~techmeme | Bookmarks (1028)

Victoria Song / The Verge: Hands-on with the live translation feature of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses: adept at translating a basic conversation, but struggles with slang and faster speech  —  I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class.  I remember enough for toddler talk — phrases like …

Politico: Supporters and skeptics of the TikTok ban in Congress say Trump's US ownership proposal bewilders them, claiming it doesn't comply with the divest-or-ban law  —  Members of Congress are declaring themselves bewildered by Donald Trump's latest proposal to save TikTok by brokering a joint-ownership deal.

New York Times: Elon Musk's first moves suggest DOGE will be closer to an IT project than the sweeping operation to slash $2T+ from the federal budget that he once predicted  —  The rebranding of a former White House digital office into the new Department of Government Efficiency signals its potential limits, budget experts said.

The Guardian: An investigation reveals how the Israeli military's reliance on Microsoft's cloud and AI systems surged during the most intensive phase of the Israel-Hamas war  —  Leaked documents shed light on how Israel integrated the US tech giant into its war effort to meet growing demand for cloud and AI tools

Politico: Although Trump downplayed Elon Musk's Stargate criticism, assuring reporters “they're putting up the money”, key White House sources say they're furious at Musk  —  “It's clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” said one ally of the president.

Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI faces challenges in transitioning to for-profit status, including valuing Microsoft's stake; its charitable arm could be worth $30B  —  ChatGPT-maker in complex talks over splitting from its non-profit arm in move opposed by Elon Musk  —  OpenAI's board is locked …

Ian King / Bloomberg: Texas Instruments reports Q4 revenue down 1.7% YoY to $4.01B, net income down 12% YoY to $1.2B, and projects Q1, 2025 sales between $3.74B and $4.06B  —  - Factory expansion weighs on chipmaker's profit projection  — Tepid outlook follows better-than-expected quarterly results

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: PE firm Everstone acquires Delhi-based Wingify, whose flagship product Visual Website Optimizer helps businesses improve online conversion rates, for $200M  —  Private equity firm Everstone has reached a deal to acquire a majority stake in Wingify, one of India's earliest bootstrapped software …

Jon Keegan / Sherwood News: DeepSeek's latest AI model R1 sticks to Chinese government restrictions on sensitive topics like Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, and the treatment of Uyghurs in China  —  Those who train the AI models get to decide what the truth is.  —  5H  —  The AI world was abuzz this week with the release …

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: Sources: Mukesh Ambani's Reliance is buying Nvidia's AI chips and plans to build a 3-gigawatt data center in Jamnagar, India, set to be the largest in the world  —  - Reliance joins rush of tech companies building data centers … Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is building what may become …

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: The US DOJ charges the former CEO of AI chatbot startup GameOn and his wife for allegedly defrauding investors of more than $60M between 2018 and 2024  —  The founder of GameOn, a San Francisco artificial intelligence startup, has been indicted for running a “brazen and wide-ranging” …

Financial Times: Sources: Stargate lacks a fully developed plan, hasn't secured funding yet, will get no government support, and will exclusively serve OpenAI once operational  —  Donald Trump has called the SoftBank-backed venture a 'resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential'

Akila Quinio / Financial Times: HSBC shuts Zing, its payments app launched in January 2024 to compete with Revolut and Wise, marking the latest failed fintech venture by a traditional bank  —  Closure marks latest failed fintech effort by traditional bank  —  HSBC is shutting its payments app Zing just a year after it launched …

Bloomberg: Sources: Daniel Guarnera, a DOJ lawyer who helped file US antitrust lawsuits against Google and Apple, has been picked to lead the FTC's Bureau of Competition  —  - Daniel Guarnera picked to lead FTC's Bureau of Competition  — Chris Mufarrige tapped to head Bureau of Consumer Protection

Donald Judd / CNN: Trump shrugs off Elon Musk's criticism of AI announcement: ‘He hates one of the people’  —  President Donald Trump on Thursday shrugged off an ugly back-and-forth between tech CEOs Elon Musk and Sam Altman that pitted one of Trump's most visible lieutenants against a key participant …

Associated Press: Trump signs an EO to develop AI systems “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas”, revoking Biden policies that “act as barriers” to innovation  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence Thursday …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Anthropic debuts Citations, a new API feature letting developers “ground” answers in source documents, available for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Haiku  —  In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI's Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Twilio says its adjusted operating margin will reach 21%-22% in 2027, exceeding est. and up from 16.1% in the most recent quarter; TWLO jumps 11%+ after hours  —  Cloud communications software maker Twilio on Thursday issued a hopeful profit forecast for the next few years.

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: Trump signs an EO to create a crypto working group led by David Sacks to consider a national digital asset stockpile “potentially derived” from seized crypto  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to promote the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S …

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Neko Health, a startup co-founded by Daniel Ek that offers AI-based full-body scans, has raised $260M led by Lightspeed, sources say at a $1.7B valuation  —  Spotify founder's body-scanning start-up valued at $1.7bn in new funding round  —  Daniel Ek's body-scanning start-up Neko Health …

Song Jung-a / Financial Times: SK Hynix's Q4 operating profit grew over 20x YoY to ~$5.6B, beating Samsung's for first time, with HBM chips accounting for 40% of its total DRAM chip revenue  —  South Korean chipmaker expects sales of high-bandwidth memory products to more than double this year

Reuters: Saudi digital security firm Elm Company agrees to acquire business services firm Thiqah from Saudi Arabia's PIF, which is also Elm's majority owner, for $906M  —  Saudi Arabian digital security firm Elm Company (7203.SE) said on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire business services firm Thiqah …

Naomi Nix / Washington Post: An interview with Pinterest CEO Bill Ready on why his company is backing US state laws to restrict cellphone use in classrooms  —  The photo-sharing app is backing state laws that restrict cellphone use in classrooms amid a political reckoning over youth safety online.

Reuters: ByteDance launches Doubao-1.5-pro, an upgraded AI model, claiming it outperforms OpenAI's o1 in AIME benchmarks, joining DeepSeek in China's AI reasoning push  —  TikTok owner ByteDance on Wednesday released an update to its flagship AI model aimed at challenging Microsoft-backed OpenAI's …