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Cate Lawrence / Tech.eu: Kazakhstan-based Kaspi.kz agrees to acquire a majority share, or 65.4%, of Turkish e-commerce platform Hepsiburada for ~$1.13B, expected to close in Q1 2025  —  The share acquisition is poised to benefit entrepreneurs and SMEs in Kazakhstan and Turkey.  —  Kazakhstan fintech Kaspi.kz …

Steven Levy / Wired: How Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming cracked an encrypted ZIP file containing the code for a system that helped ANC members communicate safely under apartheid  —  John Graham-Cumming, who happens to be Cloudflare's CTO, cracked a 30-year-old encrypted file that had a role in rewriting South Africa's history.

Bloomberg: Students, academics, and developers say AI writing detectors are most likely to falsely flag essays written in a more generic manner as written by AI tools  —  About two-thirds of teachers report regularly using tools for detecting AI-generated content.  At that scale, even tiny error rates can add up quickly.

Shahram Mokhtari / iFixit News: Meta Quest 3S teardown: uses Quest 2's same LCD panel and cheap Fresnel optics, replaces Quest 3's depth sensor with two IR flood illuminators, and more  —  The Quest 3S is a curious device.  I think we were all expecting a budget version of the Quest 3, but that's not quite what this headset is.

David Pan / Bloomberg: Six months after the bitcoin halving, some miners hold their bitcoin, while others spend more on developing AI data centers and see the largest stock gains  —  - Shares of firms keeping tokens they mint are lagging Bitcoin  — Best performers are spending on developing AI data centers

Wall Street Journal: How Waymo is converting locals and attracting tourists in San Francisco to pull ahead in the robotaxi race, with ~300 vehicles in the city and global ambitions  —  Just last year, residents wanted to get rid of robotaxis.  Now locals and tourists can't get enough.

Om Malik / Crazy Stupid Tech: Q&A with Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince on how internet traffic surge during COVID helped it build an AI-ready “connectivity cloud”, internet balkanization, more  —  I first met Matthew Prince in 2010, the day he l aunched Cloudflare at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Marah Eakin / Wired: Inside the inaugural Culver Cup, a generative AI film competition sponsored by AWS and FBRC.ai giving filmmakers AI tools and three weeks to submit a short  —  Amazon is hosting AI filmmaking competitions.  Meta is letting directors test Movie Gen. As tech companies develop new tools …

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: A historical look at Microsoft's work in AI, from research to real-world applications, recent progress, competition, challenges, and the future  —  [Editor's Note: Microsoft @ 50 is a year-long GeekWire project exploring the tech giant's past, present and future, recognizing its 50th anniversary in 2025.

Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times: 01.ai, DeepSeek, and other Chinese companies are reducing costs to create AI models by focusing on smaller training data sets, as they deal with export controls  —  01.ai, Alibaba and ByteDance have cut ‘inference’ costs despite Washington curbs on accessing cutting-edge chips

K Oanh Ha / Bloomberg: DJI sues the US DOD for adding the drone maker to a list designating it a Chinese military company, says the DOD didn't engage on the issue for over 16 months  —  - US added DJI to list designating it as a Chinese military firm  — List aimed at hindering China's access to advanced technology

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: In a filing, WP Engine asks a court in Northern California to issue a preliminary injunction and restore its access to the WordPress.org open source repository  —  Web hosting provider WP Engine has filed an injunction in a court in Northern California, asking it to intervene and restore …

Financial Times: Fuji Soft's board decided to keep backing KKR's ~$4B buyout offer despite Bain's $4.2B bid, in a rare battle between PE titans over a Japanese software company  —  Private equity titans cause a stir in the country, with a rare battle over Japanese software company

Todd Feathers / Gizmodo: The US Treasury says its enhanced detection tools, including AI, helped in the prevention and recovery of $4B+ in fraudulent payments in FY 2024, up over 6x YoY  —  The Treasury says it identified or recovered $4 billion in fraudulent payments last fiscal year, a sixfold increase over the previous year.

Reuters: Chinese robotaxi firm Pony.ai files for a Nasdaq IPO, says its H1 2024 revenue nearly doubled to $24.7M with a net loss of $51.3M, down from $69.4M in H1 2023  —  China-based autonomous driving firm Pony AI, backed by automaker Toyota (7203.T), filed for an initial public offering in the U.S. on Thursday …

Rohan Goswami / CNBC: Sources: Intel is looking to sell at least a minority stake, or possibly a majority stake, worth billions in its Altera subsidiary at a valuation of around $17B  —  Intel is looking to sell at least a minority stake in its Altera subsidiary that would raise several billion dollars in cash …

New York Times: Sources describe OpenAI and Microsoft's fraying relationship, OpenAI renegotiating its deal for more computing power, Microsoft's own LLM efforts, and more  —  The “best bromance in tech” has had a reality check as OpenAI has tried to change its deal with Microsoft and the software maker has tried to hedge its bet on the start-up.

Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: the US is probing if TSMC has been making AI or smartphone chips for Huawei in breach of US sanctions, including Huawei buying chips via intermediaries  —  The U.S. Commerce Department is investigating whether Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has been making artificial intelligence …

Nate Raymond / Reuters: X updates its ToS to steer any disputes by users to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, whose judges often favor conservative litigants  —  Elon Musk's X has updated its terms of service to steer any disputes by users of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: X updates its Privacy Policy to allow third-party “collaborators” to train their AI models on X user data, unless the user opts out, effective November 15, 2024  —  On Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party …

Will Shanklin / Engadget: The FCC issues new rules that will require all mobile phones sold in the US to be compatible with hearing aids, “after a transition period”  —  With the number of Americans 65 and older expected to balloon by nearly 50 percent by 2050, the rules will ensure those with hearing loss …

Todd Spangler / Variety: Netflix forecasts 2025 revenue of $43B-$44B, which would be 11%-13% higher than its 2024 guidance, and targets a 2025 operating margin of 28% vs. 27% in 2024  —  Netflix is expecting to keep growing revenue at double-digit percentages in 2025.  —  In reporting Q3 2024 results that beat analyst forecasts …

Forbes: Sources: Stripe is in talks to acquire startup Bridge, a provider of infrastructure for crypto stablecoins, for $1B; Bridge raised $58M  —  The acquisition, potentially Stripe's largest to date, would come as the $70 billion fintech high-flyer makes a bigger push into stablecoin payments.

Sarah Whitten / CNBC: Netflix reports Q3 revenue up 15% YoY to $9.83B, vs. $9.76B est., paid memberships up 14% to 282.72M, vs. 282.15M est., and net income of $2.4B  —  LOS ANGELES — Netflix reported earnings after the bell.  Here are the results.  — Earnings per share: $5.40.  That may not compare with the $5.12 expected by LSEG.