Friday, November 15, 2024

A profile of Klarna and its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski as it filed for a US IPO on November 13; investors hope Klarna can achieve a $150B-$200B valuation (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
A profile of Klarna and its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski as it filed for a US IPO on November 13; investors hope Klarna can achieve a $150B-$200B valuation  —  Swedish entrepreneur born to Polish immigrants seeks to list the ‘buy now, pay later’ fintech in New York



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.



Wednesday, November 13, 2024

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



Sunday, November 10, 2024

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.



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...