Sunday, October 9, 2022

A look at Dance Diffusion, an AI music generator aiming to overcome the limitations of other open-source audio tools, and legal issues with AI-generated music (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch:
A look at Dance Diffusion, an AI music generator aiming to overcome the limitations of other open-source audio tools, and legal issues with AI-generated music  —  Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, is tackling music  —  It was only five years ago that electronic punk band YACHT entered …



A look at BookScan, a subscription service for book sales data, exclusive to publishing executives, and its open-access alternative Post45 Data Collective (Melanie Walsh/Public Books)

Melanie Walsh / Public Books:
A look at BookScan, a subscription service for book sales data, exclusive to publishing executives, and its open-access alternative Post45 Data Collective  —  Culture industries increasingly use our data to sell us their products.  It's time to use their data to study them.



Experts paint a dire picture for China's semiconductor industry and AI development after the US announced new export controls on chips and chipmaking tech (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Experts paint a dire picture for China's semiconductor industry and AI development after the US announced new export controls on chips and chipmaking tech  —  Experts predict ‘tsunami of change’ for semiconductor industry as Washington wields tools tested on Huawei



Saturday, October 8, 2022

Q&A with CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz as the company surpasses $2B in annual revenue and looks to become a bigger player in data observability and IT operations (Kyle Alspach/Protocol)

Kyle Alspach / Protocol:
Q&A with CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz as the company surpasses $2B in annual revenue and looks to become a bigger player in data observability and IT operations  —  CrowdStrike is finding massive traction in areas outside its core endpoint security products, setting up the company to become …



Google Fitbit Sense 2 review: good stress tracking and nice UI but no Google Assistant or third-party apps, pricey at $300, and can't be called a smartwatch (Victoria Song/The Verge)

Victoria Song / The Verge:
Google Fitbit Sense 2 review: good stress tracking and nice UI but no Google Assistant or third-party apps, pricey at $300, and can't be called a smartwatch  —  The fitness tracker has industry-leading stress tracking, but pour one out for the future of Fitbit smartwatches … Its successor, the Sense 2?



Amazon sale: Up to 60% off on headphones from Sony, Bose, Samsung and others

https://ift.tt/U7SxWOt

China's YMTC and 30 other firms added to 'unverified' trade list by US

The United States on Friday added China's top memory chipmaker YMTC and 30 other Chinese entities to a list of companies that U.S. officials have been unable to inspect, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing and starting a 60 day-clock that could trigger much tougher penalties. https://ift.tt/4fqpbBi

Interview with founders of Character.ai, who say they left Google's LaMDA project to let users experiment with large language models through the use of chatbots (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Interview with founders of Character.ai, who say they left Google's LaMDA project to let users experiment with large language models through the use of chatbots  —  The creators of Google's LaMDA have launched the chatbot startup Character.ai, which is open for anyone to try



A look at Ukraine's efforts to block crypto donations to Russia's military and paramilitary groups, who researchers say have received $4M+ since the invasion (Andy Greenberg/Wired)

Andy Greenberg / Wired:
A look at Ukraine's efforts to block crypto donations to Russia's military and paramilitary groups, who researchers say have received $4M+ since the invasion  —  Blockchain investigators have uncovered at least $4 million—and counting—in cryptocurrency donations to Russia's violent militia groups.



Friday, October 7, 2022

'Over 70% Indians prefer contacting businesses through messages': Report

In the ever-evolving communication landscape, more than 70% of Indians prefer to message businesses rather than sending an email, calling or visiting their website, a new report said on Friday. Nearly 75% Indians surveyed said they are more likely to do business with/purchase from a company that they can contact via messaging. https://ift.tt/BohyfD6

Interview with Elon Musk: it is "vaguely therapeutic" to "play the fool on Twitter", Truth Social is a right-wing echo chamber that can be called Trumpet, more (Roula Khalaf/Financial Times)

Roula Khalaf / Financial Times:
Interview with Elon Musk: it is “vaguely therapeutic” to “play the fool on Twitter”, Truth Social is a right-wing echo chamber that can be called Trumpet, more  —  Dinner with Elon Musk begins with a drive in a Tesla.  I am seated in the back, next to X, the billionaire's two-and-a-half-year-old son.



Binance says 2M BNB, worth ~$570M, were stolen from its BNB Chain in an exploit; "majority" of BNB are in the hacker's wallet, ~$100M worth were "unrecovered" (Elizabeth Howcroft/Reuters)

Elizabeth Howcroft / Reuters:
Binance says 2M BNB, worth ~$570M, were stolen from its BNB Chain in an exploit; “majority” of BNB are in the hacker's wallet, ~$100M worth were “unrecovered”  —  Hackers have stolen around $100 million worth of cryptocurrency from a Binance-linked blockchain …



Meta warns 1M Facebook users that their account info may have been stolen by 400+ apps, often via a "Login with Facebook" button, on App Store and Google Play (Karissa Bell/Engadget)

Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Meta warns 1M Facebook users that their account info may have been stolen by 400+ apps, often via a “Login with Facebook” button, on App Store and Google Play  —  Meta is warning 1 million Facebook users that their account information may have been compromised by third-party apps from Apple or Google's stores.



Crypto hack: Attackers steal $570 million from Binance-linked blockchain

Blockchain bridges are tools used to transfer cryptocurrencies between different applications. Criminals have increasingly targeted them, with some $2 billion stolen in 13 different hacks, mostly this year, researcher Chainalysis said in August. https://ift.tt/1tvOG8K

Microsoft: '27% of Indian SMBs are all or mostly cloud-based'

Almost 35 per cent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) in India are spending over 10 per cent of their revenue on technology (in comparison to global counterparts) and 26 per cent of SMBs are early adopters of new technologies, a Microsoft report said. https://ift.tt/O1vRsNI

Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in international payments to counter Western sanctions (Gleb Bryanski/Reuters)

Gleb Bryanski / Reuters : Russia's finance minister says Russian companies have begun using bitcoin and other digital currencies in i...