~techmeme | Bookmarks (1028)

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Bluesky proposes letting users indicate if their data can be used for AI training, web archiving, and more; critics see it as a reversal of its prior statements  —  Social network Bluesky recently published a proposal on GitHub outlining new options it could give users to indicate whether …

Molly White / Citation Needed: The real threat of AI models training on open-access material is that they may bleed free repositories dry by draining resources and not providing attribution  —  Listen to me read this post here (not an AI-generated voice!), subscribe to the feed in your podcast app, or download the recording for later.

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: Google's Gemma 3 and Cohere's Command A, which require just one or two Nvidia AI chips to run, hint at an industry-wide push for more efficient AI software  —  Nearly two months after the viral success of China's DeepSeek prompted a reckoning over how much tech companies spend …

John Gruber / Daring Fireball: A developer who had a one-day session with Swift Assist in late 2024 says its UI is complete but results were not very good, and it falls apart on complex tasks  —  In an item earlier this week observing that Swift Assist, the most ambitious Xcode-related Apple Intelligence feature shown at WWDC last year …

Francisco Rodrigues / CoinDesk: 21Shares plans to liquidate two actively managed bitcoin and ether futures ETFs, following $1.66B in outflows from US-listed spot bitcoin ETFs this month  —  The firm is liquidating its ARK 21Shares Active On-Chain Bitcoin Strategy ETF and ARK 21Shares Active Bitcoin Ethereum Strategy ETF amid the downturn.

Richard Spencer / The Times: DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng has become a superstar in China with tourism around his origin story, as DeepSeek proves an unexpected boon for President Xi  —  An entire tourist industry has sprung up around the origin story of the man whose low-cost artificial intelligence model has taken the world by storm

Jackson Healy / Courthouse News Service: Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick sues G/O Media over March 2024 articles in Gizmodo and Kotaku accusing him of workplace harassment, discrimination  —  Robert Kotick accused the media company of knowingly lying about since-dismissed workplace sex harassment and discrimination charges.

Bloomberg: A look at Nvidia's challenges, including big customers building their own AI chips, Trump's trade wars, and startups like DeepSeek, ahead of its GTC conference  —  No one has benefited more from the AI boom than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.  With troubling signs ahead, he's trying to extend the good times.

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Delaware lawmakers are considering a bill that would transform the state's corporate law to keep it attractive to both investors and CEOs, following Musk's exit  —  Tesla CEO Elon Musk turned Delaware's corporate law into a hot-button topic last year after a judge there ruled …

TechCrunch: A lack of consensus on what defines an AI “agent” is leading to customer frustration, as Microsoft, OpenAI, Salesforce, and others market it differently  —  Silicon Valley is bullish on AI agents.  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said agents will “join the workforce” this year.

Kinling Lo / Rest of World: A look at the adoption of DeepSeek across China, as Chinese automakers, smartphone sellers, and others rush to build services on top of the homegrown AI model  —  Chinese companies, as a signal of patriotism, are racing to build services on top of the homegrown AI model that has taken the world by storm since January.

Steven Levy / Wired: Meta's effort to neutralize Sarah Wynn-Williams' book, filled with gossipy anecdotes, feels less about defending its reputation than a need to punish a defector  —  Mark Zuckerberg might be in his post-fact-checking-era.  But that hasn't stopped Meta from going after the author of Careless People.

Sherry Qin / Wall Street Journal: Foxconn says revenue from cloud and networking, including AI servers, made up 26% of its Q4 revenue and will almost catch up with consumer electronics in 2025  —  The Taiwanese company now plays an increasingly important role in building AI servers for U.S. tech giants such as Amazon and Nvidia

Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek: Nashville-based 360 Privacy, an identity and risk management startup protecting enterprises and high net-worth people from online threats, raised $36M from FTV  —  360 Privacy has raised $36 million in equity investment to scour the surface and dark web for leaked PII and remove it.

Aaron Weitzman / Axios: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Lumafield, which manufactures industrial CT scanners with cloud-based analysis software, raised a $75M Series C led by IVP  —  Exit Content Preview  —  Lumafield, a developer of industrial CT technology used by medical device companies, raised a $75 million Series C …

TechCrunch: A look at some standout startups from YC's W25 Demo Day, which showcased 160 companies, including several creating tools to enhance other companies' AI agents  —  Silicon Valley's most storied startup accelerator, Y Combinator, held its Winter 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, showcasing its latest batch of 160 startups.

Cameron Emanuel-Burns / FinTech Futures: Clearwater Analytics agrees to acquire Beacon, a capital markets developer platform, for $560M, and Bistro, Blackstone's portfolio visualization tool, for $125M  —  US-based investment management platform Clearwater Analytics has signed definitive agreements to acquire Beacon …

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Orlando-based Worth, whose tech lets fintechs, banks, and enterprises underwrite SMBs by automating KYC, fraud verification, and more, raised a $20M seed  —  Worth, a company focused on helping fintechs, banks, and enterprises underwrite small and medium-sized businesses more easily …

David Heaney / UploadVR: Meta debuts the highly requested Passthrough Camera API for Quest 3/3S as an experimental feature; developers can't ship apps with the API on Horizon Store yet  —  Quest's highly anticipated “Passthrough Camera API” is now available for all developers to experiment with, though they can't yet include it in store app builds.

Will Knight / Wired: The NIST's new directive to AI Safety Institute partners scrubs mentions of “AI safety” and “AI fairness” and prioritizes “reducing ideological bias” in models  —  A directive from the National Institute of Standards and Technology eliminates mention of “AI safety” and “AI fairness.”

Jessica Toonkel / Wall Street Journal: Streamers court YouTubers for new shows or spinoffs; sources: Amazon made $100M+ in profit on Beast Games and Netflix held talks with Dude Perfect for a series  —  As ‘Beast Games’ boasts profit and gears up for more seasons, streamers search for similar success  —  YouTube creators are beginning to get their Hollywood moment.

Scharon Harding / Ars Technica: Email: Amazon says Echo users won't be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally, as new generative AI features need processing in the cloud  —  In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally …

Bloomberg: Sources: Ubisoft explores selling a stake in a new entity holding IP like Assassin's Creed to investors including Tencent, at a higher valuation than Ubisoft  —  - Tencent among firms invited to bid for stake in new entity  — Unit to hold some core Ubisoft IP, including Assassin's Creed

Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac: Delaying a revamped Siri may be embarrassing for Apple, but rushing an update with half-baked features could have created a real crisis for the company  —  Apple's recent Siri delays have stirred up a mess of bad press, and reportedly led to an all-hands meeting where an exec called the affair “ugly and embarrassing.”