Friday, February 16, 2024

Ahead of the 2024 US election, Anthropic is testing Prompt Shield, which will redirect users asking political topics to "authoritative" sources of voting info (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Ahead of the 2024 US election, Anthropic is testing Prompt Shield, which will redirect users asking political topics to “authoritative” sources of voting info  —  Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, is testing a technology to detect …



An interview with Kurt Wagner on his new book Battle for the Bird, a Jack Dorsey biography morphed into a deep dive on Twitter's tumultuous transition to X (Zoë Schiffer/Platformer)

Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
An interview with Kurt Wagner on his new book Battle for the Bird, a Jack Dorsey biography morphed into a deep dive on Twitter's tumultuous transition to X  —  Was it Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk?  Kurt Wagner and Zoë Schiffer, authors of two new books on the subject, interview each other about what they learned



PitchBook: Q4 2023 saw only 12 crypto exits, the lowest number since Q4 2020 and consistent with the "low-level activity seen throughout 2023" (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch:
PitchBook: Q4 2023 saw only 12 crypto exits, the lowest number since Q4 2020 and consistent with the “low-level activity seen throughout 2023”  —  The global venture capital market is enduring a long period of limited exits.  Startups are staying private longer …



Thursday, February 15, 2024

TSMC rises ~8% in its first post-Lunar New Year trading session, reaching a record $575B market cap and passing Visa as the world's 12th most valuable company (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
TSMC rises ~8% in its first post-Lunar New Year trading session, reaching a record $575B market cap and passing Visa as the world's 12th most valuable company  —  - Global AI activity should benefit Taiwan's largest company  — TSMC is the main contract chipmaker to Nvidia and Apple



A US judge approves Genesis' plan to sell ~$1.6B in Grayscale crypto trust shares to repay creditors, including 35M GBTC shares, worth ~$1.38B (Dietrich Knauth/Reuters)

Dietrich Knauth / Reuters:
A US judge approves Genesis' plan to sell ~$1.6B in Grayscale crypto trust shares to repay creditors, including 35M GBTC shares, worth ~$1.38B  —  Bankrupt crypto lender Genesis Global on Wednesday received permission from a U.S. court to sell about $1.6 billion in Grayscale cryptocurrency trust shares …



Sources: Italian app developer Bending Spoons raised $155M from Baillie Gifford and more at a $2.6B valuation, after raising $100M in 2023, and seeks M&A deals (Daniele Lepido/Bloomberg)

Daniele Lepido / Bloomberg:
Sources: Italian app developer Bending Spoons raised $155M from Baillie Gifford and more at a $2.6B valuation, after raising $100M in 2023, and seeks M&A deals  —  - Italian app developer has raised $155 million in new funding  — Company on track to generate $500 million in sales this year



Wednesday, January 31, 2024

US and UK law enforcement are bracing for an explosion of AI-generated CSAM, and criticize Meta, the authorities' best partner for flagging CSAM, over E2EE (Eileen Sullivan/New York Times)

Eileen Sullivan / New York Times:
US and UK law enforcement are bracing for an explosion of AI-generated CSAM, and criticize Meta, the authorities' best partner for flagging CSAM, over E2EE  —  Law enforcement officials are bracing for an explosion of material generated by artificial intelligence that realistically depicts children …



Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy (Adrienne LaFrance/The Atlantic)

Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  Silicon Valley has its own ascendant political ideology.  It's past time we call it what it is.



ByteDance co-founder and CEO Liang Rubo urges staff to resist mediocrity after the company missed the initial wave of generative AI, in a company-wide meeting (Jane Zhang/Bloomberg)

Jane Zhang / Bloomberg:
ByteDance co-founder and CEO Liang Rubo urges staff to resist mediocrity after the company missed the initial wave of generative AI, in a company-wide meeting  —  - Co-founder said the company showed signs of complacency  — Chinese peer Baidu claims its model can rival OpenAI's ChatGPT



Ofcom launches a probe into TikTok over Online Safety Act compliance, citing doubts about the effectiveness of using age inference to determine users' ages (Mizy Clifton/Politico)

Mizy Clifton / Politico : Ofcom launches a probe into TikTok over Online Safety Act compliance, citing doubts about the effectiveness of ...