Salesforce says online Black Friday sales hit $74.4B globally, up 5% YoY, and $17.5B in the US, up 7% YoY; Adobe says US online sales hit $10.8B, up 10.2% YoY — The momentum of Thanksgiving — which saw consumers spend a record $33.6 billion spent globally online on the day — looks like it continued into Black Friday, with a bang.
Ex-Meta crypto chief David Marcus says there was no legal or regulatory angle for the government to kill its Libra project and “it was 100% a political kill” — How Libra Was Killed. I never shared this publicly before, but since @pmarca opened the floodgates on @joerogan's pod, it feels appropriate to shed more light on this. As a reminder, Libra (then Diem) was an advanced, high-performance, payments-centric blockchain paired with a
Google, which joined the Open Cloud Coalition, denies its offer of €100M+ in incentives to CISPE was linked to CISPE's antitrust complaint against Microsoft — El Reg has seen the presentation to CISPE members which sources say was intended to keep the lawsuit over licensing alive
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia says generative AI tools have helped it lower frauds by 30% and reduce call center customer wait times by 40% in 2024 — - Customer scam losses at Commonwealth Bank cut in half — CEO Matt Comyn says many more AI use cases in development
Japan allocates another $9.9B to boost its chip, quantum computing, and AI endeavors, with an undisclosed amount going to chip startup Rapidus — - Ishiba promised more than ¥10 trillion in outlays on chips, AI — Some of the funds are seen going to foundry startup Rapidus
Chinese food delivery giant Meituan reports Q3 revenue up 22.4% YoY to $12.9B, net profit up 3x YoY to $1.78B, and core delivery business up 20.2% YoY to $9.57B — China's largest food delivery firm Meituan (3690.HK) posted a bigger-than-expected 22.4% rise in third-quarter revenue on Friday, defying sluggish Chinese consumption.
Australia's Senate votes to pass a social media ban for children under 16, brushing aside lawmaker concerns on both sides; tech companies could be fined A$50M — - Australia's social media laws to be among strictest in world — Children under age of 16 will be banned from opening accounts
Cloud backup startup Eon raised $70M led by BOND at a $1.4B valuation, taking its total funding to $200M since its January 2024 founding by AWS alumni — - BOND led a $70 million funding round, Eon's third this year — Cloud backup startup was founded by Amazon Web Services alumni
Reddit COO Jen Wong says ~50% of current users are located outside the US, and the company is developing new search tools to simplify navigation on Reddit — Reddit is ramping up efforts to attract more users outside of the U.S., putting countries like India and Brazil in focus as it looks …
Alibaba releases QwQ-32B-Preview under an Apache 2.0 license and claims the “reasoning” AI model beats OpenAI's o1 models on the AIME and MATH tests — A new so-called “reasoning” AI model, QwQ-32B-Preview, has arrived on the scene. It's one of the few to rival OpenAI's o1 …
Anthropic updates Claude to add custom writing styles tailored to users, aiming to personalize its replies, following similar ChatGPT and Gemini features — Anthropic is adding a new feature to its Claude AI assistant that will give users more control over how the chatbot responds to different writing tasks.
IDC expects global smartphone shipments to rise 6.2% YoY to 1.24B units in 2024, with Android shipments growing 7.6% YoY and iPhone shipments growing 0.4% YoY — Worldwide smartphone shipments are forecast to grow 6.2% year-over-year in 2024 to 1.24 billion units, according …
Singapore, which has clear AV guidelines, is deploying self-driving buses and more as a way to overcome labor shortages and use its scarce land more efficiently — The tiny country has embraced autonomous vehicles as a way to overcome labor shortages and use its scarce land more efficiently.
Game console makers rethink selling more powerful machines, as performance improvements become less dramatic and consumers can't tell between 4K and 8K graphics — The human eye can't really tell the difference between 4K and 8K resolution. — Video game console manufacturers …
Google proposes Search tweaks in Europe to comply with the DMA, including removing the map showing hotel locations and results in Germany, Belgium, and Estonia — Google has proposed more changes to its search results in Europe after some smaller rivals complained about lower traffic …
Huawei unveils the $760+ Mate 70 series, powered by its HarmonyOS Next, calling the flagship device the “smartest” Mate phone, as it faces US chip curbs — Last year, a chip breakthrough put Huawei on top of the Chinese smartphone market. Now it is rolling out its newest phone, the Mate 70 series.
US coding boot camp graduates are facing a tough job market due to AI coding tools and mass layoffs; CompTIA: developer job listings are down 56% since 2019 — Coding boot camps once looked like the golden ticket to an economically secure future. But as that promise fades, what should you do?
Sources: Sony is in the early stages of developing a portable console to play PS5 games, building on the PlayStation Portal, although its launch is years away — - Nintendo's Switch has dominated mobile console space for years — Rival Microsoft is also developing portable gaming prototypes
Sources: Cantor Fitzgerald agreed to invest as much as $600M in Tether for about a 5% stake in the past year; Cantor holds most of Tether's $134B in assets — Before becoming Trump's commerce secretary pick, Lutnick deepened Cantor's ties with a stablecoin firm under investigation
Thoughts on Apple TV's history and future; sources: a larger-than-usual number of features scheduled for iOS 19 have been postponed to iOS 19.4 in spring 2026 — Apple doesn't need its own TV set. But it should make a low-cost TV streaming stick to bring its content, apps and smart home features to more households.
Profiles of Teresa Ribera, Henna Virkkunen, and Ekaterina Zaharieva, the three incoming EU commissioners in charge of key tech policy areas into 2029 — The European Union looks to have clinched political agreement on the team of 26 commissioners who will be implementing President Ursula …
How researchers used AI in tandem with drones to find 303 previously uncharted Nazca Lines in Peru, almost doubling the number that had been mapped as of 2020 — With drones and A.I., researchers managed to double the number of mysterious geoglyphs in a matter of months.
Sources: TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who has known Elon Musk for several years, has sought Musk's counsel in recent weeks on the incoming Trump administration — Popular video app and Chinese parent ByteDance view rival social-media owner as conduit to the president-elect
Strava's new API rules for third parties will make it harder for users across dozens of fitness apps and wearables to integrate their fitness data in one place — It might seem odd for one app's users to fume over an API, but at the heart of the matter is the inherent messiness of fitness data.
A look at challenges facing Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, including the company falling behind in the AI chip race and discontent from employees — Chip woes and labour unrest test the mettle of third-generation leader of South Korea's most valuable company
An investigation finds several women across the US were deceived, drugged, terrorized, and sexually enslaved by sex traffickers to make money from OnlyFans — OnlyFans gives women the chance to earn money by making porn. Sex traffickers also use the platform to abuse and exploit them, say police and prosecutors.
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...
