Techmeme
December 12, 2024, 4:10 PM

Top News

Victoria Song / The Verge:
Google unveils Android XR, a mixed reality OS with Gemini built in for headsets and smart glasses, and plans a 2025 launch with Samsung's Project Moohan headset  —  I demoed Google's new Android XR platform, Samsung's Project Moohan, and prototype smart glasses.  I felt as close to Tony Stark in a controlled demo as I'll ever be.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Hands-on with Samsung's Project Moohan headset: lighter than the Vision Pro, Android XR is highly reminiscent of visionOS, Gemini is the killer app, and more  —  - Google aims to mimic phone success with Android XR software  — Samsung headset coming next year with Vision Pro-like features
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Gemini 2.0 Flash LLM early impressions: spatial reasoning performance is impressive, and its new streaming API is one of those “we live in the future” moments  —  Huge announcment from Google this morning: Introducing Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to roll out its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip as part of Apple TV and HomePod mini updates in 2025, and in iPhones later in the year  —  - Company developing Proxima chip in separate move from modems  — New component will be part of Apple TV box and HomePod updates
Wall Street Journal:
Meta donates $1M to President-elect Trump's inaugural fund; sources say Mark Zuckerberg gifted Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to Trump at Mar-a-Lago on November 27  —  President-elect had blasted the tech tycoon during the presidential campaign, but ties have been improving
Avram Piltch / Tom's Hardware:
Microsoft's new version of Recall appears to still capture sensitive data like credit card numbers, even with the “sensitive information” filter enabled  —  Despite promising to filter personal data out, Recall still captures it. … The new version of Recall encrypts the screens …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Telefónica, one of the world's largest carriers, plans to preinstall the Epic Games Store on every new compatible Android phone it sells, including Samsung's  —  Telefónica, one of the largest carriers in the world serving the UK, Spain, Germany, and Latin America with the O2 …
Nic Fildes / Financial Times:
Australia plans a levy on tech companies like Meta with $250M+ in local revenue to force them to pay publishers for journalism, after Meta quit the prior deal  —  Move is designed to close loophole after Meta walked away from existing deal to use media content
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI releases Advanced Voice Mode with vision for ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users, letting them share their screen or video from phone cameras with ChatGPT  —  OpenAI has finally released the real-time video capabilities for ChatGPT that it demoed nearly seven months ago.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
Microsoft says Russia-backed hacking group Secret Blizzard targeted Ukraine's military using other cybercriminals' tools, “to make attribution more difficult”  —  A Russian-government backed hacking group targeted Ukraine's military using tools and infrastructure developed by cybercriminals, according to new research.
Matt Yoder / Awful Announcing:
YouTube tells customers that the monthly price for YouTube TV's base plan will jump from $73 to $83 in January 2025, after raising it from $65 to $73 in 2023  —  Streaming services became a popular alternative to cable and satellite television because they were available for far cheaper with consumer-friendly options.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Threads is testing collections of profiles to follow, curated by a “handful of Threads community leaders”, built around topics like fashion, food, and books  —  Meta's Threads is getting another feature seemingly inspired by Bluesky: curated groups of accounts that you can follow all at once.
Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal:
Current and former Netflix staff say the company has walked back its parental-leave benefits, after shifting its focus from subscriber growth to profitability  —  Employees worry the pullback and other new restrictions mean the entertainment giant is losing the identity that fueled its success
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Harvard releases a high-quality dataset of nearly 1M public-domain books, created with funding from Microsoft and OpenAI, that anyone can use to train AI tools  —  The project's leader says that allowing everyone to access the collection of public-domain books will help “level the playing field” in the AI industry.
SemiAnalysis:
A deep dive into AI scaling laws, including an outline of the old pre-training scaling trend and the new scaling trends for post-training and inference time  —  In our pursuit of becoming a better full service research firm, we've moved off Substack.  For any questions please read https://semianalysis.com/faq/ #substack
James Hunt / The Block:
Layer 1 blockchain project Avalanche raised $250M via a locked token sale co-led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi, to support its Avalanche9000 upgrade  —  - Layer 1 blockchain project Avalanche has raised $250 million in a locked token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital.
Erin Griffith / New York Times:
An interview with Evan Williams on his new app Mozi, which raised $6M and aims to foster in-person connections as a return to social media's original intention  —  Evan Williams's new app, Mozi, is aimed at fostering in-real-life connections.Carolyn Fong for The New York Times
More: Ev WilliamsBluesky: @timfernholz and @ering
Threads: @jrdorkin and @crumbler
TechCrunch:
Sources: Yahoo laid off or lost through attrition 40 to 50 people from its 200-strong cybersecurity team in 2024, as it outsources its “red team” under new CTO  —  Zack Whittaker Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai  —  Yahoo laid off around 25% of its cybersecurity team …
Julia Jacobs / New York Times:
The NLRB issues a complaint against Netflix's Love Is Blind and classifies its contestants as employees, a case that could have ripple effects across reality TV  —  The National Labor Relations Board's case against the Netflix hit could have ripple effects across the reality TV industry.
George Winslow / Tv Technology:
The FCC opens all 1,200 megahertz of the 6GHz band for unlicensed use by very-low-power devices, citing growth in wearables, AR/VR, and other cutting-edge tech  —  The move, which the agency says will spur innovation, had been opposed by the NAB for its potential impact on newsgathering
Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Sources: in the past year, US chip companies have lobbied the US government against a China sales ban, citing billions in lost revenue, shocking US officials  —  An intense struggle has unfolded in Washington between companies and officials over where to draw the line on selling technology to China.
More: IER

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John Gruber / Daring Fireball:
Muyao Shen / Bloomberg: