Friday, April 11, 2025

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cuts $5.1B in IT and consulting contracts, including with Accenture and Deloitte, calling them "wasteful spending" (Business Insider)

Business Insider:
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 (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
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 (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
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 …



Sunday, April 6, 2025

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 (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
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 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
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 (New York Times)

New York Times:
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 (Emilia David/VentureBeat)

Emilia David / VentureBeat:
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) …



Chinese robotaxi operator Pony AI and Toyota begin commercial production of an autonomous Toyota bZ4X; Pony AI aims to have 3,000+ robotaxis by the end of 2026 (Chester Dawson/Bloomberg)

Chester Dawson / Bloomberg : Chinese robotaxi operator Pony AI and Toyota begin commercial production of an autonomous Toyota bZ4X; Pony ...