Filing: Samsung plans to buy back about $7.2B of its own stock in stages over the next year, in one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Filing: Samsung plans to buy back about $7.2B of its own stock in stages over the next year, in one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history  —  - Samsung's stock soared as much as almost 9% on Friday  — Investors fear the company is missing out on the AI boom

How Physical Intelligence is trying to give robots a humanlike understanding of the physical world by feeding data from robots doing tasks into its AI model (Will Knight/Wired)

Will Knight / Wired:
How Physical Intelligence is trying to give robots a humanlike understanding of the physical world by feeding data from robots doing tasks into its AI model  —  Physical Intelligence has assembled an all-star team and raised $400 million on the promise of a stunning breakthrough in how robots learn.

London-based Tessl, which is building an AI to write and maintain code, raised $125M across seed and Series A, sources say at a $500M+ post-money valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
London-based Tessl, which is building an AI to write and maintain code, raised $125M across seed and Series A, sources say at a $500M+ post-money valuation  —  Many startups and larger tech companies have taken a crack at building artificial intelligence to code software.

How Italy became an unexpected spyware hub, going under the radar by specializing in cheaper tools, as authorities carry out thousands of operations since 2021 (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)

Suzanne Smalley / The Record:
How Italy became an unexpected spyware hub, going under the radar by specializing in cheaper tools, as authorities carry out thousands of operations since 2021  —  In April 2022, about four months after Kazakhstan's government violently cracked down on nationwide protests …

Charles Sporck, an early champion of globalization who moved some of Fairchild's chip assembly operations from the US to Hong Kong in the 1960s, died at 96 (James R. Hagerty/Wall Street Journal)

James R. Hagerty / Wall Street Journal:
Charles Sporck, an early champion of globalization who moved some of Fairchild's chip assembly operations from the US to Hong Kong in the 1960s, died at 96  —  He argued that offshoring allowed the U.S. semiconductor industry to create more high-paying jobs at home

Tencent reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to ~$23.9B and net income up 20% YoY to ~$7.4B, vs. ~$6.2B est., buoyed by Dungeon & Fighter Mobile and Black Myth: Wukong (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
Tencent reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to ~$23.9B and net income up 20% YoY to ~$7.4B, vs. ~$6.2B est., buoyed by Dungeon & Fighter Mobile and Black Myth: Wukong  —  - Net income for the September quarter beat analyst estimates  — Tencent kicks off a busy earnings season for China tech

Analysts: Nintendo and Sony are heading into the holiday season with little to offer consumers; the Switch is now seven years old and $700 PS5 Pro is overpriced (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Analysts: Nintendo and Sony are heading into the holiday season with little to offer consumers; the Switch is now seven years old and $700 PS5 Pro is overpriced  —  Video game industry fears its most important quarter will fall flat with few new mass-market offerings

SoftBank says Vision Fund co-CEO Rajeev Misra will step down from his leadership roles; during his 10-year tenure, he led investments in WeWork, Wag, and others (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
SoftBank says Vision Fund co-CEO Rajeev Misra will step down from his leadership roles; during his 10-year tenure, he led investments in WeWork, Wag, and others  —  SoftBank said the co-CEO of Vision Fund, Rajeev Misra, will soon step down from his leadership roles at the bank's flagship …

Sources: Elon Musk's US government advisory role will be structured to ensure he keeps control of Tesla, X, xAI, and others by installing acolytes and allies (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources: Elon Musk's US government advisory role will be structured to ensure he keeps control of Tesla, X, xAI, and others by installing acolytes and allies  —  Billionaire likely to push for government roles for acolytes and allies to cut regulation and protect his businesses

FTX sues Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to claw back almost $1.8B it alleges was fraudulently transferred by Sam Bankman-Fried in a 2021 deal (Emily Nicolle/Bloomberg)

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg:
FTX sues Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to claw back almost $1.8B it alleges was fraudulently transferred by Sam Bankman-Fried in a 2021 deal  —  Binance, Zhao and other Binance executives received the funds as part of a July 2021 share repurchase deal with Bankman-Fried, the FTX co-founder who is now in prison.

Threads becoming inundated with liberal election fraud conspiracies highlights a shift towards a "post-truth" online landscape across the political spectrum (Taylor Lorenz/User Mag)

Taylor Lorenz / User Mag:
Threads becoming inundated with liberal election fraud conspiracies highlights a shift towards a “post-truth” online landscape across the political spectrum  —  Thousands of users have amplified baseless claims of hacked voting machines as Democrats become more comfortable embracing denialism

Apple's future growth may come from several new Watch- or iPad-sized bets; visionOS 2.2 ultrawide Mac display option may be the Vision Pro's first killer app (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple's future growth may come from several new Watch- or iPad-sized bets; visionOS 2.2 ultrawide Mac display option may be the Vision Pro's first killer app  —  Apple may never find another product with as much revenue potential as the iPhone, but it can still thrive with several new Apple Watch- or iPad-level businesses.

Intel's Robert Hallock admits "our wounds with Arrow Lake not hitting the performance we projected were self-inflicted" and promises fixes for performance gains (Zak Killian/HotHardware)

Zak Killian / HotHardware:
Intel's Robert Hallock admits “our wounds with Arrow Lake not hitting the performance we projected were self-inflicted” and promises fixes for performance gains  —  Speaking plainly, Intel's recently-launched Core Ultra 200 desktop CPUs, code-named “Arrow Lake” …

A painting depicting Alan Turing as the god of AI, which was created by an AI-powered humanoid robot called Ai-Da, sold at a Sotheby's auction for nearly $1.1M (Zachary Small/New York Times)

Zachary Small / New York Times:
A painting depicting Alan Turing as the god of AI, which was created by an AI-powered humanoid robot called Ai-Da, sold at a Sotheby's auction for nearly $1.1M  —  The portrait depicts the British mathematician Alan Turing as the god of artificial intelligence.

FTX sues Anthony Scaramucci, Crypto.com, Zuckerberg's FWD.US, and others to recoup SBF's "investments" as part of his "campaign of influence-buying" in 2022 (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
FTX sues Anthony Scaramucci, Crypto.com, Zuckerberg's FWD.US, and others to recoup SBF's “investments” as part of his “campaign of influence-buying” in 2022  —  - Lawsuit says $67 million was invested into Skybridge endeavors  — FTX Says investments conveyed ‘little to no benefit’