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| Here's a glance at today's Tech briefing: - Apple debuts M3-powered MacBook Pros and iMac.
- X, formerly Twitter, says it's valued at $19B, down from $44B a year ago.
- Meta is facing possibe legal action for using the "Threads" name.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Apple unveiled new Macs and its latest lineup of processors, the M3 series, during its product launch event on Monday. The lineup includes the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, which are the first personal computer chips to use the advanced 3-nanometer process. New chips: - The M3 chip boasts a 2.5x speed increase compared to Apple's M1 family, with core processing performance up to 50% faster.
- The three chips feature an upgraded GPU supporting ray tracing, mesh shading, and Dynamic Caching, along with a "faster and more efficient" CPU.
New Macs: - Apple's new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros sport the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Pro Max chips.
- The laptops include a Mini LED display, 1080p camera, 22-hour battery life, and up to 128GB of memory.
- In addition, a new 24-inch iMac, Apple's primary desktop computer, contains the M3 chip with two times faster performance than the M1 version.
- Both the new iMac and MacBook Pros will be available starting Nov. 7.
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| 2 | | X, formerly Twitter, is now valued at less than half of the amount Elon Musk paid for it a year ago, per internal documents. On Monday, employees were awarded restricted stock units that value X at $19B, a 55% drop from Musk's $44B purchase price in October 2022. More: - X's share price hasn't dropped as much as the company's valuation, possibly due to changes in the number of outstanding shares.
- In paperwork for the stock grants, X said employees would receive $45-per-share restricted stock units. Musk purchased Twitter at $54.20 per share.
- According to X, its board of directors determines the fair market value per share based on "a number of factors in a manner that complies with applicable tax rules."
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| 3 | | Meta's Reality Labs division reported a $3.74B operating loss in Q3, the same as the previous quarter. Analysts had expected higher sales in the metaverse-focused division, which saw a 26% drop in revenue to $210M. 
What the numbers show: The drop in revenue was partly attributed to lower Meta Quest 2 sales ahead of the Meta Quest 3 launch this month. Expenses in Reality Labs remained flat YoY at $4B. So far this year, Reality Labs has incurred losses of more than $11.5B. The bigger picture: Meta expects the unit's operating losses to "increase meaningfully" due to ongoing AR/VR product development and an expansion of its metaverse ecosystem. CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized Meta's long-term focus on the metaverse, alongside AI, despite recent layoffs in the Reality Labs division. While Meta's VR and AR investments are happening in an emerging market, Apple's upcoming mixed-reality headset could potentially help speed up widespread adoption. | | | |
| 4 | | A U.K.-based software firm is considering legal action against Meta for using the name Threads, claiming that it owns the trademark. Threads Software Limited says it trademarked the name back in 2012, over a decade before Meta launched its text-based app called Threads. More: - Threads Software Limited provides a Slack-like intelligent messaging hub that stores a company's communications in a cloud database.
- On Monday, the British firm sent Meta a letter, warning of a potential court injunction if Meta doesn't rename its app.
- The firm has rejected four offers made by Meta's lawyers to buy its domain name, "threads.app."
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| 5 | | OpenAI is rolling out an upload feature for some ChatGPT Plus subscribers. The "Advanced Data Analysis" beta feature allows paid users to upload files such as data sheets and PDFs for analysis by ChatGPT. More: - After processing the uploaded file, ChatGPT can do tasks like answering questions, summarizing data, and generating data visualizations.
- Besides text files, ChatGPT can analyze images through its DALL-E 3 integration for paid users.
- However, OpenAI hasn't revealed plans for broader availability.
Zoom out: - In September, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT could now browse the internet for up-to-date information and is no longer limited to data before September 2021.
- OpenAI released DALL-E 3, its latest text-to-image generator, to paid premium and enterprise ChatGPT users earlier this month.
- The updates and additions could help OpenAI attract new users amid increased competition from new AI chatbots such as Microsoft's Bing Chat and Google's Bard.
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| 6 | | Canada has banned the Chinese messaging app WeChat on government mobile devices, citing privacy and security concerns. In addition, the country has banned apps made by Russian antivirus program maker Kaspersky. More: - Canada's CTO determined that the applications "present an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security," according to the Treasury Board of Canada.
- Both Tencent-owned WeChat and Kaspersky have the potential to open up "considerable access" to content on mobile devices via their data collection methods, the board noted.
- Canadian government cellphone users will now lose access to the apps and won't be able to download them in the future.
Zoom out: - Earlier this year, the Canadian government banned TikTok on government mobile devices due to cybersecurity concerns
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INSIDE TECH LEADERBOARD (7 DAYS) |
 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is an editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters, with a career spanning journalism since 2007. She has written for publications including The Arizona Republic and USA Today and authored a book on the solar industry in 2016. Reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia | |
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