46 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Tech Archive

Archives for December 2024

Sean Hollister
Sean Hollister
This liliputing gaming dream just got a price cut and a Ryzen HX 370 variant.

I’m still working on my GPD Win Max 2 review, and there’s now a more powerful model on sale. It’s pricier at $1,500 — but the 8840U version I’m using is now discounted to $1,000, so that’s great!

This is the best tiny Windows machine I’ve used, though I find I want a mouse. It’s also an OK handheld.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Starlink is bringing its protected internet service to more terminals in Ukraine.

The satellite internet company received a Pentagon contract that will give 2,500 Starlink terminals access to Starshield, its secure satellite service for governments, according to Bloomberg. With this contract, Ukraine will have a total of 3,000 terminals connected to Starshield.

Kylie Robison
Kylie Robison
On the second day of ship-mas, my AI sent to me... reinforcement fine-tuning.

OpenAI just announced an alpha program for a new tool (called reinforcement fine-tuning) that lets developers train models on specific tasks, using example problems and answers. In a post after the livestream announcement, CEO Sam Altman said this will make it “really easy to create expert models in specific domains with very little training data.”

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Perplexity has signed deals with more publishers.

Today, we’re excited to welcome over a dozen new partners to Perplexity’s Publishers’ Program: ADWEEK, Blavity, DPReview, Gear Patrol, The Independent, Lee Enterprises, Los Angeles Times, MediaLab, Mexico News Daily, Minkabu Infonoid, NewsPicks, Prisa Media, RTL Germany brands stern and ntv, and World History Encyclopedia.

Perplexity kicked off the program earlier this year by signing deals with Time, Der Spiegel, Fortune, and others.

Kylie Robison
Kylie Robison
Meta launched a new ‘cost-efficient’ AI model.

A new Llama 3.3 70B model dropped today, and Meta’s VP of genAI said it matches the performance of the larger 405B version, but runs cheaper and lighter. They also claimed this new model beats competitors Google, OpenAI, and Amazon on key tests like MMLU.

Competitors also really love overlapping their AI announcements — Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and xAI have all dropped announcements this week.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Mesh networking comes to ski helmets.

It’s not a feature you typically associate with ski and snowboard gear, but POC’s new $550 Obex Connect helmet creates its own mesh network so you can talk with others on the hill even if you don’t have a cellphone signal. It’s also got Bluetooth for connecting to smartphones, audio courtesy of Harman Kardon, and an NFC chip with your medical info.