Friday, February 28, 2025

Reports of Meta launching standalone Meta AI and Reels apps aren't surprising, as the company has a history of repeatedly bundling and unbundling its products (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass)

M.G. Siegler / Spyglass:
Reports of Meta launching standalone Meta AI and Reels apps aren't surprising, as the company has a history of repeatedly bundling and unbundling its products  —  “There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle.”  While Jim Barksdale's famous quote …



Thailand says TikTok plans to spend $8.8B to build AI data centers across the country over the next five years, more than doubling its earlier target (Pathom Sangwongwanich/Bloomberg)

Pathom Sangwongwanich / Bloomberg:
Thailand says TikTok plans to spend $8.8B to build AI data centers across the country over the next five years, more than doubling its earlier target  —  - Social media platform to invest in data-hosting infrastructure  — Company recently won approval for $3.8 billion outlay



Consensys founder Joseph Lubin says the SEC has agreed "in principle" to end its securities enforcement case against Consensys' MetaMask, filed in June 2024 (Cheyenne Ligon/CoinDesk)

Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk:
Consensys founder Joseph Lubin says the SEC has agreed “in principle” to end its securities enforcement case against Consensys' MetaMask, filed in June 2024  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is dropping yet another case against an American crypto company …



How the NYC subway used Google's experimental, AI-based TrackInspect tool to identify 92% of defect locations on subway tracks later found by human inspectors (Aarian Marshall/Wired)

Aarian Marshall / Wired:
How the NYC subway used Google's experimental, AI-based TrackInspect tool to identify 92% of defect locations on subway tracks later found by human inspectors  —  New York City's transit authority is one of a few US systems experimenting with using sensors and AI to improve track inspections.



Thursday, February 27, 2025

Microsoft calls on Trump to ease US export rules on data center chips for allies including India, Switzerland, and Israel, classed in the second of three tiers (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Microsoft calls on Trump to ease US export rules on data center chips for allies including India, Switzerland, and Israel, classed in the second of three tiers  —  Request highlights the president's challenging task of trying to boost U.S. businesses and limit China's advances in artificial intelligence



Polish startup Nomagic, which makes robotic arms for logistics operations, raised a $44M Series B led by the EBRD, taking its total funding to ~$74M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Polish startup Nomagic, which makes robotic arms for logistics operations, raised a $44M Series B led by the EBRD, taking its total funding to ~$74M  —  Regions like the U.S. and Europe have been doubling down on rebuilding their industrial muscle after decades of closing down factories and outsourcing the work to countries like China.



Sources: no major players behind online scam centers in Myanmar were taken down in the recent China-led raids, and the construction of new centers continues (Hannah Beech/New York Times)

Hannah Beech / New York Times:
Sources: no major players behind online scam centers in Myanmar were taken down in the recent China-led raids, and the construction of new centers continues  —  A China-led crackdown on online fraud rescued thousands from Myanmar this month.  But this massive business of grift keeps growing.



Tuesday, February 25, 2025

The ECMWF says its new weather model broke ground by making global predictions freely available; testing shows it outperforms other models up to 15 days ahead (Clive Cookson/Financial Times)

Clive Cookson / Financial Times:
The ECMWF says its new weather model broke ground by making global predictions freely available; testing shows it outperforms other models up to 15 days ahead  —  Predictions for up to 15 days ahead expected to improve tracking of extreme events  —  Improved weather prediction using …



The EU's Court of Justice says Google's refusal to let Italian energy company Enel host an EV charging app on Android Auto might break EU competition rules (Edith Hancock/Wall Street Journal)

Edith Hancock / Wall Street Journal:
The EU's Court of Justice says Google's refusal to let Italian energy company Enel host an EV charging app on Android Auto might break EU competition rules  —  The ruling comes after a years-long dispute between the Italian energy company and the tech giant over how it manages access to Android Auto



CoinGecko: crypto trading volume on India's four largest exchanges more than doubled QoQ to $1.9B in Q4 2024, as many young Indians trade to supplement income (Jaspreet Kalra/Reuters)

Jaspreet Kalra / Reuters:
CoinGecko: crypto trading volume on India's four largest exchanges more than doubled QoQ to $1.9B in Q4 2024, as many young Indians trade to supplement income  —  Like thousands of his countrymen in far-flung places, flower-shop owner Ashish Nagose has been learning about trading cryptocurrencies …



Monday, February 24, 2025

An analysis of the $1.46B Bybit hack, by far the largest crypto heist of all time, ahead of Poly Network's $611M in 2021, and possibly the biggest theft ever (Elliptic)

Elliptic:
An analysis of the $1.46B Bybit hack, by far the largest crypto heist of all time, ahead of Poly Network's $611M in 2021, and possibly the biggest theft ever  —  On February 21st 2025, approximately $1.46 billion in cryptoassets were stolen from Bybit, a Dubai-based exchange.



Apple says it will spend $500B in the US over the next four years, hire 20,000 new US workers, and produce AI servers in Texas, after Tim Cook met with Trump (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple says it will spend $500B in the US over the next four years, hire 20,000 new US workers, and produce AI servers in Texas, after Tim Cook met with Trump  —  - Company to begin producing Apple Intelligence servers in Texas  — $500 billion planned to be invested in US over next four years



Some hair stylists, bridal shops, and hardware stores say AI generated "inspo", taken from platforms like Pinterest, is warping customers' sense of reality (Tatum Hunter/Washington Post)

Tatum Hunter / Washington Post:
Some hair stylists, bridal shops, and hardware stores say AI generated “inspo”, taken from platforms like Pinterest, is warping customers' sense of reality  —  From bridal shops to med-spas to hardware stores, AI-generated photos are warping our sense of reality and hurting small businesses along the way.



Sources: China is instructing its top AI leaders to avoid visiting the US over fears they could be detained as bargaining chips or divulge confidential info (Yoko Kubota/Wall Street Journal)

Yoko Kubota / Wall Street Journal : Sources: China is instructing its top AI leaders to avoid visiting the US over fears they could be de...