Sunday, September 29, 2024

California passes a law that includes "neural data" under personal sensitive information, aiming to protect people's brain data from being misused by companies (Jonathan Moens/New York Times)

Jonathan Moens / New York Times:
California passes a law that includes “neural data” under personal sensitive information, aiming to protect people's brain data from being misused by companies  —  The state extended its current personal privacy law to include the neural data increasingly coveted by technology companies.



Sources: Apple considers options for its headsets, including moving compute to iPhone, and is working on homeOS; new Masimo CEO could enable a deal with Apple (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple considers options for its headsets, including moving compute to iPhone, and is working on homeOS; new Masimo CEO could enable a deal with Apple  —  Meta's latest AR glasses and cheaper mixed-reality headset add pressure on Apple to make its Vision push work.



A look at challenges to OpenAI becoming a for-profit company, including the complexity of splitting assets with the nonprofit arm, which will continue to exist (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
A look at challenges to OpenAI becoming a for-profit company, including the complexity of splitting assets with the nonprofit arm, which will continue to exist  —  Converting from a nonprofit happens rarely, especially for organizations this wealthy.  OpenAI has two years to do so.



NYU professor Aswath Damodaran on an AI bot that is trained on his equity valuation work that is in the public domain, why AI will empower generalists, and more (Aswath Damodaran/Financial Times)

Aswath Damodaran / Financial Times:
NYU professor Aswath Damodaran on an AI bot that is trained on his equity valuation work that is in the public domain, why AI will empower generalists, and more  —  Whether the risks to jobs is real or not, it behoves us all to act like it is given how consequential the costs could be



Saturday, September 28, 2024

Sources: TSMC's execs took to calling Sam Altman a "podcasting bro" after he said it would take $7T and many years to build 36 chip plants to fulfill his vision (New York Times)

New York Times:
Sources: TSMC's execs took to calling Sam Altman a “podcasting bro” after he said it would take $7T and many years to build 36 chip plants to fulfill his vision  —  Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, is talking to the United Arab Emirates, Asian chipmakers and U.S. officials …



Sources: OpenAI expects its revenue to grow to $11.6B in 2025; ChatGPT has 10M paying users and could bring in $2.7B in revenue in 2024, up from $700M in 2023 (Reuters)

Reuters:
Sources: OpenAI expects its revenue to grow to $11.6B in 2025; ChatGPT has 10M paying users and could bring in $2.7B in revenue in 2024, up from $700M in 2023  —  Thrive Capital is investing more than $1 billion of OpenAI's current $6.5 billion fundraising round, and it has a sweetener …



SEMI: China is projected to invest $100B+ on chipmaking equipment from 2025 to 2027, followed by South Korea at $81B, Taiwan at $75B, and the Americas at $63B (Toby Sterling/Reuters)

Toby Sterling / Reuters:
SEMI: China is projected to invest $100B+ on chipmaking equipment from 2025 to 2027, followed by South Korea at $81B, Taiwan at $75B, and the Americas at $63B  —  Semiconductor manufacturers will spend a record $400 billion on computer chip-making equipment in 2025-2027 …



Chinese state media has embraced the success of Black Myth: Wukong, a Chinese AAA game that has sold 20M+ copies globally, hailing it as a soft power export (Lizzi C. Lee/Rest of World)

Lizzi C. Lee / Rest of World:
Chinese state media has embraced the success of Black Myth: Wukong, a Chinese AAA game that has sold 20M+ copies globally, hailing it as a soft power export  —  China is changing its long-critical stance thanks to the smash hit, according to Chinese game developers and industry analysts.



Friday, September 27, 2024

The UK CMA rules that Amazon's $4B Anthropic deal does not qualify for an investigation under merger laws as Anthropic's UK revenue did not meet needed limits (Katharine Gemmell/Bloomberg)

Katharine Gemmell / Bloomberg:
The UK CMA rules that Amazon's $4B Anthropic deal does not qualify for an investigation under merger laws as Anthropic's UK revenue did not meet needed limits  —  The Competition and Markets Authority said Friday that the tie-up did not qualify for an investigation under merger laws.



DefiLlama: Coinbase's L2 Ethereum network Base stands at $2.08B in total value locked, up from $430M at the start of 2024, marking a 370% growth year-to-date (Vishal Chawla/The Block)

Vishal Chawla / The Block:
DefiLlama: Coinbase's L2 Ethereum network Base stands at $2.08B in total value locked, up from $430M at the start of 2024, marking a 370% growth year-to-date  —  - Base has surpassed a total value locked of $2 billion for the first time — a 370% increase year-to-date.



Current and former staff say OpenAI has rushed product announcements and safety testing, lost its lead over rivals, and Altman is detached from the day-to-day (Deepa Seetharaman/Wall Street Journal)

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal:
Current and former staff say OpenAI has rushed product announcements and safety testing, lost its lead over rivals, and Altman is detached from the day-to-day  —  Executives and researchers have left this year amid disputes over the company's values and fights among its leaders



Stripe data: AI startups took a median 11 months to hit $1M in annualized revenue after their first sales, vs. 15 months for previous gen of SaaS companies (Madhumita Murgia/Financial Times)

Madhumita Murgia / Financial Times:
Stripe data: AI startups took a median 11 months to hit $1M in annualized revenue after their first sales, vs. 15 months for previous gen of SaaS companies  —  New data from payments group Stripe suggest artificial intelligence groups are making revenues at an unprecedented rate



Sunday, September 22, 2024

A profile of SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, who transformed the Japanese tech conglomerate into a global investment group and is criticized for high-risk investments (Lionel Barber/Financial Times)

Lionel Barber / Financial Times:
A profile of SoftBank's Masayoshi Son, who transformed the Japanese tech conglomerate into a global investment group and is criticized for high-risk investments  —  He has won and lost fortunes with his bets on technology.  So is the investor a visionary — or a gambler who got lucky?



Law enforcement agencies shut down a service offered by iServer, a phishing-as-a-service platform, which was used to unlock 1.2M+ stolen or lost mobile phones (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Law enforcement agencies shut down a service offered by iServer, a phishing-as-a-service platform, which was used to unlock 1.2M+ stolen or lost mobile phones  —  iServer provided a simple service for phishing credentials to unlock phones.  —  A coalition of law-enforcement agencies …



Thoughts on the iPhone's slowing pace of hardware innovation, first impressions of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and a closer look at Apple Intelligence roll out plans (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Thoughts on the iPhone's slowing pace of hardware innovation, first impressions of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and a closer look at Apple Intelligence roll out plans  —  The new iPhone has tantalizing camera improvements, but the device is emblematic of Apple's slower pace of hardware innovation.



With the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which can easily slot into people's lives, Meta has exceeded expectations in a year when many AI gadgets flopped (Victoria Song/The Verge)

Victoria Song / The Verge:
With the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which can easily slot into people's lives, Meta has exceeded expectations in a year when many AI gadgets flopped  —  The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses exceeded expectations in a year when AI gadgets flopped.  But can it keep the momentum going?



Saturday, September 21, 2024

A look at Jony Ive's work with LoveFrom; Ive bought a city block in SF's Jackson Square and could raise ~$1B with Sam Altman by end of 2024 for an AI device (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)

Tripp Mickle / New York Times:
A look at Jony Ive's work with LoveFrom; Ive bought a city block in SF's Jackson Square and could raise ~$1B with Sam Altman by end of 2024 for an AI device  —  Many people have wondered what Jony Ive has been up to since he left Apple five years ago.Carolyn Fong for The New York Times



A Google threat analyst says the hacker behind the Snowflake breach recently broke into a "handful" of new orgs and is likely a male based in Canada in his 20s (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
A Google threat analyst says the hacker behind the Snowflake breach recently broke into a “handful” of new orgs and is likely a male based in Canada in his 20s  —  Cyber investigators are tracking alleged scammer in connection with a string of compromises



California Gov. Newsom signs Senate Bill 976 to protect minors, banning "addictive feeds", barring social media notifications from 12am to 6am, and more (Taryn Luna/Los Angeles Times)

Taryn Luna / Los Angeles Times:
California Gov. Newsom signs Senate Bill 976 to protect minors, banning “addictive feeds”, barring social media notifications from 12am to 6am, and more  —  California took a major step in its fight to protect children from the ills of social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature …



Google says it plans to counter Japan's FTC over claims that it hobbles rivals in search; a source says Japan's FTC sent a cease-and-desist order to Google (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg : Google says it plans to counter Japan's FTC over claims that it hobbles rivals in search; a source says Japan's FTC s...