Techmeme
January 4, 2024, 11:50 AM

Top News

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils a Copilot keyboard key, shipping in new PCs and laptops from its partners, the first major change to the PC keyboard layout in nearly 30 years  —  Microsoft wants 2024 to be “the year of the AI PC,” and it's kicking things off with a significant change to the keyboard on new laptops and PCs.
Sarah Martin / The Guardian:
The CEO of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse, introduced to investors in 2021, doesn't appear to exist; Chainalysis: consumers lost $1.3B to HyperVerse in 2022  —  Exclusive: Steven Reece Lewis was introduced to investors with an impressive list of qualifications and achievements, but no organisation cited can find any record of him
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
LastPass now requires users to set a master password with a minimum of 12 characters, after enforcing the requirement for new accounts or resets in April 2023  —  LastPass notified customers today that they are now required to use complex master passwords with a minimum of 12 characters to increase their accounts' security.
Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Perplexity, which offers an AI-based “answer engine” with ~10M MAUs to compete with Google, raised $74M at a $520M valuation from IVP, Jeff Bezos, and others  —  Perplexity, with a fraction of Google's users, raised the largest sum by an internet search startup in recent years
Allison Johnson / The Verge:
Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2, an update to the XR2 Gen 2 used in Meta's Quest 3, offering 4.3K resolution at 90fps per eye, up from 3K per eye  —  The new chipset is designed as a step up from the XR2 Gen 2 in the Meta Quest 3, capable of rendering high-resolution visuals like the ones promised by Apple's Vision Pro.
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI offered some media companies as little as between $1M and $5M per year to license their news articles for use in model training, a tiny amount  —  OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles for use …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
In a letter to a group of victims of its October 2023 breach, 23andMe blames them, saying that “users negligently recycled and failed to update their passwords”  —  Facing more than 30 lawsuits from victims of its massive data breach, 23andMe is now deflecting the blame …
Alex Cranz / The Verge:
Dell announces the $1,299+ XPS 13, the $1,699+ XPS 14, replacing the XPS 13 Plus, and the $1,899+ XPS 16, offering Intel Core 7 and 9 and up to 4TB of storage  —  This might not be the biggest shake-up of the Dell XPS lineup ever, but between some bigger laptops and a total revamping of the XPS portfolio, it feels like a big deal.
Bloomberg:
Sources: TikTok aims to grow TikTok Shop US' merchandise volume tenfold to $17.5B in 2024 and plans to launch TikTok Shop in Latin America in the coming months  —  - ByeDance's video app is fast expanding beyond advertising … The 2024 merchandise volume goal for the US version of TikTok Shop …
The Information:
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
The White House awards $162M in federal grants to Arizona-based Microchip Technology to expand its Oregon and Colorado facilities, the second CHIPS Act award  —  The Biden administration said its second grant under a new program would help Microchip Technology expand its facilities in Oregon and Colorado.

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
Are you ready for the era of agentic AI?  —  Tech leaders are always talking about what's next, and right now, agentic AI is dominating the discourse.  Equip yourself with the info you need in this recorded webinar.
Tribe AI:
State of AI: Adoption, Challenges and Recommendations  —  Examining the current state of AI, the key challenges organizations face, and practical recommendations for utilizing AI integration alongside other best practices.
Zoho:
Introducing captions, dynamic cross-references, table of tables and figures, and more in Zoho Writer  —  Easily ensure that your documents—reports, manuals, research papers, or thesis—are neatly structured …
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

Techmeme Ride Home:
Instagram iPad App But For REAL This Time?
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
The Social Radars:
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel (Part 3)
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
NYT publisher AG Sulzberger on Trump, OpenAi and the economy
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Spotlight On:
Corelight's Brian Dye on What He's Learned About Scaling
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
Invest Like the Best:
Michael Ovitz - Turning Potential into Prominence
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
UiPath CEO Daniel Dines on AI agents replacing our jobs
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:50 AM ET, January 4, 2024.

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

Nicole Carpenter / Polygon:
Paul Sandle / Reuters:

Earlier Picks

Macauley Peterson / Blockworks:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Todd Shields / Bloomberg:
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Leo Schwartz / Fortune: