Wednesday, February 12, 2025

A letter to US senator Ron Wyden shows data broker Datastream, which was selling US military location data, got the data from Lithuanian adtech company Eskimi (Wired)

Wired:
A letter to US senator Ron Wyden shows data broker Datastream, which was selling US military location data, got the data from Lithuanian adtech company Eskimi  —  In a letter to a US senator, a Florida-based data broker says it obtained sensitive data on US military members in Germany from a Lithuanian firm …



Analysis of credit and debit card data: Shein's US sales fell 16% to 41% for five days from February 5 and Temu fell up to 32% after Trump targets China trade (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Analysis of credit and debit card data: Shein's US sales fell 16% to 41% for five days from February 5 and Temu fell up to 32% after Trump targets China trade  —  Online shopping giants Temu and Shein have seen a sustained drop in sales in the week after US President Donald Trump scrapped …



Researcher Johann Rehberger shows a hack to override Gemini's prompt injection defenses, letting long-term memories be permanently planted for future sessions (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
Researcher Johann Rehberger shows a hack to override Gemini's prompt injection defenses, letting long-term memories be permanently planted for future sessions  —  In the nascent field of AI hacking, indirect prompt injection has become a basic building block for inducing chatbots …



Sunday, February 9, 2025

How DeepSeek's R1 accelerated the rollout of chatbots showing their "thinking" process; an expert says seeing a chatbot's inner monologue can trigger empathy (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
How DeepSeek's R1 accelerated the rollout of chatbots showing their “thinking” process; an expert says seeing a chatbot's inner monologue can trigger empathy  —  How Chinese start-up DeepSeek triggered a rush to launch chatbots that “reason.”  —  Chinese start-up DeepSeek …



A look at WikiTok, a site that lets users vertically swipe through an endless stream of random Wikipedia article stubs without algorithmically tracking the user (Benj Edwards/Ars Technica)

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
A look at WikiTok, a site that lets users vertically swipe through an endless stream of random Wikipedia article stubs without algorithmically tracking the user  —  On Wednesday, a New York-based app developer named Isaac Gemal debuted a new site called WikiTok, where users can vertically swipe through …



An analysis of US DOL data: the IT sector unemployment rate rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January, with the number of unemployed rising from 98K to 152K (Belle Lin/Wall Street Journal)

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal:
An analysis of US DOL data: the IT sector unemployment rate rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January, with the number of unemployed rising from 98K to 152K  —  Artificial intelligence continues to impact the technology labor market  —  The unemployment rate in the information technology sector rose …



Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association: the semiconductor market in India is projected to grow to $103.4B at a CAGR of 13% through 2030 (The Economic Times)

The Economic Times:
Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association: the semiconductor market in India is projected to grow to $103.4B at a CAGR of 13% through 2030  —  India's semiconductor consumption market, valued at $52 billion in 2024-25, is expected to grow at a 13% CAGR through 2030.



Saturday, February 8, 2025

TikTok advises its US Android users to sideload the app through APKs made available for download on its official website (Mariella Moon/Engadget)

Mariella Moon / Engadget:
TikTok advises its US Android users to sideload the app through APKs made available for download on its official website  —  The social media app is still not available on Apple App Store and Google Play.  —  If you need to download and install TikTok in the US, you can do so on Android …



How Sam Altman outflanked Elon Musk to win over Donald Trump, including by telling Trump in a phone call that AGI will be achieved during his second term (New York Times)

New York Times:
How Sam Altman outflanked Elon Musk to win over Donald Trump, including by telling Trump in a phone call that AGI will be achieved during his second term  —  After helping President Trump get elected, Elon Musk was poised to dominate the country's A.I. policies.  Then Mr. Altman sneaked into the White House.



Tests show DeepSeek's chatbot often hallucinates URLs in citations and admits that sharing news articles' content could violate copyright and paywall policies (Andrew Deck/Nieman Lab)

Andrew Deck / Nieman Lab:
Tests show DeepSeek's chatbot often hallucinates URLs in citations and admits that sharing news articles' content could violate copyright and paywall policies  —  The DeepSeek hype cycle is in full force, but can the chatbot attribute sources more accurately than its competitors?



Alibaba's DAMO Academy releases RynnBrain, an open-source foundation model to help robots perform real-world tasks like navigating rooms, trained on Qwen3-VL (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg : Alibaba's DAMO Academy releases RynnBrain, an open-source foundation model to help robots perform real-worl...