Google's video demo of Gemini's multimodal AI capabilities wasn't carried out in real time or in voice; the model was shown still images and given text prompts
The tech giant's latest AI model is only marginally better than the one from OpenAI that's been out for eight months.
The US and the UK accuse Russia's FSB of orchestrating a global hacking campaign since 2015 to interfere in UK elections and target US energy networks and spies
The cyberattacks also allegedly took aim at U.S. energy networks and American spies — LONDON—The U.S. and U.K. governments …
Sources: in a first, Apple is working with China's BYD to move iPad product development to Vietnam, with test production set to begin around mid-February 2024
China's BYD helps American giant with shift to alternative tech hubs — Vietnam is emerging as an increasingly important production hub …
Sources: Apple and its suppliers aim to make 50M+ iPhones annually in India in two to three years, which would account for a quarter of global iPhone production
Supplier Foxconn plans to build more factories and give India a production role once limited mostly to China
Sources: Tata plans to build one of India's largest iPhone plants, employing 50,000 workers within two years, and expects operations to begin in 12 to 18 months
- New plant would speed up Apple's diversification beyond China — Tata wants more Apple business after buying one iPhone factory
How Meta addressed the technical challenges of developing E2EE for Messenger, including creating an encrypted storage protocol and re-architecting chat features
Mark Zuckerberg personally promised that the privacy feature would launch by default on Messenger and Instagram chat.
A researcher says a years-old Bluetooth authentication flaw lets attackers inject keystrokes to run arbitrary commands on Apple, Android, and some Linux devices
Issue has been around since at least 2012 — A years-old Bluetooth authentication bypass vulnerability allows miscreants to connect to Apple …
The UK CMA is considering an antitrust investigation into Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership, and is taking comments until January 3 before making a decision
- CMA seeking views on whether the relationship should be probed — Move is less than two months since watchdog cleared Activision
A look at Grok responses Elon Musk has highlighted on X shows an AI chatbot whose unfunny, “edgy”, pointlessly offensive humor feels forced and try-hard
Fine. Let's talk about xAI, which is getting funded to the tune of $1 billion or whatever.
X rolls out xAI's snarky, “anti-woke” chatbot Grok to X Premium+ users; X CEO Linda Yaccarino describes Grok as “the ultimate ride or die”
😂😂😂 [embedded post] X: @x : ok buckle up everyone access to @grok is now rolling out to Premium+ subscribers in the US over the next week. the longer you've been a subscriber, the sooner you can grok....
Users say Google's Gemini Pro is loath to comment on potentially controversial news topics, fails to get basic facts right, and struggles with some coding tasks
Mobile network companies have backed themselves into a corner by racing to roll out 5G, taking on piles of debt with few returns to show for their investments
Networks spent years telling us that 5G would change everything. But the flashiest use cases are nowhere to be found …
India's powerful and independent labor movement presents a crucial complicating factor for Apple in its ambitions to diversify its production away from China
Megha Mandavia / Wall Street Journal :
23andMe changed its TOS to prevent lawsuits days after its October data breach; to opt out, customers must email the company that they disagree within 30 days
Days after a data breach allowed hackers to steal 6.9 million 23andMe users' personal details, the genetic testing company changed …
Source: the US FTC is examining the nature of Microsoft's investment in OpenAI and whether it violates antitrust laws
- The agency hasn't opened a formal probe into Microsoft-OpenAI — Microsoft didn't report deal to FTC due to non-profit status
Google launches NotebookLM, an “AI-first notebook” demoed at I/O 2023, available in early access since July 2023, and now powered by Gemini Pro, in the US
Abner Li / 9to5Google :
How author Steven Johnson, now a Google employee for over a year, helped create NotebookLM, which lets writers extract key themes from their research material
Author Steven Johnson helped Google create an app that can analyze a writer's research material and help them extract and explore the key themes.
A US federal judge rules Binance founder Changpeng Zhao cannot return to the UAE before his sentencing, set for February 2024, after his release on a $175M bond
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk :
A UK class action lawsuit against Vodafone, EE, Three UK, and O2, filed last week, accuses them of overcharging ~4.8M customers over 16 years and seeks £3.3B
Vodafone, EE, Three and O2 are accused of levying ‘loyalty penalties’ on customers — The biggest UK mobile phone operators …
Meta rolls out tags on Threads, offering support for multiple words and spaces, and no # symbol; posts can only have one tag and the tag view is the search view
I have zero interest in joining online groups of strangers linked by a keyword in a timestream. Adam Mosseri / @mosseri : With tags we're trying something simple and slightly new. No # marks, support...
Spotify says CFO Paul Vogel plans to leave on March 31, 2024, and launches a search for a successor; Daniel Ek wants a CFO “with a different mix of experiences”
now he, too, is out of a job Podnews : Spotify's CFO Paul Vogel quits (with $12.6mn) South China Morning Post : Spotify's CFO to leave in another executive departure as major job cuts hit upper manage...
Meta announces Purple Llama, an initiative to promote responsible AI development by offering tools and evaluations for safely building open generative AI models
Anthropic researchers find adding pleas to a prompt that tell its Claude 2 model not to be biased could reduce discrimination based on race, gender, and more
The problem of alignment is an important one when you're setting AI models up to make decisions in matters of finance and health.
TikTok forms a task force to tackle hate speech and plans to open its research API to civil society groups, after complaints about viral Israel-Hamas war videos
Kaya Yurieff / The Information :
Sources: Montenegro Justice Minister Andrej Milovic has privately said he plans to extradite Do Kwon to the US rather than South Korea to face criminal charges
Microsoft says Russia-aligned propagandists duped at least seven Western celebrities via Cameo into recording videos used to attack Ukraine's President Zelensky
Wall Street Journal :
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner says the “goal in firing Sam [Altman] was to strengthen OpenAI”, but declines to say why she and others voted to fire him
Wall Street Journal :
Amazon sues an “international fraud organization” for allegedly stealing millions of dollars in merchandise from the company through a series of refund scams
- Shoppers took gaming consoles, smartphones, tires and gold — Scammers live in US, five other countries, according to suit
Amazon tests a $9.99/month grocery subscription service for Prime members, offering unlimited Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh grocery delivery on orders over $35
Annie Palmer / CNBC :
Apple's guidelines now say that US law enforcement can obtain a push notification token's associated Apple ID “with a subpoena”; Google requires a court order
A countdown timer viewable only on the Threads.net home page in EU countries indicates the service will start rolling out to EU users on December 14
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge :
A US judge sentences Gene Levoff, the ex-Apple lawyer who pled guilty to insider trading from 2011 to 2016, to four years of probation; Apple fired him in 2018
Chris Dolmetsch / Bloomberg :
Blackstone and Digital Realty launch a joint venture to spend $7B developing 10 data centers across four campuses in Frankfurt, Paris, and Northern Virginia
Peter Grant / Wall Street Journal :
Block opens preorders for its self-custodial Bitcoin hardware wallet Bitkey in 95+ countries, coming to the US in early 2024 for $150, after a beta in June 2023
Ben Weiss / Fortune :
Toronto-based ContactMonkey, which offers an internal communications tool that integrates with Outlook, Gmail, and more, raised a $55M Series A led by Updata
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
A look at Alibaba's decline since China halted Ant's IPO in 2020, losing its online shopping dominance to rival PDD last week, and roadblocks in revival plans
Wall Street Journal : X: @newley X: Newley Purnell / @newley : Chinese internet titan Alibaba once seemed invincible. Now, it is stuck in a slump. By @lizalinwsj @raffaelehuang https://www.wsj.com/.....
Abu Dhabi-based AI company G42 plans to cut ties with Chinese hardware suppliers in favor of US counterparts, saying “we cannot work with both sides”
Financial Times :
Amazon tells customers that the company plans to stop accepting Venmo as a payment method on January 10, 2024, after rolling out Venmo support in October 2022
Micron strikes a labor deal to hire 3,700 union workers for its $15B chip plant in Boise, Idaho, potentially giving the company an edge for federal chip funds
Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg :
Sources: Ganesh Venkataramanan, who led Tesla's Dojo supercomputer project for five years, left Tesla in November; Tesla executive Peter Bannon now leads Dojo
Seattle-based Rhythms, which plans to use AI to analyze companies' patterns, such as monthly reviews and weekly meetings, comes out of stealth with a $26M seed
Microsoft announces a major security leadership reshuffle as part of its Secure Future Initiative, replacing Bret Arsenault with Igor Tsyganskiy as Global CISO
Q&A with IBM CEO Arvind Krishna on AI's business uses, Biden's EO, rolling out WatsonX in July 2023, growing IBM's AI business, falling behind in AI, and more
and IBM's biggest mistake. …
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
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.