Saturday, June 7, 2025

Microsoft plans to add a "safety" category to its AI leaderboard on Azure Foundry, with a safety metric based on its ToxiGen and CAIS's WMD Proxy benchmarks (Financial Times)

Financial Times:
Microsoft plans to add a “safety” category to its AI leaderboard on Azure Foundry, with a safety metric based on its ToxiGen and CAIS's WMD Proxy benchmarks  —  Tech group's corporate clients use its ‘leaderboard’ to assess rival offerings by likes of OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI



YouTube rolls out a tool to let some creators upload different thumbnails for each video dubbed into a different language, to help expand their global audience (Dan Whateley/Business Insider)

Dan Whateley / Business Insider:
YouTube rolls out a tool to let some creators upload different thumbnails for each video dubbed into a different language, to help expand their global audience  —  - YouTube is adding a new tool to let creators change thumbnails for videos in different languages.



A profile of Panos Panay, head of devices and services at Amazon, who has scaled back new releases to focus on perfecting products like Alexa+ before rollout (Sebastian Herrera/Wall Street Journal)

Sebastian Herrera / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Panos Panay, head of devices and services at Amazon, who has scaled back new releases to focus on perfecting products like Alexa+ before rollout  —  Panos Panay needs the more advanced Alexa+ assistant to be a hit.  For 10 years, the product has struggled to evolve.



Friday, June 6, 2025

The UK FCA says it will lift its ban on offering crypto exchange traded notes to retail investors "to support UK growth and competitiveness" (Ian Allison/CoinDesk)

Ian Allison / CoinDesk:
The UK FCA says it will lift its ban on offering crypto exchange traded notes to retail investors “to support UK growth and competitiveness”  —  The move is to support U.K. growth and competitiveness, the FCA said.  —  What to know: … U.K. financial regulator …



China's Hainan province tests letting some corporate users bypass the Great Firewall for global internet access, as the island seeks to become a free-trade port (Ben Jiang/South China Morning Post)

Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
China's Hainan province tests letting some corporate users bypass the Great Firewall for global internet access, as the island seeks to become a free-trade port  —  China's southernmost province of Hainan is piloting a programme to grant select corporate users broad access to the global internet …



United Airlines partners with Spotify to provide free access to 450+ hours of curated playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts across its flights (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
United Airlines partners with Spotify to provide free access to 450+ hours of curated playlists, audiobooks, and podcasts across its flights  —  Access over 450 hours of curated content for free on seat-back screens. … United Airlines is expanding its in-flight entertainment catalog …



An interview with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, as the company navigates political instability in The Netherlands and abroad and the impacts of Trump's trade war (Adam Satariano/New York Times)

Adam Satariano / New York Times:
An interview with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet, as the company navigates political instability in The Netherlands and abroad and the impacts of Trump's trade war  —  ASML, the Dutch company that makes multimillion-dollar tools to manufacture advanced semiconductors, is grappling with the repercussions of a tech trade war.



Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Photos and partial footage of an FSD-enabled Tesla sideswiping a parked vehicle and hitting a woman in November 2023 shows FSD's limits; the NHTSA is probing it (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Photos and partial footage of an FSD-enabled Tesla sideswiping a parked vehicle and hitting a woman in November 2023 shows FSD's limits; the NHTSA is probing it  —  The setting sun was blinding drivers on the Arizona interstate between Flagstaff and Phoenix in November 2023.



Google pauses the rollout of Photos' AI-powered Ask Photos feature due to issues with latency, quality, and user experience, per a Google product manager on X (Hayden Field/The Verge)

Hayden Field / The Verge:
Google pauses the rollout of Photos' AI-powered Ask Photos feature due to issues with latency, quality, and user experience, per a Google product manager on X  —  'Ask Photos isn't where it needs to be,' says a product manager for Google Photos.



An interview with Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki on balancing chaos and accessibility, redesigning core mechanics, and more, ahead of its June 5 launch (Christopher Cruz/Rolling Stone)

Christopher Cruz / Rolling Stone:
An interview with Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki on balancing chaos and accessibility, redesigning core mechanics, and more, ahead of its June 5 launch  —  Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki discusses the challenges of a free roam racer and balancing the difficulty for new players



Nokia, Nvidia, Safran, and 40+ organizations plan to build an EU-funded unmanned drone project to protect critical infrastructure, set to launch in three years (Nathan Vifflin/Reuters)

Nathan Vifflin / Reuters:
Nokia, Nvidia, Safran, and 40+ organizations plan to build an EU-funded unmanned drone project to protect critical infrastructure, set to launch in three years  —  A consortium of more than 42 organizations, led by Nokia (NOKIA.HE), will work on an unmanned drone project aimed at protecting …



French accounting software startup Pennylane raised $204M led by TCV, a source says at a ~$4.25B valuation, with participation from Blackstone, DST, and others (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)

Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg : French accounting software startup Pennylane raised $204M led by TCV, a source says at a ~$4.25B valuation, with...