Bookmarks (981)

Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media: Researchers at Anthropic, Oxford, Stanford, and MATS create Best-of-N Jailbreaking, a black-box algorithm that jailbreaks frontier AI systems across modalities  —  Anthropic created an AI jailbreaking algorithm that keeps tweaking prompts until it gets a harmful response.

Reuters: Dealogic data: the global M&A activity in the tech sector in 2024 jumped 20%+ YoY to $534B, accounting for the largest share of the total $3.45T in M&A activity  —  Bankers expect global deal volumes to surpass $4 trillion next year, the highest in four years, buoyed …

Wency Chen / South China Morning Post: Report: Alibaba splits the team developing apps for its AI chatbot Qianwen from the team that builds its LLM, following similar moves by ByteDance and Baidu  —  It follows similar moves by ByteDance and Baidu, which have divided their AI research and application teams to tackle a competitive market

Bloomberg: Sources: Intel shortlists buyout firms for the next round of bidding for its Altera unit, including Francisco Partners, Silver Lake, and Lattice Semiconductor  —  - Company asks suitors to submit formalized bids by late January  — Intel is without a permanent CEO after Pat Gelsinger ousted

Bloomberg: Google calls DOJ's proposed Chrome sale “extreme” and at odds with the law, urging the judge to take caution to avoid stifling innovation and future investment  —  - Justice Department seeking forced sale in antitrust case  — DC federal court to hold hearing on remedy proposals in April

Jody Godoy / Reuters: As part of its remedies proposal, Google would make its Android agreements with OEMs non-exclusive and allow them to unbundle Play Store from Chrome and Search  —  Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google proposed on Friday a loosening of its agreements with Apple (AAPL.O) and others to set Google …

Lee-Anne Mulholland / The Keyword: Google files its proposed remedies in the DOJ's search antitrust lawsuit, including letting browser companies have multiple default agreements across platforms  —  We will appeal the Court's decision but the process requires that we first file proposed remedies.  This is a case about contracts.

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal: Sources: OpenAI's GPT-5, codenamed Orion, is behind schedule and faces technical hurdles, including high computing costs and limited high-quality training data  —  OpenAI has run into problem after problem on its new artificial-intelligence project, code-named Orion

TrendForce: Global shipments of VR and MR headsets are expected to reach ~9.6M units in 2024, up 8.8% YoY; Meta remains the global leader with a 73% market share  —  TrendForce's latest report estimates that global shipments of VR and MR headsets are expected to reach approximately 9.6 million units in 2024, representing a YoY increase of 8.8%.

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: A US judge finds NSO Group liable for exploiting a bug in WhatsApp to spy on 1,400 users and that WhatsApp is entitled to sanctions against NSO  —  Israel-based maker of Pegasus program loses five-year-old landmark case.  —  Messaging giant WhatsApp won a landmark ruling Friday …

David Scheer / Bloomberg: Tai Mo Shan, part of Jump Trading's crypto unit, agrees to pay $123M to settle SEC's claims it misled investors about the stability of TerraUSD  —  Tai Mo Shan Ltd., part of Jump Trading's crypto unit, agreed to pay $123 million to settle a US regulator's claims it misled investors …

Kali Hays / Fortune: Sources: David Sacks' role as WH AI and crypto czar will be limited to an adviser role, overseen by Michael Kratsios, partly because he won't divest from Craft  —  David Sacks may already be getting a taste of how difficult it can be to get things done in Washington D.C.

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge: A study by Waymo and insurer Swiss Re finds Waymo's vehicles were safer than those driven by humans, with a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims and more  —  Waymo's autonomous vehicles cause less property damage and fewer bodily injuries when they crash than human-driven vehicles …

Stephen Alpher / CoinDesk: Rumble announces a $775M investment from Tether and plans to use $525M to fund a tender offer for ~70M shares of its common stock; RUM jumps 35%+ after hours  —  YouTube competitor Rumble (RUM) is in a deal for a $775 million strategic investment from stablecoin giant Tether.

Sylvia Varnham O'Regan / The Information: Google hired 100+ staffers of Magic Leap as contractors to assist with Google's work on its new Android XR OS, raising questions about the future of Magic Leap  —  Google has hired more than 100 staffers at augmented reality firm Magic Leap as contractors to assist with Google's work …

Bloomberg: SAP promoted a team lead five female staff allege has a pattern of targeting female reports, raising questions about its culture and workplace discrimination  —  Women who worked for a team lead at the tech giant's Signavio unit say that the company failed to address complaints of bullying and discrimination.

Bloomberg: Sony shares surged ~50% from an August trough to reach an all-time high last week, as investors are bullish on Sony's gaming business growth in 2025  —  - Next year ‘one of the greatest’ for video games: Smithers  — M&A and good management boost stock's appeal: Janus Henderson

Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters: Singapore-based bolttech, a B2B2C startup that offers “embedded” insurance products, raised a $100M+ Series C led by Dragon Fund at a $2.1B valuation  —  Singapore-headquartered insurance technology firm bolttech has raised more than $100 million in its latest funding round …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Sources: Anysphere, developer of GitHub Copilot rival Cursor, raised a $100M Series B at a $2.6B valuation, up from a $400M valuation in August 2024  —  Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, raised $100 million Series B at a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.

Malcolm Owen / AppleInsider: Apple researchers say the company's open-source ReDrafter method on Nvidia GPUs led to a 2.7x speed increase in generated tokens per second for greedy encoding  —  Apple's latest machine learning research could make creating models for Apple Intelligence faster, by coming up with a technique …

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Researchers unveil Genesis, an open-source generative physics engine that trains robots in simulated reality 430K times faster than in the real world  —  On Thursday, a large group of university and private industry researchers unveiled Genesis, a new open source computer simulation system …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Charlotte, NC-based Aiwyn, which provides automation software for accounting firms, raised $113M led by KKR and Bessemer, bringing its total funding to $127M  —  Accounting firms are struggling to adopt high-tech solutions.  That's according to a survey earlier this year from Rightsworks …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: YouTube plans to start a crackdown on “egregious clickbait”, or videos where the titles or thumbnails make claims the videos don't back up, beginning in India  —  A lot of YouTube videos have flashy, misleading titles and thumbnails, such as “BREAKING NEWS” or “The president steps down …

Bloomberg: A look at Frank McCourt's efforts to acquire TikTok and the obstacles he faces, as he lobbies Congress and Trump's team and recruits former TikTok executives  —  - TikTok hopes Supreme Court will halt ban at final hour  — McCourt is pitching his bid to Congress, Trump's team

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: Backflip, which is building AI models that can generate 3D designs using text, sketches, or photos as prompts, raised a $30M Series A co-led by NEA and a16z  —  What if it were as easy to generate a usable 3D design as prompting ChatGPT?  That's the mission of Backflip …

Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information: Anthropic, whose CEO, Dario Amodei, has vocally opposed Donald Trump, and OpenAI look to hire more people with ties to Trump and the GOP for their policy teams  —  Lately, AI developer Anthropic has been riding high, with its models' impressive performance on tasks like code generation helping …

New York Times: Sources: the US' proposed AI chip framework would block adversaries entirely, and give others quotas based on their US alignment, threatening Nvidia's expansion  —  The chipmaker expects more than $10 billion in foreign sales this year, but the Biden administration is advancing rules that could curb that growth.

New York Times: In 150+ X posts, Elon Musk led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by sharing misinfo, which may lead to a government shutdown over Christmas  —  The world's richest man led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by promoting false and misleading claims about it.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, an experimental “reasoning” model that “explicitly shows its thoughts” and can use them to strengthen its reasoning  —  Google has released what it's calling a new “reasoning” AI model — but it's in the experimental stages …

Allyson Versprille / Bloomberg: The US FAA publishes 22 temporary flight restrictions for drones over parts of New Jersey, as public hysteria over sightings of possible drone activity persists  —  The US Federal Aviation Administration prohibited drone flights over several parts of New Jersey as public hysteria over sightings continues to persist.

Myles McCormick / Financial Times: NERC, overseen by FERC, warns soaring electricity demand from sources including data centers to power AI could strain US and Canadian grids, risking blackouts  —  Surging demand from tech sector could overwhelm generation capacity, report says  —  North America's electricity grid faces …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India's commerce minister says that Shein will operate in India purely as a tech partner, with Reliance Retail having full ownership and control of operations  —  Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail …

Google DeepMind: Google introduces FACTS Grounding benchmark for evaluating the factuality of LLMs, and announces a leaderboard that ranks Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental on top  —  Our comprehensive benchmark and online leaderboard offer a much-needed measure of how accurately LLMs ground their responses …

Ernie Smith / Tedium: Bluesky's use of domains to verify users has led to cybersquatting and impersonation, as domains don't offer enough social proof for the average person  —  An apparent extortion scheme involving famous writers and entrepreneurs lit up Bluesky the other night.

Richard Waters / Financial Times: NYC-based Precision Neuroscience, a maker of brain-computer interfaces, raised a $102M Series C led by General Equity Holdings at a ~$500M post-money valuation  —  Precision Neuroscience, maker of a ‘brain-computer interface’, has raised more than $100mn in latest investment round

Avram Piltch / Tom's Hardware: Nvidia unveils Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit, a $249 compact AI development board that promises 67 TOPS, compared to 40 TOPS of the $499 last-gen kit  —  The Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit will be available later this month and comes with 8GB of RAM.

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: Apple Maps on the web adds support for Look Around, Apple's version of Google Street View  —  Apple in June introduced a beta version of Apple Maps on the web, allowing users of other platforms such as Windows PCs to access its map service directly from a web browser.

Blake Brittain / Reuters: The US ITC says smartphones made by Lenovo's Motorola infringe on Ericsson's 5G patents, which could lead to an import ban; a final ruling is set for April 2025  —  The U.S. International Trade Commission said on Tuesday that smartphones made by Lenovo's (0992.HK) Motorola Mobility infringe patents owned …

John Voorhees / MacStories: Game emulator Delta adds an in-app link to pay outside of the App Store, via Patreon, likely the first US app to use Apple's External Purchase Link Entitlement  —  Delta, the MacStories Selects App of the Year, received an important update today that allows users of the game emulator to support …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI adds o1 to its API, but only for certain developers to start, announces new versions of GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini as part of its Realtime API, and more  —  OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers, to start.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Salesforce says it will hire 2,000 people to sell AI agent software, a month after saying it would hire 1,000 for the task and two years after laying off 7,000+  —  Salesforce will hire 2,000 people to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday …

Todd Spangler / Variety: CAA partners with YouTube to help CAA clients identify and remove AI-generated content that features their likeness, with a wider rollout planned in early 2025  —  In what's being touted as the first partnership of its kind, CAA is collaborating with YouTube on a program promising to let actors …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Amid the AI boom, non-AI startups that raised a Series A 18 months ago are likely facing challenges in securing their Series B, even with decent revenue growth  —  Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies …

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: SCOTUS rejects ISPs' challenge to a NY law requiring ISPs to offer $15/month or $20/month service to low-income clients, by not revisiting a lower court ruling  —  The Supreme Court yesterday rejected the broadband industry's challenge to a New York law that requires Internet providers …

Jody Godoy / Reuters: Grubhub settles with the US FTC and IL AG for $25M, for allegedly adding restaurants without consent and misleading users about order fees and drivers about pay  —  Grubhub settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on Tuesday for allegedly misleading customers …

Margaux Nijkerk / CoinDesk: Electric Capital annual survey: total developers working in crypto fell 7% YoY globally, and Solana was the most popular blockchain among new developers  —  Ethereum remained the blockchain with the most devs, and the overall population of software builders in crypto was flat, the VC firm said in its annual survey.

Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal: The merger of advertising giants Omnicom and Interpublic shows how the industry is preparing for an AI-driven upheaval, which is squeezing out creative talent  —  Two advertisers are combining into a $30 billion behemoth to harness the data, tech and AI expertise now dominating Madison Avenue—and all the marketing you see

Anna Edgerton / Bloomberg: TikTok critics like Marco Rubio, Jacob Helberg, and Brendan Carr are set for senior roles in Trump's administration, emphasizing Trump's murky stance on the app  —  - Longtime China critic Helberg named under secretary of State  — Rubio pushed for congress's TikTok divest-or-ban law last year

Natasha Singer / New York Times: How tech is stoking cycles of violence in US schools, with students using phones and social media to arrange, provoke, record, and spread school brawl videos  —  Ricardo Martinez, an 11th grader, was in his high school lunchroom in April when a mass brawl erupted.

Jason Parham / Wired: A look at Blacksky, the Bluesky custom feed curated by a team of six moderators that is slowly turning into the main avenue for many Black users on the service  —  The curated feed, now run by a team of six moderators, is the meeting ground for hundreds of thousands of Black users on Bluesky.