US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cuts $5.1B in IT and consulting contracts, including with Accenture and Deloitte, calling them “wasteful spending” — - US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered cuts at the Pentagon including some consulting contracts.
AI reasoning models cost more to benchmark, making it harder to independently verify claims; Artificial Analysis: OpenAI's o1 costs $2,767.05 to evaluate — AI labs like OpenAI claim that their so-called “reasoning” AI models, which can “think” through problems step by step …
Madrid-based Jobandtalent, which connects gig workers with companies, raised a $103M Series F at a $1.5B valuation, down from its $500M Series E at $2.35B — Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers …
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Google would add support for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol to its Gemini models and SDK, but offered no timeframe — Just a few weeks after OpenAI said it would adopt rival Anthropic's standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides, Google is following suit.
Ofcom opens an investigation into a pro-suicide forum, its first using the Online Safety Act; the BBC linked the unnamed forum to 50+ deaths in the UK — A pro-suicide forum is under investigation by the UK's online regulator - its first using new powers under the Online Safety Act.
Samsung reports Q1 revenue up ~10% YoY to ~$53.4B and operating profit flat YoY at ~$4.5B, above ~$3.8B est., boosted by Galaxy S25 and legacy DRAM sales — Powerbeats Pro 2 Review: Best Workout Earbuds Still Lag on Audio Quality — Beats' newest exercise headphones are improved, but they face stiffer competition than ever.
Nintendo and Sony fell by 10%+ on April 7 amid a widespread selloff in Japan exacerbated by US tariffs; most Switch hardware is assembled in China and Vietnam — Nintendo, fresh off the announcement of its pivotal next-generation Switch 2 console, is particularly vulnerable as North America accounted …
Z-Wave, popular among smart home enthusiasts, becomes an open-source protocol with a new long-range technology as it seeks Matter support to avoid obsolescence — Now an open-source protocol and with a new long-range technology, the path forward for Z-Wave looks clearer, with a little help from Matter.
How Apple may adjust to the US tariffs; sources: the iPhone 17 Pro's camera panel will span the width of the phone and will be the same color as the device — After years of avoiding iPhone price hikes in the US, Apple could finally be forced to to make increases.
A look at the US market for humanoids in homes and businesses; PitchBook says investors have poured $7.2B into 50+ startups since 2015, including $1.6B in 2024 — By getting its humanoids into people's homes, 1X hopes to gather enormous amounts of data that can show these robots how to handle …
Anthropic's Alignment Science team: “legibility” or “faithfulness” of reasoning models' Chain-of-Thought can't be trusted and models may actively hide reasoning — We now live in the era of reasoning AI models where the large language model (LLM) …
Joel Kaplan says Meta's US fact-checking program will be over by Monday, and Community Notes will start appearing on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram — Meta will no longer have any fact-checkers in the U.S. come Monday, according to chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan.
In backing Trump, effective accelerationists like Musk and Andreessen got a “Decel-in-Chief”, who instigated a brain drain and tariffs that hurt tech companies — In October of 2023, Marc Andreessen, founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) …
Miami-based Felix Pago, which uses stablecoins for cross-border remittances and handled $1B+ of transfers via WhatsApp in 2024, raised $75M Series B led by QED — Remittance startup Felix Pago raised $75 million in a Series B round led by QED Investors as it looks to expand operations …
Leaked docs show Outlier and Scale AI use freelancers to write prompts about suicide, abuse, and terrorism to stress-test AI, urging creativity but banning CSAM — - BI obtained training docs showing how freelancers stress-test AI with “harmful” prompts. — Outlier and Scale AI use freelancers …
Meir Orbach / CTech : Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; ...
