund High-Flyer and who some compare to quant investing pioneer Jim Simons  —  The Chinese engineer built the AI company after founding a successful hedge-fund  —  Some call him China's Sam Altman.
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch:
Fusion reactor startup Helion, which has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028, raised a $425M Series F, valuing the company at $5.245B  —  Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion.  The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Arm China picks Chen Feng, an ex-executive at China-based chipmaker Rockchip Electronics, as its CEO; Liu Renchen and Eric Chen will resign as co-CEOs  —  - SoftBank-backed unit taps former Rockchip executive Chen Feng  — Chip designer's China arm navigating global tech protectionism
Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET:
Block introduces an on-device, open-source AI agent called Goose, which allows developers to choose their preferred LLM to automate engineering tasks  —  Whether for developer needs or mundane tasks, the artificial intelligence (AI) tide appears to be turning in favor of open-source solutions.
Jem Aswad / Variety:
Spotify says it paid out a record $10B to the music industry in 2024, up from a then-record $9B in 2023, taking its total to nearly $60B since its 2006 founding  —  Spotify paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 — some $1 billion more than last year, the previous record …

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Benjamin Breen / Res Obscura:
Marques Brownlee / Marques Brownlee on YouTube:
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Bloomberg:
Reece Rogers / Wired:
Kif Leswing / CNBC: