Techmeme
January 4, 2024, 1:55 PM

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.
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.
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
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
Wall Street Journal:
As Google restricts third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users, marketers, adtech companies, and publishers say Google has not done enough to prepare the market  —  Search giant plans to remove a technology seen as critical to the digital-ad industry  —  Google is going forward …
Liam Proven / The Register:
Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, who devised nine programming languages and won the Turing Award in 1984, dies at 89  —  Evangelist of lean software and devisor of 9 programming languages and an OS was 89  —  OBIT Swiss computer scientist Professor Niklaus Wirth died …
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.
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 Ultra 7 and 9 and up to a 4TB SSD  —  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.
The Information:
Sources: OpenAI offered some media companies $1M to $5M per year to license their news articles for AI model training, a tiny amount even for small publishers  —  OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles for use …
Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg:
The US NLRB rules that Alphabet illegally refused to negotiate with a group of YouTube Music contract workers employed by Cognizant after they voted to unionize  —  - YouTube Music staff voted to join Alphabet union last year  — Google to appeal, says workers are employees of Cognizant
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.
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Memo: OpenAI plans to launch its GPT store next week; the store was originally slated to open in November, but it was delayed after OpenAI's leadership crisis  —  OpenAI is planning to launch its “GPT store” next week, according to a memo to developers seen by The Information.
Paul Sandle / Reuters:
Layered Reality announces Elvis Evolution, an AI, AR, and holographic-based show, launching in London in 2024 before traveling to Las Vegas, Tokyo, and Berlin  —  Elvis Presley fans who missed out on seeing their hero when he was alive will be able to catch a glimpse of the King …
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 …

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