Filing shows Apple supplier Luxshare plans to buy a 62.5% stake in Pegatron's Kunshan unit in eastern China for about $300M, as it seeks to compete with Foxconn (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

Debby Wu / Bloomberg:
Filing shows Apple supplier Luxshare plans to buy a 62.5% stake in Pegatron's Kunshan unit in eastern China for about $300M, as it seeks to compete with Foxconn  —  - Pegatron to sell majority stake of Kunshan campus to Luxshare  — Apple's fostering Chinese suppliers to boost ties with Beijing

Transgender people say games help them explore their identities; character creation in RPGs like Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 makes fewer gendered assumptions (Zachary Small/New York Times)

Zachary Small / New York Times:
Transgender people say games help them explore their identities; character creation in RPGs like Starfield and Baldur's Gate 3 makes fewer gendered assumptions  —  Transgender people have turned to games, some with robust character creators, as places where they can safely express themselves.

As more high-performance computing chips pushed past 1 kW in 2023, like Nvidia's GH200 Superchips, many manufacturers embraced direct liquid cooling (Tobias Mann/The Register)

Tobias Mann / The Register:
As more high-performance computing chips pushed past 1 kW in 2023, like Nvidia's GH200 Superchips, many manufacturers embraced direct liquid cooling  —  Air cooling holdouts take notice, the fun stuff is all liquid  —  ANALYSIS As Moore's Law slowed to a crawl, chips …

A look at the challenges Amazon faces in selling cars in the US: only 11% of its customers report buying $1,000+ items, dealerships sell most new cars, and more (Sebastian Herrera/Wall Street Journal)

Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
A look at the challenges Amazon faces in selling cars in the US: only 11% of its customers report buying $1,000+ items, dealerships sell most new cars, and more  —  Company aims to make online car purchases as seamless as getting everyday essentials  —  Willie Hall loves to browse and buy cars online, but he wants more options.

China struggles to contain a shadow market for business data, as most companies shun the 48 official exchanges for data sales set up by local governments (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
China struggles to contain a shadow market for business data, as most companies shun the 48 official exchanges for data sales set up by local governments  —  Dozens of marketplaces have sprung up since a 2020 initiative but most transactions still happen on the black market

Amazon Prime Video plans to start showing ads starting on January 29, with an option for customers to pay an additional $2.99 per month to avoid the ads (Chris Welch/The Verge)

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Amazon Prime Video plans to start showing ads starting on January 29, with an option for customers to pay an additional $2.99 per month to avoid the ads  —  Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service …

A legal dispute about a Bitcoin mine in a small Texas town reveals how Chinese nationals are using Tether to move money to the US without drawing attention (New York Times)

New York Times:
A legal dispute about a Bitcoin mine in a small Texas town reveals how Chinese nationals are using Tether to move money to the US without drawing attention  —  A legal dispute in a tiny Texas town unexpectedly reveals how Chinese nationals can move money to the U.S. without drawing the attention of authorities in either country.

Israel's government agrees to give Intel a $3.2B grant for a $25B chip plant the company plans to build in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, set to open in 2027 (Steven Scheer/Reuters)

Steven Scheer / Reuters:
Israel's government agrees to give Intel a $3.2B grant for a $25B chip plant the company plans to build in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel, set to open in 2027  —  Israel's government agreed to give Intel Corp (INTC.O) a $3.2 billion grant for new $25 billion chip plant it plans to build in southern Israel, both sides said on Tuesday.

A look at AI apps like Bluey-GPT, Oscar, Once Upon a Bot, and Bedtimestory.ai, which create stories for kids, and concerns over copyright, trademark, and safety (Nicole Kobie/Wired)

Nicole Kobie / Wired:
A look at AI apps like Bluey-GPT, Oscar, Once Upon a Bot, and Bedtimestory.ai, which create stories for kids, and concerns over copyright, trademark, and safety  —  Artificial intelligence can now tell tales featuring your kids' favorite characters.  It's copyright chaos—and a major headache for parents and guardians.

After vocal commitments following George Floyd's murder in 2020, DEI programs at Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, are in broad retreat in 2023 (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)

Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
After vocal commitments following George Floyd's murder in 2020, DEI programs at Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, are in broad retreat in 2023  —  - After vocal commitments following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, DEI programs in the tech industry are in broad retreat.

Kuo: Apple Vision Pro shipments are estimated to be approximately 500,000 units in 2024 and will most likely be available in late January or early February (Omar Sohail/Wccftech)

Omar Sohail / Wccftech:
Kuo: Apple Vision Pro shipments are estimated to be approximately 500,000 units in 2024 and will most likely be available in late January or early February  —  An earlier Apple Vision Pro launch timeline stated that the mixed-reality headset's shipments would start in February next year …

China's new gaming rules can be 'worse' for smaller developers: Report

China's National Press and Publication Administration recently proposed new gaming rules that would prohibit companies from incentivising daily sign-ins for games and other revenue-generating practices. Stock values of Chinese gaming giants Tencent, NetEase, and Bilibili have gone down since the announcement. According to a report by UBS, China's proposed gaming rules are expected to hit smaller developers more than large ones and may also reduce overall online advertising revenue in the gaming industry. https://ift.tt/70ENWHi

The US is focusing on blocking North Korea's ability to launder its crypto stolen via cyberattacks, which the US thinks funds North Korea's weapons programs (John Sakellariadis/Politico)

John Sakellariadis / Politico:
The US is focusing on blocking North Korea's ability to launder its crypto stolen via cyberattacks, which the US thinks funds North Korea's weapons programs  —  The Biden administration is doing more to counter North Korean hackers amid concerns their cryptocurrency heists are powering the country's weapons programs.

Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October (Sharon Goldman/VentureBeat)

Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat:
Researchers from Apple and Columbia University released Ferret, an open source multimodal LLM that can recognize and describe any shape in an image, in October  —  With little fanfare, researchers from Apple and Columbia University released an open source multimodal LLM, called Ferret, in October 2023.

Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company (Steven Scheer/Reuters)

Steven Scheer / Reuters:
Nvidia and its staff donated $15M to Israeli nonprofits helping civilians affected by the Israel-Hamas war, the largest humanitarian fundraiser for the company  —  U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) and its employees have donated $15 million to Israeli non-profit organisations …