~techmeme | Bookmarks (1012)

Financial Times: China arrests a South Korean chip engineer on espionage charges, escalating the battle over IP theft between China and South Korea in the critical chip sector  —  Move escalates battle over intellectual property theft between Beijing and Seoul in critical semiconductor sector

Bloomberg: Samsung's stock has dropped 32% from its 2024 peak on July 9, cutting $122B off its market cap, more than any other chipmaker worldwide on AI and foundry woes  —  - Stock sheds more value than any chipmaker on AI, foundry woes  — Samsung is ‘losing its technology leadership’: Pictet's Lee

Financial Times: IDC: Samsung's global market share in Q3 fell from 21% to 18% YoY, the only one of the top five global smartphone makers to experience falling shipments  —  Korean tech giant is losing market share to US rival Apple and Chinese players  —  Samsung Electronics is struggling to hold …

Katrina Manson / Bloomberg: Microsoft says Russian hackers have sent “highly targeted spearphishing emails” to thousands of US officials, defense workers, and others in a phishing campaign  —  - Thousands targeted in spearphishing campaign during last week  — Hackers said to impersonate Microsoft employees in some emails

Tess Owen / Wired: Data: anti-government militia activity has grown on Facebook in the US, with the platform even auto-generating some group pages, despite the issue being flagged  —  Ahead of the election, anti-government militias are using Facebook to recruit, coordinate training, and promote ballot box stakeouts.

Bloomberg: Research: China's industrial policy to make the nation a leader in emerging technologies has largely been a success, despite US efforts to contain the country  —  At a glance, the campaign appears successful.  China's economy is no longer on pace to overtake the US and is actually falling further behind.

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: EA reports Q2 net bookings up 14% YoY to $2.08B vs. $2.04B est., revenue up 6%, raises its FY 2025 bookings forecast, as its American football titles outperform  —  Videogame publisher Electronic Arts (EA.O) raised its forecast for fiscal 2025 bookings on Tuesday, helped by strong performance …

Karissa Bell / Engadget: X says it has “re-architected” the scoring system for its Community Notes feature so that notes can now appear less than 20 minutes after a post is published  —  The fact checks can now appear less than 20 minutes after a post is published, the company said.

Jay Peters / The Verge: Sundar Pichai says “more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers”  —  Google is building a bunch of AI products, and it's using AI quite a bit as part of building those products, too.  “More than a quarter of all new code …

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Paris-based Filigran, whose open-source threat intelligence platform OpenCTI is used by the EU, the FBI, and others, raised a $35M Series B led by Insight  —  Paris-based startup Filigran is fast becoming the next cybersecurity rocketship to track: The company just raised a $35 million Series B round …

Stephanie Stacey / Financial Times: Banks and regulators warn of a rise in QR code phishing scams, which experts say are commonly deployed in emails to get through corporate cyber security filters  —  HSBC, Santander and the US Federal Trade Commission concerned over email attacks that bypass cyber-defences

Claire Jiao / Bloomberg: Indonesia bans the sale of iPhone 16 series, claiming that Apple has not fulfilled 40% local content requirements and has not met its investment commitments  —  Indonesia blocked Apple Inc. from selling its latest iPhones in Southeast Asia's largest economy, saying the company has yet to meet local investment requirements.

Fred Lambert / Electrek: Musk said there's a “chance” HW3 systems, now in millions of Teslas, do “not achieve the safety level” for unsupervised FSD and mentioned free upgrades from HW3  —  Elon Musk finally admits Tesla's HW3 might not support full self-driving and that he doesn't actually know what it will take.

Wall Street Journal: Q&A with Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson on Agility's humanoid robot Digit, which was demoed on stage sorting laundry, automation's impact on jobs, and more  —  Peggy Johnson of Agility Robotics gives a demo of the company's Digit—a robot that can, among other things, sort laundry

Wall Street Journal: Q&A with Precision Neuroscience executives about the uses of brain-computer interfaces, human trials, brain implants becoming consumer devices, and more  —  People with severe spinal injuries will one day be able to return to work, according to executives at Precision Neuroscience

Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post: Online influencers are earning thousands for a single post on behalf of groups backing Harris or Trump, with scant regulatory oversight or public transparency  —  On TikTok, Instagram and X, freelance creators profit from the murky practice of persuading their large followings to back Trump or Harris.

Alex Wolf / Bloomberg Law: FTX agrees to drop its litigation against Bybit in a deal worth about $228M that will allow FTX to withdraw assets from Bybit's cryptocurrency exchange  —  Search by Law Firm Search by Topic  —  FTX Trading Ltd. agreed to drop sprawling litigation against Bybit Fintech Ltd. and related entities …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: A closer look at M4 Macs coming this week; sources: Apple's home smart display will have an iMac G4-like base and a square screen the size of about two iPhones  —  Also: fresh details on the company's upcoming smart home device.  —  Apple kicks off a Mac overhaul this week that centers on new M4 chips.

Wall Street Journal: How militaries around the world are using warfare simulation video games like Slitherine Software's Command: Professional Edition to run battle scenarios  —  Militaries worldwide run battle scenarios using one family-run British company's software, rooted in Tom Clancy novels.  Watch a video simulation to see how.

Bloomberg: Q&A with Arm CEO Rene Haas on AI transforming the world much faster than the internet, Arm's global operations and China's role, geopolitics, and more  —  Rene Haas, the chief executive officer of Arm Holdings, says AI's impact will be ‘quite, quite dramatic’ and there's no holding back smart cars.

Leo Lewis / Financial Times: Japan has too many startups that IPO too early amid a lack of late-stage funding, hurting unicorn ambitions; data: funding is set to fall ~33% from 2022 to 2024  —  The country urgently needs a vibrant business pipeline to replace the unicorn's unambitious cousin

Bloomberg: At a TSMC event, founder Morris Chang said the company will soon face its “most severe” challenges in driving growth as free trade of semiconductors falters  —  - CEO says confident TSMC will still expand tech leadership  — Washington has been limiting China's access to advanced chips

Reuters: Sources: TSMC halted shipments to Chinese chip designer Sophgo, which was co-founded by Bitmain's Micree Zhan, after TSMC chips were found on Huawei AI chips  —  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (2330.TW) suspended shipments to China-based chip designer Sophgo after a chip …

Keith Bradsher / New York Times: China, the leading producer of rare minerals, has made it harder in recent weeks for foreign companies, particularly chip makers, to buy such materials in China  —  Already the dominant producer of rare minerals, Beijing is using export restrictions and its power over state-owned companies to further control access.