Techmeme
January 29, 2025, 11:10 AM

Top News

Financial Times:
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft and OpenAI are investigating whether a DeepSeek-linked group obtained a large amount of data from OpenAI's API in an unauthorized manner  —  Microsoft's security researchers in the fall observed individuals they believe may be linked to DeepSeek exfiltrating a large amount …
Jackie Davalos / Bloomberg:
Eduardo Baptista / Reuters:
Alibaba releases Qwen 2.5-Max, an AI model that the company's cloud unit claims “outperforms” GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Llama-3.1-405B “almost across the board”  —  Chinese tech company Alibaba (9988.HK) on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model …
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Sources: the US Office of Personnel Management's highest ranks are now controlled by former employees of Elon Musk's companies, like 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.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple has been working with SpaceX and T-Mobile to add Starlink support from iOS 18.3; T-Mobile is testing it with some users, exclusively for texting  —  - T-Mobile begins pushing offering in limited beta test to users  —  Apple Inc. has been secretly working with SpaceX …
New York Times:
Meta executives say DeepSeek's breakthrough shows that upstarts now have a chance to innovate and compete with AI giants, vindicating its open-source strategy  —  The Silicon Valley giant was criticized for giving away its core A.I. technology two years ago for anyone to use.  Now that bet is having an impact.
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:
Google's maps unit reclassifies the US as a “sensitive country”, a designation 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 …
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Christopher Dring / Video Games Chronicle:
Ampere: users spent $465M on Microsoft games in December, making it the biggest publisher, ahead of EA's $366M; Call of Duty HQ had 38M MAUs in November 2024  —  NEARLY $0.5BN WAS SPENT ON XBOX GAMES ACROSS STEAM, PLAYSTATION AND XBOX IN DECEMBER  —  $465 million was spent on Microsoft games …
bellingcat:
A look at MrDeepFakes, a site with obscure ownership that hosts non-consensual deepfake porn, has close to 650K members, and gets millions of visits per month  —  This article is the result of a collaboration with German YouTube channel STRG_F.  You can watch their documentary here.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
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A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
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More News

Ryan Gallagher / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Ryan Knappenberger / Courthouse News Service:
More: Thurrott, 9to5Mac, MediaPost, and MLex
Bluesky: @quinnypig.comX: @balancecrafting, @jason_kint, and @vidushi_lawForums: r/apple
Jyoti Mann / Business Insider:
Cynthia Littleton / Variety:
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Dan Milmo / The Guardian: