~techmeme | Bookmarks (1028)

TechCrunch: Indian police arrest Aleksej Besciokov, the co-founder of Garantex, a Russian crypto exchange sanctioned by the EU and the US, at the request of US authorities  —  Indian police have arrested the co-founder of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the European Union …

Benoit Berthelot / Bloomberg: French publishers and authors sue Meta for allegedly training AI models on their books without consent, say they have evidence of “massive” copyright breaches  —  SNE, the trade association representing major French publishers including Hachette and Editis, along …

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Cerebras, Groq, and Big Tech target AI inference to challenge Nvidia; Barclays sees inference capex surpassing training in two years, reaching $208.2B in 2026  —  Rivals focus efforts on how AI is deployed, in their efforts to disrupt the world's most valuable semiconductor company

John Keilman / Wall Street Journal: Seagate and other HDD makers bet on tech like heat-assisted magnetic recording to stay competitive; IDC expects data center HDD spending to hit $22B by 2028  —  Hard disk drive makers, under pressure from faster rivals, hope a breakthrough will keep it the dominant data-storage medium

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Infinite Uptime, which uses AI and proprietary sensors to offer predictive maintenance solutions for factories, raised a $35M Series C led by Avataar Ventures  —  Infinite Uptime, an Indian startup that offers predictive maintenance solutions for factories, has raised $35 million …

Liz Napolitano / Decrypt: Thailand's SEC approves Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC for exchange trading, with both available in Thailand on March 16, signaling growing stablecoin adoption  —  Thailand has added two dollar-backed stablecoins to its list of regulated cryptocurrencies as global stablecoin adoption gains steam.

Jaspreet Singh / Reuters: ServiceNow says it plans to acquire agentic AI company Moveworks for $2.85B in its largest-ever acquisition, a cash and stock deal set to close in H2 2025  —  ServiceNow (NOW.N) said on Monday it would buy AI firm Moveworks for $2.85 billion in cash and stock, marking the software maker's …

Columbia Journalism Review: A study of eight AI search engines found they provided incorrect citations of news articles in 60%+ of queries; Grok 3 answered 94% of the queries incorrectly  —  We Compared Eight AI Search Engines.  They're All Bad at Citing News.  —  AI search tools are rapidly gaining in popularity …

Tom Warren / The Verge: Leaked video: Sony is working on a prototype AI-powered version of a PlayStation game character that can interact with players through voice prompts  —  Sony's advanced technology group has created an AI-powered version of Aloy from PlayStation's Horizon games.

Bailey Lipschultz / Bloomberg: Virtual physical therapy service Hinge Health files for a US IPO, and reports revenue of $390M in 2024, up from $293M in 2023, and a net loss of $11.9M  —  The company had revenue of $390 million in 2024, compared with $293 million in the same period a year earlier, according to a US Securities …

Emma Roth / The Verge: Bluesky adds support for three-minute videos, up from the previous one-minute limit, and a new “Chat Requests” feature to screen messages from unknown users  —  Bluesky will let you accept or reject messages from people you might not know.

New York Times: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Lila Sciences, founded in 2023 to build AI to accelerate scientific discovery, emerges from stealth with a $200M seed  —  An ambitious start-up embodies new optimism that artificial intelligence can turbocharge scientific discovery.

New York Times: Eric Schmidt becomes CEO of Relativity Space; sources: he made a significant investment in the rocket-building startup to take a controlling stake  —  Eric Schmidt, 69, has not served as a chief executive since he gave up the job at Google in 2011.  Benoit Tessier/Reuters

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: Asana announces CEO Dustin Moskovitz is retiring, and reports Q4 sales rose 10% YoY to $188.3M, in line with estimates; ASAN drops 25%+ after hours  —  Dustin Moskovitz, the CEO of Asana and one of the original founders of Facebook, is retire from the software company he started in 2008.

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Oracle reports Q3 revenue grew 6% YoY to $14.13B, vs. $14.39B est., and cloud revenue rose 23% YoY to $6.2B  —  Oracle (ORCL.N) missed Wall Street expectations for third-quarter revenue on Monday, weighed down by softer enterprise spending on its cloud infrastructure services, and strong competition from larger players.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple preps a major interface revamp for iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16, loosely based on visionOS, with consistent design, simpler navigation, more  —  Apple Inc. is preparing one of the most dramatic software overhauls in the company's history, aiming to transform the interface of the iPhone …

Jez Corden / Windows Central: Sources: Microsoft is working on an Xbox-branded gaming handheld, slated for later in 2025, and successors to the Xbox Series X|S, tentatively slated for 2027  —  Microsoft's first full foray into PC gaming handhelds begins with a partner device set to launch later this year, with its own Xbox Series X|

Bloomberg: Starting September 1, schools in Beijing will offer at least eight hours of AI classes per academic year for primary and secondary students  —  Schools in Beijing will introduce artificial intelligence courses to primary and secondary students to strengthen China's goal to dominate the sector.

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Zoom researchers detail a “Chain of Draft” method to let LLMs accurately solve reasoning problems with as little as 7.6% of the tokens used by current methods  —  A team of researchers at Zoom Communications has developed a breakthrough technique that could dramatically reduce …

Kerry Flynn / Axios: NYC-based Firsthand, whose tools let marketers and publishers engage consumers through AI agents on their own sites or other sites, raised a $26M Series A  —  - The New York-based startup previously raised $6.6 million in seed funding, led by Radical Ventures.

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: Tarlogic researchers find an undocumented “backdoor” in Chinese manufacturer Espressif's ESP32 microchip used in 1B+ devices for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity  —  The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: A US federal judge allows the Kadrey v. Meta case, in which authors allege Meta violated IP rights by using their books to train Llama models, to move forward  —  A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit.

Fortune: Sources describe the collapse of fintech middleman Synapse that left ~$200M in customer money frozen, with entities blaming each other for shoddy recordkeeping  —  In 2022, after her family had a series of health scares, Kayla Morris sold her house.  She cleared $280,000, representing 15 years of her life savings.

Bloomberg: As Japan copes with a labor shortage, its market for service robots, which assist people with tasks like waiting tables, is expected to almost triple by 2030  —  As Japan copes with a labor shortage, the service robot market is expected to triple in the next five years.