Tuesday, January 31, 2023

A roundup of potential rivals to OpenAI's ChatGPT service: DeepMind's Sparrow, Google's LaMDA, Anthropic's Claude, and Character AI (Sharon Goldman/VentureBeat)

Sharon Goldman / VentureBeat:
A roundup of potential rivals to OpenAI's ChatGPT service: DeepMind's Sparrow, Google's LaMDA, Anthropic's Claude, and Character AI  —  Today, ChatGPT is two months old.  —  Yes, believe it or not, it was less than nine weeks ago that OpenAI launched what it simply described as an …



A look at the history of generative AI and developments that paved the way for breakthroughs, including CUDA, convolutional neural networks, and transformers (Haomiao Huang/Ars Technica)

Haomiao Huang / Ars Technica:
A look at the history of generative AI and developments that paved the way for breakthroughs, including CUDA, convolutional neural networks, and transformers  —  A new class of incredibly powerful AI models has made recent breakthroughs possible.  —  Progress in AI systems often feels cyclical.



EU Commission changes, triggered by human rights group ICCL, mean regulators in Ireland and elsewhere will report six times a year on GDPR, violations, and more (Parmy Olson/Bloomberg)

Parmy Olson / Bloomberg:
EU Commission changes, triggered by human rights group ICCL, mean regulators in Ireland and elsewhere will report six times a year on GDPR, violations, and more  —  It's well established that the European Union has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world, threatening fines of up to 4% of a company's annual turnover.



Dutch social enterprise Fairphone, which makes sustainable, modular consumer electronics, raised €49M in "growth capital", bringing its total funding to ~€86.6M (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Dutch social enterprise Fairphone, which makes sustainable, modular consumer electronics, raised €49M in “growth capital”, bringing its total funding to ~€86.6M  —  Dutch social enterprise Fairphone, which makes modular and — the claim is — more sustainable …



An in-depth analysis of Yandex's leaked source code shows 17,854 ranking factors, scraping Google, Bing, YouTube, and TikTok, "Vital Hosts" boosts, and more (Michael King/Search Engine Land)

Michael King / Search Engine Land:
An in-depth analysis of Yandex's leaked source code shows 17,854 ranking factors, scraping Google, Bing, YouTube, and TikTok, “Vital Hosts” boosts, and more  —  Yandex isn't Google, but there is a lot SEOs can learn about how a modern search engine is built from reviewing this codebase.



A draft EU proposal details plans to ask Netflix, Alphabet, and other "large traffic generators" to help pay for next-generation internet infrastructure (Jillian Deutsch/Bloomberg)

Jillian Deutsch / Bloomberg:
A draft EU proposal details plans to ask Netflix, Alphabet, and other “large traffic generators” to help pay for next-generation internet infrastructure  —  The European Union is weighing a proposal to make technology companies that use the most bandwidth, like Netflix Inc. and Alphabet Inc. …



Independent examiner: Celsius misled investors and sometimes used new customer funds to pay for withdrawals, CEO Alex Mashinsky made false claims, and more (Jack Schickler/CoinDesk)

Jack Schickler / CoinDesk:
Independent examiner: Celsius misled investors and sometimes used new customer funds to pay for withdrawals, CEO Alex Mashinsky made false claims, and more  —  Shoba Pillay was appointed by a New York bankruptcy court to look at whether the crypto lender operated as a Ponzi scheme



Manu Jain, who led Xiaomi's India business for seven years, leaves, joining a long list of key departures; sources say he pitched investors on EV startup ideas (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Manu Jain, who led Xiaomi's India business for seven years, leaves, joining a long list of key departures; sources say he pitched investors on EV startup ideas  —  Manu Jain, the executive who helped Xiaomi set up and scale business in India, has left the company, he said Monday …



Monday, January 30, 2023

China's JD.com to shut e-commerce sites in Indonesia, Thailand

JD.com will end its services in Thailand from March 3 and in Indonesia from the end of the same month, its local websites showed. Both units will stop taking orders on February 15. https://ift.tt/fbLK4h2

Qualcomm introduces 'Snapdragon Insiders Access Program'

With the new Access Program, Insiders will get the opportunity to be among the first to try new Snapdragon-powered devices and partner with top brands, the company said in a blogpost. https://ift.tt/CvsYl2o

The memory-chip sector, known for boom-and-bust cycles, is facing one if its worst-ever routs, as inventory glut and a fight for marketshare has cratered prices (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
The memory-chip sector, known for boom-and-bust cycles, is facing one if its worst-ever routs, as inventory glut and a fight for marketshare has cratered prices  —  This time was supposed to be different.  —  The memory-chip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways.



Sunday, January 29, 2023

Source: Baidu is planning to launch an AI chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT in March 2023, initially embedded into its main search services (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Source: Baidu is planning to launch an AI chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT in March 2023, initially embedded into its main search services  —  Baidu Inc. is planning to roll out an artificial intelligence chatbot service similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to a person familiar with the matter …



Analysis: US Black Web3 founders raised $60M in 2022, up from $16M in 2021; total money raised by US Web3 startups in 2022 fell to $11.9B from $16.5B in 2021 (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)

Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
Analysis: US Black Web3 founders raised $60M in 2022, up from $16M in 2021; total money raised by US Web3 startups in 2022 fell to $11.9B from $16.5B in 2021  —  Startups in the space are more bullish than ever  —  Much hope remains after the crypto winter almost froze the sector …



Court records since 2011 show how police in some US states used digital data, like text messages, search history, and emails, in abortion-related prosecutions (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch:
Court records since 2011 show how police in some US states used digital data, like text messages, search history, and emails, in abortion-related prosecutions  —  In late April, police in Nebraska received a tip saying 17-year-old Celeste Burgess had given birth to a stillborn baby and buried the body.



Analysis: Florida startups raised $9.7B in 601 deals in 2022 vs. $7.8B in 652 deals in 2021; VC funding fell 40%+ in 2022 in California, Massachusetts, and NY (Chris Metinko/Crunchbase News)

Chris Metinko / Crunchbase News:
Analysis: Florida startups raised $9.7B in 601 deals in 2022 vs. $7.8B in 652 deals in 2021; VC funding fell 40%+ in 2022 in California, Massachusetts, and NY  —  Last year could not top the banner year venture capital saw in 2021 — at least in most geographies.



Researchers detail how ProGen, an LLM trained on 280M proteins, designed proteins with anti-microbial properties that were tested in real life and shown to work (Karmela Padavic-Callaghan/New Scientist)

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan / New Scientist:
Researchers detail how ProGen, an LLM trained on 280M proteins, designed proteins with anti-microbial properties that were tested in real life and shown to work  —  An AI was tasked with creating proteins with anti-microbial properties.  Researchers then created a subset of the proteins and found some did the job



Saturday, January 28, 2023

Meme-stock mania companies, including GameStop and AMC Entertainment, have raised $4.7B since the hype began in January 2021, but failed to boost performance (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Meme-stock mania companies, including GameStop and AMC Entertainment, have raised $4.7B since the hype began in January 2021, but failed to boost performance  —  Cash bonanza enabled by retail investors fails to boost beneficiaries' performance  —  Companies at the centre of the meme-stock mania …



Q&A with Princeton CS professor Arvind Narayanan on why he calls ChatGPT a "bullshit generator", his worries over its boom, developing his AI taxonomy, and more (Julia Angwin/The Markup)

Julia Angwin / The Markup:
Q&A with Princeton CS professor Arvind Narayanan on why he calls ChatGPT a “bullshit generator”, his worries over its boom, developing his AI taxonomy, and more  —  Hello, friends,  —  If you have been reading all the hype about the latest artificial intelligence chatbot …



As the GOP assumes leadership of the US House, antitrust subcommittee's bipartisan efforts to curb the power of big tech shift to a focus on free-speech issues (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
As the GOP assumes leadership of the US House, antitrust subcommittee's bipartisan efforts to curb the power of big tech shift to a focus on free-speech issues  —  The new GOP House majority is turning away from last year's bipartisan efforts to rein in the dominance of the largest tech companies …



12 South Korean websites still unavailable after Chinese attacks

Twelve South Korean websites attacked by a Chinese hacking group remain unable to be accessed five days after the incident, industry sources said. The Chinese attackers, identifying themselves as Xiaoqiying, hacked into the websites of 12 academic organizations and institutions Sunday, including the Korea Research Institute for Construction Policy, the Korean Archaeological Society and the Korean Academy of Basic Medicine & Health Science. https://ift.tt/yGujqb0

Q&A with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, on having no major Xbox releases in 2022, its outlook for 2023, layoffs, Activision deal amid FTC lawsuit, and more (Kat Bailey/IGN)

Kat Bailey / IGN:
Q&A with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, on having no major Xbox releases in 2022, its outlook for 2023, layoffs, Activision deal amid FTC lawsuit, and more  —  Xbox's CEO talks about the recent Developer Direct, 2022 struggles, layoffs, and what 2023 could hold.



ShareChat employees and investors shed light on the company's leadership crisis and say revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and the ~$5B 2022 valuation (Moneycontrol)

Moneycontrol:
ShareChat employees and investors shed light on the company's leadership crisis and say revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and the ~$5B 2022 valuation  —  The company's top and middle management are hollowing out, revenue has not kept pace with cash burn and Sharechat's top-tier valuation …



Friday, January 27, 2023

Tech jobs still hot in US amid mass layoffs, finds report

According to data by job portal Indeed, the tech jobs in high demand are full-stack developers at the top spot, followed by data engineers, cloud engineers, senior product managers and back-end developers, among others. https://ift.tt/Pmo9jd8

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says Elon Musk "doesn't seem like" the right owner for Twitter and claims morale and content improvements have been lost under Musk (Dan Milmo/The Guardian)

Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says Elon Musk “doesn't seem like” the right owner for Twitter and claims morale and content improvements have been lost under Musk  —  Biz Stone, one of quartet who set up company, says positive changes he oversaw have been undone by Tesla chief executive



After losing billions on mobile bets, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten raised ~$1.9B for its mobile business and plans to sell its banking and securities units (Finbarr Flynn/Bloomberg)

Finbarr Flynn / Bloomberg:
After losing billions on mobile bets, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten raised ~$1.9B for its mobile business and plans to sell its banking and securities units  —  Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Group Inc. sold 250 billion yen ($1.9 billion) of bonds on Friday, giving the company …



The EU Commission says Google has agreed to update its Store, Play Store, Hotels, and Flights to provide clear and accurate information and comply with EU laws (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
The EU Commission says Google has agreed to update its Store, Play Store, Hotels, and Flights to provide clear and accurate information and comply with EU laws  —  Many of Google's offerings will soon be updated to provide clear and accurate information in compliance with consumer protection laws in the EU.



Over 100 Israeli tech groups let staff join a "warning strike" over controversial government plans to curb judiciary powers, the latest warnings by businesses (James Shotter/Financial Times)

James Shotter / Financial Times:
Over 100 Israeli tech groups let staff join a “warning strike” over controversial government plans to curb judiciary powers, the latest warnings by businesses  —  Executives say new government's move to curb judicial powers will scare away vital investment to the self-styled Startup Nation



A look at crypto money laundering in 2022: illicit addresses sent nearly $23.8B, up 68% YoY, four addresses got $1B+ combined, DeFi got record funds, and more (Chainalysis)

Chainalysis:
A look at crypto money laundering in 2022: illicit addresses sent nearly $23.8B, up 68% YoY, four addresses got $1B+ combined, DeFi got record funds, and more  —  The 2023 Crypto Crime Report  —  Money laundering is crucial to all financially motivated crime because it's what enables criminals …



A look at Abu Dhabi-based AI startup G42, as sources say US intelligence officials fixated on CEO Xiao Peng ahead of its China divestment and Microsoft deal (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg : A look at Abu Dhabi-based AI startup G42, as sources say US intelligence officials fixated on CEO Xiao Peng ahead of its Chin...