~techmeme | Bookmarks (1045)

Reuters: Brazil's data protection authority ruled that Tools for Humanity, co-founded by Sam Altman, must stop offering compensation for iris scans in the country  —  Brazil's data protection authority has ordered Tools for Humanity, co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to stop offering iris scan compensation in the country.

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: DeepSeek's iOS app is now #1 on the “Top Free Apps” chart in Apple's App Store in the US, just ahead of ChatGPT  —  Since Chinese AI company DeepSeek released an open version of its reasoning model R1 at the beginning of this week, many in the tech industry have been making grand pronouncements …

The Information: Sources: Meta set up four war rooms to analyze DeepSeek's tech, two focusing on how High-Flyer reduced training costs, one on what data High-Flyer may have used  —  Artificial intelligence researchers at Meta Platforms have been in panic mode.  In recent days, leaders of some of the company's …

Wall Street Journal: Betting data from Illinois, New Jersey, and Colorado shows how parlays are driving revenue growth for FanDuel, DraftKings, and other US sports betting companies  —  Parlays, the tough-to-win multipart wagers with tantalizing payouts, are bringing in casual and newbie gamblers, and betting companies are making a killing

Jeffrey Emanuel / YouTubeTranscriptOptimizer: A bear case for Nvidia: competition from hardware startups, inference-heavy “reasoning” models, DeepSeek's training and inference efficiency breakthroughs, more  —  As someone who spent ~10 years working as a generalist investment analyst at various long/short hedge funds …

Hall of Impossible Dreams: A look at the growing prevalence of LLM-written posts that have been backdated and attributed to human authors on Physics Forums, which was founded in 2001  —  What Internet Will Look Like in the Future  —  cripes does anybody remember Google People  —  Does anybody remember PhysicsForums?

Reuters: Trump denies talks with Oracle about a TikTok deal, says “I have spoken to many people about TikTok” and expects a decision in the next 30 days  —  U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was in talks with multiple people over buying TikTok and would likely have a decision …

Wataru Suzuki / Nikkei Asia: Chinese esports companies, including Tencent and Huya, face growth challenges in China, the world's biggest esports market; the industry earned ~$3.8B in 2024  —  BEIJING — One chilly Saturday evening late last year, 33,000 people gathered at Beijing Workers' Stadium to watch …

Rest of World: Major Chinese social media apps have mastered the “shoppertainment” experience, blending social media with shopping, that Western competitors struggle to match  —  Addictive algorithms fuse social networking with shopping and entertainment.  —  In the days leading …

Martin Matishak / The Record: Sources: US State Dept.'s freeze on foreign aid applies to a bureau that uses cyber diplomacy to fight threats and pursues international norms for emerging tech  —  The U.S. State Department's move to halt nearly all existing foreign assistance applies to the programs and funds …

Brian Armstrong / @brian_armstrong: CEO Brian Armstrong says Coinbase needs to rethink its listing process for new tokens to keep up with “~1m tokens a week being created now, and growing”  —  We need to rethink our listing process at @coinbase given there are ~1m tokens a week being created now, and growing. High quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one...

Raffaele Huang / Wall Street Journal: Sources: DeepSeek's Liang Wenfeng told Chinese Premier Li Qiang in a Jan. 20 meeting that US export controls on advanced chips to China were still a bottleneck  —  DeepSeek is called ‘amazing and impressive’ despite working with less-advanced chips  —  SINGAPORE—A Chinese artificial-intelligence company …

Kenrick Cai / Reuters: A look at Google's plans to shape public perception and policies on AI, including building out educational programs, ahead of a global wave of AI regulation  —  Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google, already facing an unprecedented regulatory onslaught, is looking to shape public perception and policies …

Wall Street Journal: Despite assurances, advertisers worry Meta's tools may not prevent ads from appearing near offensive content as the new content moderation approach takes effect  —  Social-media giant's loosening of speech restrictions is unsettling advertisers, who say a decade of efforts to protect their reputations is at risk

Bobby Allyn / NPR: Sources: the Trump admin is in talks for Oracle and a group of US investors to take over TikTok's global operations, with ByteDance retaining a minority stake  —  The Trump administration is working on a plan to save TikTok that involves tapping software company Oracle and a group …

John Gruber / Daring Fireball: Siri with Apple Intelligence is a massive regression from the old Siri, which recognized its limitations and provided a list of search links to answer a query  —  Writing about the current state of Apple Intelligence yesterday, I mentioned how utterly stupid and laughably wrong Siri is when asked …

Zeyi Yang / Wired: DeepSeek, which started as a deep-learning research branch of Chinese quant hedge fund High-Flyer, is now giving US AI giants a run for their money  —  When Chinese quant hedge fund founder Liang Wenfeng went into AI research, he took 10,000 Nvidia chips and assembled a team of young, ambitious talent.

MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: After pouring tens of millions into Trump's campaign, the crypto industry has been paid back handsomely during his first week back, with EOs, rule changes, more  —  Crypto executives, companies and investors are getting an early return on their investment in Donald Trump.

Caiwei Chen / MIT Technology Review: Rather than weakening China's AI capabilities, US sanctions appear to be driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate by prioritizing efficiency and collaboration  —  The AI community is abuzz over DeepSeek R1, a new open-source reasoning model.  —  The model was developed by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek …

New York Times: Some crypto executives worry Trump's memecoin undercut the industry's credibility at the very moment crypto is seeking a prominent place in mainstream finance  —  The president's promotion of a speculative digital coin left some crypto investors feeling blindsided, while others saw it as a gimmick …

Bloomberg: Sources: people affiliated with DOGE have met with representatives of various public blockchains as they explore using a blockchain to track federal spending  —  - Conversations said to be held with multiple public blockchains  — The technology may be used to track government spending

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.