Techmeme
January 4, 2025, 1:30 PM

Top News

Mike Allen / Axios:
Sources: Tim Cook will personally donate $1M to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural committee in the spirit of unity; Apple is not expected to donate  —  The company is not expected to give.  — Cook, with a consistent presence in Washington, has made it clear over the years …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
After a backlash, Meta says newly viral AI-generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram were created in 2023 in “an early experiment”, and it is deleting them  —  Earlier this week, Meta executive Connor Hayes told the Financial Times that the company is going to roll …
Aroon Deep / The Hindu:
India releases the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, meant to enforce the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, for public comments  —  The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, lay out the tentative terms of enforcing the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which was passed in Parliament in 2023
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Samsung and Google plan to enable Eclipsa Audio, a new open-source 3D audio standard, on some YouTube videos later in 2025 via Samsung's 2025 TVs and soundbars  —  Samsung and Google are ready to push a new standard, Eclipsa Audio. … Over the years, Samsung notably hasn't supported Dolby Vision HDR …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft says it is on track to invest ~$80B in FY 2025 to build out datacenters to train AI and deploy AI and cloud apps, with 50%+ of the spending in the US  —  Microsoft expects to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 on the construction of data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads …
Max Woolf / Max Woolf's Blog:
In a test, iteratively asking Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write better code” improved the code's features and speed, but aggressive prompt engineering introduced bugs  —  In November 2023, after OpenAI added the ability for ChatGPT to generate images from DALL-E 3 within the ChatGPT web interface …
Eli Tan / New York Times:
Religious leaders are experimenting with AI, spurring an industry of faith-based tech companies that offer AI tools to do theological research and write sermons  —  Rabbi Josh Fixler at Congregation Emanu El in Houston worked with a data scientist to create his experimental “Rabbi Bot.”

Sponsor Posts

TELUS Digital:
See how your customer experience priorities compare  —  TELUS Digital surveyed leaders about the tech they're investing in, the KPIs they're tracking and their plans for outsourcing.  Get the results.  No form fill required!
Intel:
Intel Delivers powerful CPUs for AI and Networking  —  With the onset of AI, businesses demand powerful and efficient CPUs.  Explore new Intel Xeon 6 processors, for the broadest set of workloads with leadership performance and lower TCO.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign at Kenya's Digital Trust Forum 2025 organized by Evrotrust and Geda  —  Kenyan businesses and government services are adapting to digital alternatives to explore opportunities in the nation's newly launched ten-year Digital Master Plan.
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:
How Tariffs Might Impact Tech
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe to Techmeme Ride Home.
Decoder with Nilay Patel:
What AI anime memes tell us about the future of art and humanity
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
Subscribe to Decoder with Nilay Patel.
Great Chat:
Battle of the startup cities
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
The Logan Bartlett Show:
Zach Weinberg (Co-Founder & CEO, Curie.Bio) on The Tariff Trap, Self-Inflicted Recession Risk, and Open AI's Fundraise
A podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett, an investor at Redpoint Ventures, covering tech with industry insiders.
Subscribe to The Logan Bartlett Show.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Trump vs The Media, Round 2, with Sara Fischer
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:
Graphite's Merrill Lutsky on Revolutionizing Code Review for the AI Era
A podcast from Accel about how companies are built, from the people doing the building.
Subscribe to Spotlight On.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:30 PM ET, January 4, 2025.

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

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Molly White / Citation Needed:

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
More: Reuters and The Information
Bluesky: @siscoX: @davidclinchnews and @unusual_whalesLinkedIn: Paul MelcherForums: Slashdot
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Alexandra S. Levine / Bloomberg:
Victoria Song / The Verge: