Chainalysis: payments in Singapore using stablecoins reached a record high of almost $1B in Q2, led by transactions at merchant outlets — - Digital-asset consultancy Chainalysis releases a crypto study — Stablecoin usage remains a small fraction of overall payments
Mistral releases its first multimodal model, Pixtral 12B, available on GitHub and Hugging Face, and via API “soon” — French AI startup Mistral has released its first model that can process images as well as text. — Called Pixtral 12B, the 12-billion-parameter model is roughly 24GB in size.
Riot Platforms plans the world's largest bitcoin mine in Corsicana, a former Texas oil boom town, using a liquid immersion system, despite residents' protests — A cash-strapped city in rural Texas will soon be home to the world's largest bitcoin mine. Local protesters are “raising hell.”
A surge in scams poses a serious image problem for Revolut, which faces more complaints than its large UK rivals about authorized push payment scams — The $45 billion challenger bank says it's committed to tackling online fraud as it seeks ‘exponential’ growth.
Smartcat, which provides AI-powered translation tools for businesses, raised a $43M Series C led by Left Lane Capital, bringing its total funding to $70M — Can AI ever fully replace translators? Not likely. AI translations tend to lack the lexical richness of their human-translated counterparts …
South Korean police arrest two former Samsung officials on suspicion of stealing tech worth $3.2B+ to build a chipmaking plant in China — - Police accuse two former execs of stealing trade secrets — They allegedly set up a JV with local government officials
Oracle shares are up 34% since January, well outpacing the Nasdaq's 14% rise, as it becomes an attractive cloud-computing provider for AI developers — Long-stagnant stock is up 34% thanks to its neutral status in the booming market for AI computing power — Oracle missed the tech industry's move …
Alibaba's stock rises 5%+ after being made directly accessible to mainland China investors for the first time, following an upgrade to Hong Kong primary listing — The country's mainland retail investors are a formidable force and known for their enthusiasm for tech names
Sources: Japanese chip startup Rapidus seeks to raise ~$696M from existing and new investors by issuing new shares to finance its chip development efforts — - Government-funded startup is approaching Mizuho, SMBC and DBJ — Rapidus part of Japan's campaign to regain leadership in chips
A writer on working for a tech company, writing pretend responses to hypothetical chatbot questions, to help train AI models and teach chatbots how to write — Journalists and other writers are employed to improve the quality of chatbot replies. The irony of working for an industry …
London's e-bike boom is frustrating local councils over parking issues, as Lime and Forest expand; Lime trips during peak hours have grown 91% YoY in 2024 — Badly parked and abandoned vehicles cause frustration for local authorities — London has seen a surge in rented e-bikes this summer …
Sources: Apple will launch Image Playground and Genmoji in iOS 18.2; Sonos cuts its plans to build ~1M units of Ace headphones per year, to ~100K per year — Apple's AI features keep getting delayed — and that slow rollout likely means that the iPhone 16 won't see a “super cycle” of orders.
Some creators move from unpredictable algorithm-driven platforms to subscription services; YouTube group The Try Guys launched 2nd Try, a $5/month streamer — The Try Guys, one of YouTube's most established creator groups, have successfully abandoned their reliance on Google's algorithms …
A profile of Texas-based Tyler Tech, which has become a dominant US local government software provider, despite a history of software flaws and release delays — Tyler Tech dominates America's software industry managing parks, courts, municipal offices and prison networks. And you thought the DMV was rough before.
Analysis of 3.2M+ Telegram messages from 16K+ channels shows how the app is inundated with criminal activity, CSAM, drug dealers, white nationalists, and more — Drug dealers, scammers and white nationalists openly conduct business and spread toxic speech on the platform …
Matt Burgess / Wired : Finland, Canada, the US, and other countries are testing tech for passport-free travel, including facial recogniti...
