Sunday, June 1, 2025

How the delivery app Fantuan grew its US presence to 50+ cities since 2019 by focusing on Asian cuisines, with an app design reminiscent of Chinese platforms (Alex Harring/CNBC)

Alex Harring / CNBC:
How the delivery app Fantuan grew its US presence to 50+ cities since 2019 by focusing on Asian cuisines, with an app design reminiscent of Chinese platforms  —  NEW YORK - When Kelly Wu feels sick and wants a delivery of congee, the Chinese porridge she grew up eating, she opts for a platform many may not have heard of.



Researchers say tactics used to make AI more engaging, like making them more agreeable, can make chatbots reinforce harmful ideas, like encouraging drug use (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)

Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Researchers say tactics used to make AI more engaging, like making them more agreeable, can make chatbots reinforce harmful ideas, like encouraging drug use  —  Tactics used to make AI tools more engaging can drive chatbots to monopolize users' time or reinforce harmful ideas.



DappRadar: NFT lending market volume has dropped 97% from a peak of ~$1B in January 2024 to ~$50M in May 2025, with borrower activity falling by 90% (Stephen Katte/Cointelegraph)

Stephen Katte / Cointelegraph:
DappRadar: NFT lending market volume has dropped 97% from a peak of ~$1B in January 2024 to ~$50M in May 2025, with borrower activity falling by 90%  —  Average NFT loan sizes have tanked, which DappRadar's Sara Gherghelas says means users are borrowing against low-value assets or being conservative with leverage.



Saturday, May 31, 2025

Internal docs show Meta plans to use AI to automate up to 90% of its privacy and integrity risk assessments, including in sensitive areas like violent content (NPR)

NPR:
Internal docs show Meta plans to use AI to automate up to 90% of its privacy and integrity risk assessments, including in sensitive areas like violent content  —  For years, when Meta launched new features for Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, teams of reviewers evaluated possible risks: Could it violate users' privacy?



Google quietly released an Android app called Google AI Edge Gallery on GitHub, letting users run some AI models from Hugging Face locally on their phones (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Google quietly released an Android app called Google AI Edge Gallery on GitHub, letting users run some AI models from Hugging Face locally on their phones  —  Last week, Google quietly released an app that lets users run a range of openly available AI models from the AI dev platform Hugging Face on their phones.



Grow a Garden, a hit game on Roblox, has spawned a market where in-game items are sold for real money on sites like eBay, potentially violating Roblox's ToS (Cecilia D'Anastasio/Bloomberg)

Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg:
Grow a Garden, a hit game on Roblox, has spawned a market where in-game items are sold for real money on sites like eBay, potentially violating Roblox's ToS  —  At a recent peak on Saturday, May 24, some 8.7 million people were playing at once, roughly the population of Switzerland …



Brazil is piloting dWallet, a digital wallet program that allows users to monetize their data, the first nationwide initiative of its kind in the world (Gabriel Daros/Rest of World)

Gabriel Daros / Rest of World:
Brazil is piloting dWallet, a digital wallet program that allows users to monetize their data, the first nationwide initiative of its kind in the world  —  Brazil is piloting dWallet, a project that lets citizens earn money from their data.  It is ahead of similar U.S-based initiatives.



Friday, May 30, 2025

Letter: Synopsys tells staff to stop sales, services, and new orders in China to comply with new US export curbs, and pulls its annual and quarterly forecasts (Reuters)

Reuters:
Letter: Synopsys tells staff to stop sales, services, and new orders in China to comply with new US export curbs, and pulls its annual and quarterly forecasts  —  Semiconductor design software firm Synopsys (SNPS.O) has told staff in China to halt services and sales in the country and stop taking …



The US Treasury sanctions Philippines-based Funnull Technology for allegedly facilitating "pig butchering" crypto scams that stole over $200M from US victims (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
The US Treasury sanctions Philippines-based Funnull Technology for allegedly facilitating “pig butchering” crypto scams that stole over $200M from US victims  —  The U.S. government imposed sanctions on FUNNULL, a company accused of providing infrastructure for cybercriminals running so-called …



Sources say Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and other Chinese companies are testing domestic alternatives as they deal with a dwindling stockpile of Nvidia processors (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Sources say Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and other Chinese companies are testing domestic alternatives as they deal with a dwindling stockpile of Nvidia processors  —  Tougher US export restrictions on advanced chips give added urgency to testing of domestic alternatives



Thursday, May 29, 2025

At Foxconn's shareholder conference, Chair Young Liu says 2025 revenue is set to reach ~$234B due to AI, and reassures shareholders amid US tariff uncertainty (Sherry Qin/Wall Street Journal)

Sherry Qin / Wall Street Journal:
At Foxconn's shareholder conference, Chair Young Liu says 2025 revenue is set to reach ~$234B due to AI, and reassures shareholders amid US tariff uncertainty  —  The company has been diversifying its businesses, growing its footprint in areas like AI servers and electric vehicles



Inside Las Vegas' Bitcoin Conference: Eric and Donald Trump Jr gave speeches, JD Vance said bitcoin is "only going to help the American dollar", and more (Alex Rogers/Financial Times)

Alex Rogers / Financial Times:
Inside Las Vegas' Bitcoin Conference: Eric and Donald Trump Jr gave speeches, JD Vance said bitcoin is “only going to help the American dollar”, and more  —  The US president is a crypto booster — and the faithful went to America's gambling capital to celebrate



Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Chinese AI rivals are filling the void left by US companies leaving China and Huawei has become "quite formidable" (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Chinese AI rivals are filling the void left by US companies leaving China and Huawei has become “quite formidable”  —  Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said that Chinese AI rivals are filling the void left by the departure of US companies …



Sources: the Trump administration suspends sales of more US tech, including chips and jet engines, in response to China's critical mineral export restrictions (Ana Swanson/New York Times)

Ana Swanson / New York Times:
Sources: the Trump administration suspends sales of more US tech, including chips and jet engines, in response to China's critical mineral export restrictions  —  President Trump has stopped some critical products and technologies made only in the United States from flowing to China …



Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands (The Information)

The Information : Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researc...