Pinned post

How Paul Ginsparg, a Cornell University physics professor, created the digital repository arXiv nearly 35 years ago to help researchers share their preprints (Sheon Han/Wired)

Sheon Han / Wired : How Paul Ginsparg, a Cornell University physics professor, created the digital repository arXiv nearly 35 years ago t...

31 December 2024

The US Treasury sanctions Iranian and Russian entities over attempted election interference, including a Moscow entity that directed the creation of deepfakes (Raquel Coronell Uribe/NBC News)

Raquel Coronell Uribe / NBC News:
The US Treasury sanctions Iranian and Russian entities over attempted election interference, including a Moscow entity that directed the creation of deepfakes  —  The Treasury Department said Iran and Russia sought to divide Americans through targeted disinformation campaigns in the 2024 elections.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

St. Louis-based tech services company World Wide Technology agrees to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in an all-cash deal valuing the latter at ~CA$1.8B (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
St. Louis-based tech services company World Wide Technology agrees to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in an all-cash deal valuing the latter at ~CA$1.8B  —  One last mega-deal closed out an eventful 2024.  —  On Tuesday, World Wide Technology (WWT), a tech services company based in St. Louis …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Some 2024 LLM takeaways: multimodal vision became common, LLM prices crashed, overall environmental impact worsened despite efficiency gains, slop arrived, more (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Some 2024 LLM takeaways: multimodal vision became common, LLM prices crashed, overall environmental impact worsened despite efficiency gains, slop arrived, more  —  A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024.  Here's a review of things we figured …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Researchers find 4.5M "stars" on GitHub repos they suspect are fake; in July, Check Point found a network of inauthentic users starring repos containing malware (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Researchers find 4.5M “stars” on GitHub repos they suspect are fake; in July, Check Point found a network of inauthentic users starring repos containing malware  —  GitHub has a problem with inauthentic “stars” used to artificially inflate the popularity of scam …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

In 2024, Intel had its worst year since going public in 1971, losing 61% of value; Broadcom stock soared 111%, its best performance ever, driven by AI revenue (CNBC)

CNBC:
In 2024, Intel had its worst year since going public in 1971, losing 61% of value; Broadcom stock soared 111%, its best performance ever, driven by AI revenue  —  It was a big year for silicon in Silicon Valley — but a brutal one for the company most responsible for the area's moniker.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Ant Group's payment app Alipay adds an AI-powered image search feature as it tries to become a super app like rival Tencent's WeChat (Coco Feng/South China Morning Post)

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
Ant Group's payment app Alipay adds an AI-powered image search feature as it tries to become a super app like rival Tencent's WeChat  —  Alipay's move shows how mobile payment platforms are striving to grow their customer base and engender user loyalty in the AI era

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Sources: Mobvista explores selling mobile ad platform Mintegral after getting interest from buyers like Bain Capital; Mobvista stock in HK surged ~190% in 2024 (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: Mobvista explores selling mobile ad platform Mintegral after getting interest from buyers like Bain Capital; Mobvista stock in HK surged ~190% in 2024  —  - Company is working with financial adviser on Mintegral sale  — Mobvista's HK-listed shares have climbed almost 190% this year

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Montenegro extradites Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to the US; South Korea also sought Do Kwon's extradition (Reuters)

Reuters:
Montenegro extradites Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to the US; South Korea also sought Do Kwon's extradition  —  Montenegro on Tuesday extradited Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to the United States, the interior ministry said.  —  Kwon, a South Korean national …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Alibaba cuts prices on its visual language model Qwen-VL by up to 85%, after cutting Qwen prices by as much as 97% in May, amid growing AI competition in China (Ryan Browne/CNBC)

Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Alibaba cuts prices on its visual language model Qwen-VL by up to 85%, after cutting Qwen prices by as much as 97% in May, amid growing AI competition in China  —  Alibaba is cutting prices on its large language models by up to 85%, the Chinese tech giant announced Tuesday.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payments network, providing relief to Google Pay and PhonePe (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payments network, providing relief to Google Pay and PhonePe  —  India has once again pushed back a contentious plan to limit big technology companies' control of the nation's digital payments system …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

The US arrests a US Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, who sold sensitive customer call records stolen from AT&T and Verizon in the Snowflake hack (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)

Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
The US arrests a US Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m, who sold sensitive customer call records stolen from AT&T and Verizon in the Snowflake hack  —  Federal authorities have arrested and indicted a 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier on suspicion of being Kiberphant0m …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

India removes a 100M user cap on WhatsApp Pay, letting Meta roll out the mobile payments service to all of its 500M+ users in the country (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
India removes a 100M user cap on WhatsApp Pay, letting Meta roll out the mobile payments service to all of its 500M+ users in the country  —  India has removed restrictions on WhatsApp's mobile payments service in a significant victory for Meta in its largest market by users as it seeks to compete with entrenched fintech rivals.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Inside Apple labs testing and calibrating iPhone 16 series' audio and video features, including new Audio Mix editing tools and 4K slow motion capabilities (Patrick Holland/CNET)

Patrick Holland / CNET:
Inside Apple labs testing and calibrating iPhone 16 series' audio and video features, including new Audio Mix editing tools and 4K slow motion capabilities  —  I'm standing on a wire mesh floor in a secluded room at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

The US DOJ files a complaint and announces a civil enforcement action against fintech startup Dave and CEO Jason Wilk, replacing an FTC complaint from November (Kanishka Singh/Reuters)

Kanishka Singh / Reuters:
The US DOJ files a complaint and announces a civil enforcement action against fintech startup Dave and CEO Jason Wilk, replacing an FTC complaint from November  —  The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint and announced a civil enforcement action on Monday against financial technology company Dave Inc …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF surpassed $50B in assets in 11 months, marking the fastest-growing ETF debut ever and pushing BTC's price past $100K for the first time (Sidhartha Shukla/Bloomberg)

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:
BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF surpassed $50B in assets in 11 months, marking the fastest-growing ETF debut ever and pushing BTC's price past $100K for the first time  —  - IBIT has grown to more than $50 billion in assets in 11 months  — US ETFs played a key role in Bitcoin's rally over $100,000

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Samsung invests $181M in South Korean robot maker Rainbow Robotics, boosting its stake to 35%, and launches a Future Robotics Office reporting to the CEO (Reuters)

Reuters:
Samsung invests $181M in South Korean robot maker Rainbow Robotics, boosting its stake to 35%, and launches a Future Robotics Office reporting to the CEO  —  Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) became the largest shareholder of South Korea's Rainbow Robotics (277810.KQ), the robotics company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Venezuela's top court fines TikTok $10M over viral challenge deaths, citing a failure to take necessary measures, and orders it to open an office in the country (Agence France-Presse)

Agence France-Presse:
Venezuela's top court fines TikTok $10M over viral challenge deaths, citing a failure to take necessary measures, and orders it to open an office in the country  —  Venezuela's highest court Monday fined TikTok $10 million in connection with viral challenges that authorities …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

30 December 2024

Letter: the US Treasury says China-backed hackers gained access to some Treasury workstations and unclassified docs; a vendor notified it of the hack on Dec. 8 (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Letter: the US Treasury says China-backed hackers gained access to some Treasury workstations and unclassified docs; a vendor notified it of the hack on Dec. 8  —  The U.S. Treasury told lawmakers in a letter Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack earlier in December, which the department has attributed to Chinese government hackers.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

A US judge delays the CFTC v. Gemini trial to January 21, after Trump's inauguration; CFTC alleged Gemini misled the agency in its 2017 bid to debut BTC futures (Turner Wright/Cointelegraph)

Turner Wright / Cointelegraph:
A US judge delays the CFTC v. Gemini trial to January 21, after Trump's inauguration; CFTC alleged Gemini misled the agency in its 2017 bid to debut BTC futures  —  The civil case between the US financial regulator and Gemini Trust Company was initially scheduled to go to trial before Donald Trump's inauguration.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

The technology of passkeys is elegant, but the complexities of syncing them to password managers can contribute to platform lock-in and make them less usable (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
The technology of passkeys is elegant, but the complexities of syncing them to password managers can contribute to platform lock-in and make them less usable  —  It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Source: ByteDance keeps using a loophole for US chip sanctions and told suppliers it planned to spend up to $7B to access Nvidia chips outside China in 2025 (The Information)

The Information:
Source: ByteDance keeps using a loophole for US chip sanctions and told suppliers it planned to spend up to $7B to access Nvidia chips outside China in 2025  —  ByteDance continues to use Nvidia's most advanced artificial intelligence chips despite U.S. efforts to block Chinese companies from using them.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Source: accounting startup Bench, which had raised $100M+ and abruptly shut down last week, will be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price (Charles Rollet/TechCrunch)

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Source: accounting startup Bench, which had raised $100M+ and abruptly shut down last week, will be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price  —  Bench, the VC-backed accounting startup that left thousands of customers locked out of their accounts after it suddenly shut down last week …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Waymo robotaxis, which are now ubiquitous in parts of CA, will often not stop for pedestrians using crosswalks there, unless a pedestrian is far into the road (Geoffrey A. Fowler/Washington Post)

Geoffrey A. Fowler / Washington Post:
Waymo robotaxis, which are now ubiquitous in parts of CA, will often not stop for pedestrians using crosswalks there, unless a pedestrian is far into the road  —  Our tech columnist captured videos of Waymo self-driving cars failing to stop for him at a crosswalk.  How does an AI learn how to break the law?

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

The UK's CMA opens an antitrust investigation into IBM's planned acquisition of cloud software vendor HashiCorp; the US FTC has been investigating it since July (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
The UK's CMA opens an antitrust investigation into IBM's planned acquisition of cloud software vendor HashiCorp; the US FTC has been investigating it since July  —  The Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.'s antitrust watchdog, has opened an investigation into whether IBM's planned acquisition …

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals

Donald Trump's next term may widen the longstanding speech divide between the US and Europe, putting social media companies in the middle of a global tug-of-war (New York Times)

New York Times:
Donald Trump's next term may widen the longstanding speech divide between the US and Europe, putting social media companies in the middle of a global tug-of-war  —  President-elect Donald J. Trump's picks for the F.C.C. and F.T.C. have vowed to remove censorship online.

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

Daily Deals