Bookmarks (982)

Jay Peters / The Verge: Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse, is back online in the US and plans to “partner with a new publisher” to prevent future bans  —  Marvel Snap is back online in the US after access was cut off Saturday night due to the law that banned TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps.

Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: Huawei plans to challenge Nvidia in China's AI chip market by positioning its latest Ascend AI processors as the hardware of choice for “inference” tasks  —  Tech giant pushes its artificial intelligence chips as hardware of choice for ‘inference’ tasks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Trump signs an EO renaming the US Digital Service to the US DOGE Service, directing agency heads to form “DOGE Teams” of at least four members within 30 days  —  The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory commission spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk recommending deep cuts …

Bobby Allyn / NPR: Trump signs an EO that pauses the TikTok ban for 75 days to give ByteDance more time to reach a deal and provides a “liability shield” to TikTok's providers  —  President Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to hit pause on a law banning TikTok and to provide …

The Information: Source: Meta is offering creators with large TikTok followings bonuses ranging from $10K to $50K/month to post videos on Instagram Reels before other platforms  —  Instagram isn't letting a good TikTok crisis go to waste.  —  Representatives for the Meta Platforms-owned app in the last week …

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: Trump signs an EO to end “federal censorship” of online platforms, and directs the AG to probe if the Biden admin engaged in censorship of Americans' views  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to stop “government censorship,” a sweeping action …

David Shepardson / Reuters: Trump revokes a 2023 executive order signed by Biden that sought to reduce the risks that AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security  —  U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses …

Matt Novak / Gizmodo: During a speech following Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk delivered what many saw as two “Nazi salutes”  —  The billionaire Tesla CEO has a history of racist comments. … Elon Musk gave what appeared to be Nazi salutes at a rally held at Capitol One Arena on Monday …

Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Jan. 17 filing: the US NHTSA said it “upgraded” its April 2024 probe into Ford's BlueCruise, a driver assistance system that was active during two fatal crashes  —  A U.S. federal safety regulator has “upgraded” its investigation into Ford's hands-free advanced driver assistance system known …

Hafiz Rashid / New Republic: Did Elon Musk Seriously Just Do a Nazi Salute at Trump's Inauguration?  —  During a speech at Capitol One Arena Monday following Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk appeared to deliver a Roman salute not once, but twice.  —  The gesture is associated with Nazi Germany …

PYMNTS.com: Stuttgart-based robotics startup Sereact, which develops Vision Language Action Models and whose customers include BMW and Daimler Truck, raised a $26M Series A  —  German tech company Sereact has raised $26 million for its AI-powered robotics efforts.  —  The company's Series A round …

Tim Copeland / The Block: A memecoin named Official Barron Trump hit a $460M market cap before falling 95%; a Pump.fun user behind it has debuted other unofficial coins called “official”  —  - A memecoin called Official Barron Trump rose to a $460 million market cap on speculation that it might have been launched by Barron Trump himself.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Metropolis, an AI-powered parking service, acquires Oosto, formerly known as AnyVision, for just $125M in stock, well under the $380M it raised over the years  —  The general hype around all things AI is not lifting all boats, as certain startups continue to struggle and look for exits.

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: Chinese AI lab DeepSeek debuts DeepSeek-R1, an MIT-licensed model that does well with math, code, and reasoning tasks, alongside other open and distilled models  —  DeepSeek are the Chinese AI lab who dropped the best currently available open weights LLM on Christmas day, DeepSeek v3.

Financial Times: Democratic Republic of Congo lawyers say Belgium has started a criminal probe into allegations that Apple has knowingly sourced “blood minerals” from the DRC  —  Lawyers for DRC allege iPhones and other electronics use minerals supplied by armed groups behind atrocities

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse, cuts off access for US gamers, as the TikTok divest-or-ban law impacts other ByteDance-linked apps  —  The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap.

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: TikTok is not available for download in the App Store and Play Store in the US, as the app halts service in the country to comply with the divest-or-ban law  —  Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores Saturday night, complying with a law requiring China's ByteDance to divest …

NBC News: ByteDance's TikTok and CapCut suspend service in the US, telling users “Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok”  —  Users reported being unable to access TikTok Saturday after a pop-up message from the company came up on their screens saying “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”

Will Oremus / Washington Post: TikTok bans in countries around the world have played out quite differently; Instagram Reels largely replaced TikTok in India, following TikTok's ban in 2020  —  India's 2020 crackdown helped give rise to Instagram Reels, which has largely replaced it there.  But TikTok has proved more resilient elsewhere.

Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: A close look at some privacy implications of AI interfacing with messaging apps and other E2EE systems, Apple's approach to “Private Cloud Compute”, and more  —  Recently I came across a fantastic new paper by a group of NYU and Cornell researchers entitled “How to think about end-to-end encryption and AI.”

Kevin Roose / New York Times: As the TikTok eulogies pour in from some creators, very few Americans seem concerned that one of the nation's most popular social media apps will disappear  —  So this may be the way TikTok ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.  —  Over the past few weeks, as the Jan. 19 deadline loomed …

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: A whistleblower complaint claims Amazon paid $380M for licensing robot maker Covariant's tech and hiring its staff, and the deal merits antitrust scrutiny  —  Filing details $400 million license for smart robot system and claims retail giant's “reverse acquihire” contract limits competition and merits antitrust scrutiny.

Hayden Field / CNBC: Source: Perplexity AI made a TikTok US bid to ByteDance, proposing a merger that brings video to Perplexity, with ByteDance investors retaining their stakes  —  Perplexity AI officially made a play for TikTok on Saturday, submitting a bid to its parent company, ByteDance …

Financial Times: A profile of Charlwin Mao, founder of Xiaohongshu or “Little Red Book”, who claims the name references the color of his university Stanford and ex-employer Bain  —  A sudden surge of US users on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, could threaten China's Great Firewall

Politico: Congressional leaders seem flummoxed by the growing popularity of Chinese-owned apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, an unintended consequence of the TikTok ban  —  The Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8 have exploded in popularity as TikTok faces an imminent ban and the Supreme Court upheld the law forcing its sale.

NBC News: Trump says he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve after he takes office on Monday “because it's appropriate”  —  Trump spoke to NBC News' Kristen Welker in an exclusive phone interview Saturday, discussing his plans on what to do about the popular social media app.

Ana Faguy / BBC: The White House says TikTok's threat to shut down is a “stunt” as there is “no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions” before Trump takes office  —  The White House has said a threat by TikTok to shut down in the US on Sunday unless tech firms get assurances …

Zack Abrams / The Block: Vitalik Buterin outlines “large changes” to Ethereum Foundation leadership structure, after fellow Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin called for new EF leadership  —  - Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in a post on X, said “large changes” to the leadership structure of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) are underway.

Wes Davis / The Verge: Instagram now lets users upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit, as TikTok is set to go dark on Sunday  —  Instagram will now let you upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit the platform had in place before, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced today.

Axios: CoinGecko: $TRUMP rose more than 600% overnight and was trading at just over $32 as of 11AM ET, giving it a fully diluted market capitalization of $32B+  —  - It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.

Andrew Hayward / Decrypt: Donald Trump is promoting a Solana memecoin called TRUMP from his social media accounts, with 200M $TRUMP available now and growing to 1B “over three years”  —  Talk about a Friday night surprise.  President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears …

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Filing: Nasdaq-listed Qorvo reveals activist investor Starboard's 7.7% stake, amid stiff competition and slowing orders for the company's smartphone chips  —  Starboard Value has built a 7.7% stake in Qorvo (QRVO.O), the chipmaker revealed in a filing on Friday, as the activist investor looks to boost the company's weak share price.

Jasper Goodman / Politico: Leading crypto firms have given at least $10M to the Trump inaugural fund; Ripple, a major target of SEC enforcement action, donated $5M in digital tokens  —  Crypto executives and their lobbyists are scrambling to gain sway over the incoming administration.

Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review: OpenAI worked with Retro Biosciences to develop GPT-4b micro, an AI model that it says can engineer proteins capable of turning regular cells into stem cells  —  When you think of AI's contributions to science, you probably think of AlphaFold, the Google DeepMind protein-folding program that earned its creator a Nobel Prize last year.

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: TikTok says it will go dark in the US on Sunday unless the Biden admin provides a “definitive statement” to critical service providers assuring non-enforcement  —  TikTok said its services will go dark on Sunday unless the Biden administration gives a definitive statement providing assurances …

Karissa Bell / Engadget: Zuckerberg says there's a “bogus narrative saying I blamed Sheryl for a bunch of stuff” and he was just addressing the origin of “bring your whole self to work”  —  Well, specifically, they want me to know.  —  On Thursday, The New York Times published a lengthy story …

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: Filing: ChatGPT's head of product, Nick Turley, will testify as a witness for the US DOJ in its antitrust case against Google, as a court decides penalties  —  The U.S. government wants to prove that Google's competitors face overwhelming barriers to entry as part of its antitrust case against the tech giant.

Brady Dale / Axios: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong endorses a US bitcoin strategic reserve in a blog post on “economic freedom” that calls on world leaders to embrace crypto  —  - This is the first time Coinbase has specifically addressed the idea of a strategic bitcoin reserve, doing …

Matt Day / Bloomberg: Amazon suspends drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona to fix the drones' software after two of its latest models crashed in rainy weather at a testing facility  —  - Deliveries halted in Texas, Arizona, pending a software repair  — Drone program suffering setbacks 11 years after its unveiling

Mia Sato / The Verge: Instagram adds a new tab in the Reels feed that will show videos that a user's friends have liked or added commentary to  —  Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features, now reworked for the short-form video era.  —  A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos …

Edith Hancock / Wall Street Journal: A group of 18 former European heads of state call on the EC to break up Google's advertising tech business, claiming it erodes Europe's media landscape  —  18 former European heads of state are claiming Google's highly lucrative advertising-technology business erodes Europe's media landscape

Kalley Huang / The Information: Source: Meta plans to break up its civil rights team, which helped develop tech to address racial and other disparities in how Meta distributed ads on its apps  —  Meta Platforms will break up a team that trained employees on civil rights, sought to prevent the company's algorithms …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals; Read.cv will shut down and let users export their profiles, posts, and more until May 16  —  Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity.

Sarah Wynn / The Block: Digital Currency Group agrees to settle and pay $38.5M in civil penalties to the US SEC over charges that it misled investors via crypto lender Genesis Global  —  - The SEC said that one of Genesis' largest borrowers was asset hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and said on June 13 that the fund “failed to meet a margin call.”

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky 2024 moderation report: Bluesky gained 23M+ users, its moderation team grew to ~100, and its moderation service received 6.48M reports, up 17x from 2023  —  Bluesky on Friday published its moderation report for the past year, noting the sizable growth the social network experienced …

Jane Lanhee Lee / Bloomberg: TSMC reports Q4 sales up 38.8% YoY to ~$26.38B, net income up 57% YoY to ~$11.4B, both above estimates; stock jumped 80%+ in 2024, its biggest gain since 1999  —  - Revenue, capex projections surpass analysts' estimates  — TSMC is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom

Omkar Godbole / CoinDesk: Jio Platforms partners with Polygon Labs to integrate Web3 and blockchain services into Jio's apps and services; Jio Platforms has over 450M users in India  —  Indian telecom and technology company Jio Platforms (JPL) is taking significant steps to enhance the digital experience for its more than 450 million users.

NBC News: An official says the Biden administration is “exploring options” to implement the law without causing TikTok to go dark for US users on January 19  —  Barring action by the Supreme Court, a ban in the U.S. on the popular app is set to begin on Sunday.

Semafor: Sources: Satya Nadella and Brad Smith had lunch with Trump, Vance, and Musk at Mar-a-Lago on January 15; Microsoft says its two execs had a “Productive meeting”  —  THE SCOOP  —  President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance had lunch with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Wednesday …

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg: Germany-based Neura Robotics, which is building cognitive, humanoid robots for logistics and other sectors, raised a €120M Series B led by Lingotto Investment  —  Neura Robotics, a German startup that manufactures robots that can “see, hear and touch,” has raised $120 million …