Saturday, June 15, 2024

A profile of game publisher Devolver Digital, which gives indie studios immense creative freedom, doesn't take IP rights from them, and is turning 15 on June 25 (Rollo Romig/New York Times)

Rollo Romig / New York Times:
A profile of game publisher Devolver Digital, which gives indie studios immense creative freedom, doesn't take IP rights from them, and is turning 15 on June 25  —  Devolver Digital teams with independent video game studios and gives them immense freedom.  Just don't kill Jeff Bezos.



Apple may not be bringing Apple Intelligence to iPhone 15, which has 6GB of RAM vs. iPhone 15 Pro's 8GB, due to RAM requirements for on-device AI processing (Andrew Williams/Wired)

Andrew Williams / Wired:
Apple may not be bringing Apple Intelligence to iPhone 15, which has 6GB of RAM vs. iPhone 15 Pro's 8GB, due to RAM requirements for on-device AI processing  —  Older iPhones might well be able to cope with Apple's AI, so why won't your $900 year-old model run it?  Here's why.



How the launch of AI search chatbots such as Bing Copilot is affecting advertisers, as they look for new ways to target users with relevant ads (Paresh Dave/Wired)

Paresh Dave / Wired:
How the launch of AI search chatbots such as Bing Copilot is affecting advertisers, as they look for new ways to target users with relevant ads  —  Microsoft and Google are bringing ads to their AI search experiences.  But users don't always find it helpful.



How disabled people use Apple Vision Pro for work, entertainment, and more, and interviews with some disabled Apple staff who built the accessibility features (Andrew Leland/New York Magazine)

Andrew Leland / New York Magazine:
How disabled people use Apple Vision Pro for work, entertainment, and more, and interviews with some disabled Apple staff who built the accessibility features  —  The headset is already changing disabled users' lives.  —  In her childhood bedroom, Maxine Collard had a PC connected …



Friday, June 14, 2024

Sources: Shein tries to suppress its chair's claim that the retailer is American, amid fears it could annoy China, which needs to approve Shein's London IPO (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources: Shein tries to suppress its chair's claim that the retailer is American, amid fears it could annoy China, which needs to approve Shein's London IPO  —  Donald Tang's remarks are said to have annoyed Chinese officials who need to approve London IPO  —  Online fast-fashion retailer Shein …



The crypto industry has amassed a $160M war chest to bolster pro-crypto US candidates, which could be pivotal in handing the Senate majority to GOP in November (Steven T. Dennis/Bloomberg)

Steven T. Dennis / Bloomberg:
The crypto industry has amassed a $160M war chest to bolster pro-crypto US candidates, which could be pivotal in handing the Senate majority to GOP in November  —  - Industry seeks regulatory changes to blunt SEC influence  — Democrats Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester targeted by crypto



Sources: Lightspeed wants to become a registered investment adviser, letting it use more than 20% of its funds, the cap for VC firms, to trade secondary markets (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)

Tabby Kinder / Financial Times:
Sources: Lightspeed wants to become a registered investment adviser, letting it use more than 20% of its funds, the cap for VC firms, to trade secondary markets  —  Move is a sign of how traditional investment models are under threat by a challenging VC environment



Boulder, Colorado-based Enveda, which combines AI with ancient remedies for drug discovery, raised a $55M Series B extension from investors including Microsoft (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Boulder, Colorado-based Enveda, which combines AI with ancient remedies for drug discovery, raised a $55M Series B extension from investors including Microsoft  —  For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn't isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s



Thursday, June 13, 2024

Amazon and telecom Vrio plan to launch a satellite internet service in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, coming online in mid-2025 (Eliana Raszewski/Reuters)

Eliana Raszewski / Reuters:
Amazon and telecom Vrio plan to launch a satellite internet service in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, coming online in mid-2025  —  Amazon (AMZN.O) and telecommunications firm Vrio will jointly launch a satellite internet service in seven South American countries …



Dublin-based AccountsIQ, which offers AI-powered bookkeeping, raised €60M, after raising just €12.7M in its nearly 20 year history, and reports 1,000 clients (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Dublin-based AccountsIQ, which offers AI-powered bookkeeping, raised €60M, after raising just €12.7M in its nearly 20 year history, and reports 1,000 clients  —  The European economy is on shaky ground, but there is a silver lining for enterprise startups: Those building tools …



Ant Group spent a record ~$2.9B on research in 2023, as the Alibaba affiliate develops its BaiLing LLM; Ant and affiliate MYbank served 87M businesses by 2023 (Xinyi Luo/Bloomberg)

Xinyi Luo / Bloomberg:
Ant Group spent a record ~$2.9B on research in 2023, as the Alibaba affiliate develops its BaiLing LLM; Ant and affiliate MYbank served 87M businesses by 2023  —  Founded by Jack Ma, Ant has been developing technology including its large language model BaiLing, which won approval …



India announces a new $1.15B Fund of Funds for startups with an "expanded scope" compared to previous initiatives, and extends tax benefits for startups (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch : India announces a new $1.15B Fund of Funds for startups with an “expanded scope” compared to previous initiat...