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.
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.
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
Google debuts Gemini 2.0 and plans to test the model in search and AI Overviews, saying it enables “agents that can think, remember, plan, and even take action”
Company expects AI assistants will follow its users around the web — Google debuted a new version …
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
YouTube TV logo — Streaming services became a popular alternative to cable and satellite television because they were available …
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.
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
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 …
An interview with Google President of Android Ecosystem Sameer Samat on Android XR, why AI can make mixed reality work, Gemini, privacy concerns, and more
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
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
Binance and Circle partner to promote USDC; Binance plans to list more crypto trading pairs denominated in USDC and hold USDC for its own corporate treasury
- Circle faces increased challenges in the stablecoin market — Binance will support more USDC usage on its platform
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.
Google rolls out two updates to Android's unknown tracker alerts feature, letting users pause location updates from their phone and pinpoint unfamiliar trackers
Google is rolling out two new updates to its unknown tracker alerts feature that should make it easier for Android device owners …
GM pulling the plug on Cruise's robotaxi experiment in favor of “privately owned” driverless cars is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles
Eight years and $10 billion later, GM has decided to pull the plug on its grand robotaxi experiment.
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
Character.AI announces more parental controls and a separate LLM for users under 18, after two US lawsuits claimed its chatbots harmed young users
In an announcement today, Chatbot service Character.AI says it will soon be launching parental controls for teenage users …
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.
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
The Information: Apple this past summer canceled the development of a high-performance Mac chip to let some engineers in Israel work on its first AI server chip
Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu, in a piece today for The Information (paywalled up the wazoo, sadly), “Apple Is Working on AI Chip With Broadcom”:
Meta says it is “99% of the way” to resolving a global outage that hit Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, starting at approximately 12:40pm ET
Facebook: down — Bluesky: up up up with the workers Karissa Bell / @karissabe : Quite an outage for Meta... I can't remember the last time so many of its services were down more than an hour, must b...
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.
Amazon delayed the deployment of Microsoft 365 for its 1.5M employees for a year to resolve security concerns about Microsoft's Midnight Blizzard hack
- Companies teamed up to make sure cloud-based product is secure — Amazon employees were expected to receive software this year X: @mattmday and @seanmcginty . Forums: Slashdot X: Matt Day / @mattmda...
The crypto industry's impact on the 2024 US elections shows that crypto is a perfect anti-establishment technology for the turbulence and distrust of the 2020s
An anti-establishment technology for an anti-establishment age — For years, crypto skeptics have asked, What is this for? Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . Threads: @cwarzel Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo /...
Honda plans to dissolve a self-driving vehicle partnership with GM after GM announced plans to exit robotaxi development; Honda had invested $852M in Cruise
Shoya Okinaga / Nikkei Asia :
The EU's scrutiny of TikTok over the Romanian presidential election will be a litmus test for enforcing the DSA and should finally detail algorithmic influence
Investigations should finally shed light on how algorithms win votes and influence people
OpenAI says ChatGPT, API, and Sora traffic has largely recovered after a multi-hour outage, and that it is monitoring the situation to ensure full resolution
The website appears to be functioning normally again. Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac : ChatGPT down for some users; iOS 18.2 integration affected Stephen Schenck / Android Authority : ChatGPT is down, as O...
Sources: Nvidia added ~200 staff to its self-driving R&D team in Beijing and will end 2024 with ~4,000 staff in China, up from ~3,000 at the start of the year
India Startup Rebel Foods Raises Funds Ahead of Planned IPO — US-China Tech War Fuels Asia Boomtowns Built on AI, Chips
The NYT Tech Guild and its 600+ members reach a tentative deal with management on a contract enhancing job security, setting flexible hybrid schedules, and more
Katie Robertson / New York Times :
Adobe reports Q4 revenue up 11% YoY to $5.61B, vs. $5.54B est., Digital Media revenue up 12% YoY, and forecasts FY 2025 earnings below est.; ADBE drops 8%+
Brody Ford / Bloomberg :
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
Zürich-based robotics startup Anybotics raised a $60M Series B extension, taking the round, announced in May 2023, to $110M and its total funding to $130M
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch :
Gigs, which helps companies become mobile virtual network operators, raised a $73M Series B led by Ribbit Capital, after a $20M Series A in 2022
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch :
Stigg, which helps companies modernize their payment and billing infrastructure, raised a $17.5M Series A led by Red Dot, taking its total funding to $24M
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE :
Berlin-based Upvest, which offers an API for stock trading and other financial services to N26, Revolut, and others, raised a €100M Series C led by Hedosophia
which powers stock trading on Revolut, N26, Bunq — secures €100M Vigneshwar Ravichandran / Silicon Canals : Berlin-based fintech firm Upvest secures €100M from Hedosophia, Bessemer, BlackRock, others
Tel Aviv-based Astrix Security, which helps firms secure access to API keys, service accounts, secrets, and more, raised a $45M Series B led by Menlo Ventures
Ryan Naraine / SecurityWeek :
Filing: Samsung accuses India's competition watchdog of unlawfully detaining its employees and seizing data in a 2022 antitrust raid tied to Amazon and Flipkart
Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck lists on the Nasdaq via a SPAC, closing at $13.35 for a ~$1.7B market cap; Coincheck had ~2.15M accounts in November 2024
The Japan Times :
Former employees share how Cognizant favored Indian H-1B workers over US staff; internal data from 2013 to 2020 shows ~66% of US-based employees were from India
Bloomberg :
Study: the US is on track to add more construction for computer and electronics manufacturing in 2024 alone than it did during the 20 years before the CHIPS Act
Michael Acton / Financial Times :
Sources: Xiaohongshu, the Instagram-like app popular with younger Chinese users, told investors it will double profit to $1B+ in 2024, ahead of a potential IPO
Bloomberg :
Montreal-based Flare, a threat exposure management startup that develops tech to thwart info-stealer malware, raised a $30M Series B led by Base10 Partners
Julie Bort / TechCrunch :
The US CSRB starts probing the Salt Typhoon hack; CISA says the CSRB's report could come as early as next spring and wouldn't be disrupted by the transition
Jake Bleiberg / Bloomberg :
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.