Bookmarks (1062)

Axios: Dario Amodei says AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment in the US to 10%-20% in the next one to five years  —  Dario Amodei — CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's most powerful creators of artificial intelligence — has a blunt, scary warning for the U.S. government and all of us:

Katie Notopoulos / Business Insider: Inside Solana Accelerate conference in NYC, which was full of buzz about stablecoins and lacked the over-the-top glitz and pomp of earlier crypto conferences  —  - Solana's Accelerate conference in New York City was full of buzz about stablecoins.  — It lacked the flashy over-the-top goofiness …

Financial Times: The Czech Republic says that the state-sponsored Chinese hacking group APT31 has targeted its foreign ministry's unclassified communications network since 2022  —  ‘Malicious’ assault blamed on group known as APT31 that has been linked with Chinese state security ministry

Anupriya Datta / Euractiv: EU Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen says that far more online content is being removed in the EU under the T&Cs of US platforms than as a result of the DSA  —  “Often in the US, platforms have more strict rules with content,” Virkkunen said.  —  Based on facts, either observed …

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: GreyNoise researchers detail a novel botnet infecting 9K+ routers from Asus and others with a persistent SSH backdoor, enabling access after reboots and updates  —  Over 9,000 ASUS routers are compromised by a novel botnet dubbed “AyySSHush” that was also observed targeting SOHO routers from Cisco, D-Link, and Linksys.

Financial Times: Sources: X covered some losses usually borne by banks when seven lenders, including Morgan Stanley, sold $1.2B of its debt at 98 cents on the dollar in April  —  Trump's election helped revive loans that once threatened to hit banks with big losses  —  Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Sahil Lavingia: Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia on working as a DOGE software engineer for the VA, says he was let go after his Fast Company interview was published  —  In August 2014, President Obama and Congress created the United States Digital Service (USDS).  —  In January 2025, President Trump signed …

Wall Street Journal: Source: Delaware's AG is hiring an investment bank to independently value the equity that OpenAI's nonprofit parent will hold in the new for-profit entity  —  Startup must determine how to distribute equity in the new public-benefit corporation  —  OpenAI is undergoing a transformation meant …

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: In a SCOTUS brief, the Trump administration backs Cox's argument that ISPs shouldn't have to terminate customers based on unproven copyright infringement claims  —  The Trump administration is backing cable company Cox in a battle that could determine whether Internet service providers are forced to disconnect users accused of piracy.

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Hex, which provides a tool for finding correlations between data points, building predictive models, and running experiments, raised a $70M Series C led by Avra  —  Hex cofounders Glen Takahashi, Barry McCardel, and Caitlin Colgrove.  —  Hex  —  On Memorial Day, the Oklahoma City Thunder's …

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google unveils new Photos features, including a redesigned editor with AI features rolling out globally to Android next month and to iOS “later this year”  —  The UI has been redesigned to focus on Google's AI Magic Editor features.

New York Times: Sources detail factors that weakened Elon Musk's alliance with President Trump, including his frustrations with Trump's tariffs and his disillusionment with DC  —  The billionaire has made clear he is frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he tried to upend the federal bureaucracy.

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft opens Windows Update to any third-party app that needs to be updated, letting developers sign up for a private preview of a new orchestration platform  —  A new orchestration platform will let developers update any app through Windows Update.

Zachary Basu / Axios: Elon Musk departs the Trump administration as a “special government employee”, defending DOGE's mission to reduce wasteful government spending  —  Elon Musk pivoted to damage control in his final days as a “special government employee,” publicly recommitting to Mars …

Lindsay Whitehurst / Associated Press: The US Court of International Trade blocks Trump from imposing sweeping import tariffs under an emergency-powers law, finding Trump exceeded his authority  —  A federal trade court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.

Bloomberg: Taiwan is ramping up its defense drone push with help from startups like Coretronic, as giants like TSMC and Foxconn hold back due to a smaller local market  —  Military's stockpile of about 1,000 drones seen as inadequate in the case of conflict with China

Wall Street Journal: California's population is growing again, rising 0.6% in 2024, with the H-1B visa program being one of the drivers, helping offset the residents who are leaving  —  A job market without enough ‘homegrown’ engineers drives an influx of workers to the U.S.—and helps offset the residents who are leaving

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: Researchers detail an exploit in GitHub's official MCP server that lets hackers trick an LLM agent into leaking private information about the MCP user  —  GitHub MCP Exploited: Accessing private repositories via MCP (via) GitHub's official MCP server grants LLMs a whole host of new abilities …

Alexios Mantzarlis / Indicator: The top contributor to X's Community Notes is Web3 Antivirus, a startup that uses an automated process to flag crypto scam posts and has posted 52,000 times  —  I thought someone was gaming X's crowdsourced moderation; instead, they appear to be helping clean up the platform's mess for free.

Owen Walker / Financial Times: Scam victims in Singapore lost a total of ~$858M last year, up 70% YoY; most are contacted via Meta-owned apps, and deepfakes in scams are increasingly common  —  City-state residents who spend a lot of time online and are naturally compliant with authority are especially vulnerable

Bloomberg: Sources, including 30+ current and former Meta employees and 10+ US officials, detail Mark Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump, which has yet to pay major dividends  —  Meta's CEO has done everything he can to win over Trump, and it's not clear how much he has to show for it.

Tatum Hunter / Washington Post: People are using ChatGPT for unsparing assessments of their looks, with many also asking the chatbot to create plans to “glow up” their appearance  —  Friends want to protect your feelings.  AI isn't pulling any punches.  —  Ania Rucinski was feeling down on herself.

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: A database tracking instances where lawyers got caught presenting AI hallucinations shows that, of 116 cases dating back to June 2023, 20 occurred this month  —  AI Hallucination Cases (via) Damien Charlotin maintains this database of cases around the world where a legal decision …

Edith Hancock / Wall Street Journal: The EU says Shein's practices breach rules against false discounts, deceptive product labels, and more, and warn that it could face fines if it doesn't comply  —  European Union regulators said China-founded e-commerce platform Shein's sales tactics fall foul of EU law and that the company …

Pranav Dixit / Business Insider: Meta's AI team has faced a talent drain, with just three of the 14 authors credited on the landmark 2023 Llama paper still at Meta; several joined Mistral  —  - Meta's AI team has faced a talent drain as key Llama model creators have exited.  — The departures raise concerns about Meta's ability to retain top AI talent.

Bloomberg: A look at the UAE's Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, which aims to supply talent to Emirati companies, incubate startups, and serve as the UAE's AI R&D arm  —  Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI is focused on building an engineering pipeline, incubating homegrown startups, and hypercharging the region's AI development

Financial Times: Sources: Trump Media and Technology Group aims to raise $2B in fresh equity and another $1B via a convertible bond to buy cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin  —  US president's administration and family have become staunch advocates for digital assets  —  Antoine Gara, Oliver Barnes and George Steer in New York, Arash Massoudi in London

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: CB Insights: VC investment in voice AI startups rose from $315M in 2022 to $2.1B in 2024, driven by growing business adoption of voice AI agents in call centers  —  Improvements in the technology behind voice-based AI bots are making them more prolific and humanlike in phone calls

Financial Times: JioHotstar has grown its subscriber base from 50M in March to over 280M in May, driven by IPL cricket streams, nearing Netflix's global subscriber count of 300M  —  Subscriptions soar as JioStar consolidates rights for world's richest league in sport-mad nation  —  Krishn Kaushik and Chris Kay in Mumbai

Mayank Parmar / BleepingComputer: Palisade Research claims that OpenAI's o3 altered a shutdown script to avoid being turned off, even when explicitly instructed to allow shutdown  —  A new report claims that OpenAI's o3 model altered a shutdown script to avoid being turned off, even when explicitly instructed to allow shutdown.

Sean Heelan / Sean Heelan's Blog: A security researcher details how he discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the Linux kernel's SMB implementation by analyzing the code using OpenAI's o3 API  —  In this post I'll show you how I found a zeroday vulnerability in the Linux kernel using OpenAI's o3 model.

Emma Roth / The Verge: A look at updates that weren't in the Google I/O keynote, including a Nearby Passes notification in Wallet and the Play Store's Ask Someone Else to Pay button  —  The Google Play Store will let you ask other people to pay for your purchases, and Live Updates are coming to smartwatches.

David Cendon Garcia / EU-Startups: Paris-based Veesion, which offers AI-powered video surveillance software for spotting suspicious behavior in stores, raised a €38M Series B led by White Star  —  Veesion, a French startup building AI tools to detect suspicious behaviour in physical stores, has announced …

Colin Demarest / Axios: CX2, a defense tech startup building software and hardware, including autonomous drones, for electronic warfare, raised a $31M Series A led by Point72 Ventures  —  Defense-tech upstart CX2 plans to hire more people and accelerate development of its electronic warfare tools on the heels of a $31 million raise, executives told Axios.

Jason Del Rey / Fortune: General Medicine, an online storefront for medical care founded by PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, launches with $32M in funding led by Matrix  —  General Medicine's founding team has disrupted health care once.  They're trying again.  —  Courtesy of General Medicine

Leo Schwartz / Fortune: OpenFX, which is building a near-instant payments and settlement network for cross-border transactions, emerges from stealth with $23M in funding led by Accel  —  OpenFX founder Prabhakar Reddy.  —  Courtesy of OpenFX  —  Outside of AI, there's no hotter sector than stablecoins.

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: Amap, Alibaba's mapping and local services business, introduces a ride-hailing feature on the app's English version, targeting foreign visitors in China  —  Amap's ride-hailing feature, available on the platform's English version, reflects support for China's visa-free travel scheme

Evan Ochsner / Bloomberg Law: Legora, whose AI tools help legal teams review, draft, research, and advise, raised an $80M Series B at a $675M valuation led by ICONIQ and General Catalyst  —  Legora, the legal AI startup that's taking aim at the U.S. legal market, raised $80 million in a startup funding round that values the company at $675 million.

New York Times: Crypto investor John Woeltz from Kentucky was charged in NYC for allegedly kidnapping and torturing an Italian tourist for three weeks to gain crypto passwords  —  The investor, 37-year-old John Woeltz, and another man abused their victim for three weeks in a Manhattan townhouse as they tried …

Geoffrey Bunting / The Verge: Accessibility consultants say the video game industry's accessibility advancements, which gained momentum in 2020, have slowed down due to cutbacks  —  Video game consultants like Laura Kate Dale came into 2023 with a lot of hope. … Yet, as the year drew on, she says, “there started to be signs that …

Adam Edelman / NBC News: Texas is set to enact one of the strictest bans on social media for minors, with age verification requirements and letting parents request account deletions  —  It's the latest attempt in a growing effort by states to enact significant limits on the use of social media by young people.

Jason Snell / Six Colors: Sam Altman and Jony Ive's awkward io video feels like empty hype until a compelling device is released, especially given Ive's post-Jobs design missteps  —  Ever since OpenAI announced a couple of days ago that it's integrating Jony Ive's hardware startup, I've been struggling with what to write about it.

Allison Johnson / The Verge: Despite Google's guardrails, Veo 3 users are generating realistic clips of news, disasters, and fictional events, some with dialogue not included in the prompt  —  Cursed AI-generated videos come with very convincing audio now. … Even at first glance, there's something off about the body on the street.

Valentine Baldassari / Bloomberg: Elon Musk says he needs to be “super focused on X/xAI and Tesla”, saying major operational improvements need to be made “as evidenced by the X uptime issues”  —  Billionaire Elon Musk said he needs to be “super focused” on his companies, pointing to issues at X …

Abram Brown / The Information: A look at The Technology Brothers Podcast Network, a daily tech news talk show that has captured the attention of Silicon Valley's investors and founders  —  In recent months, John Coogan and Jordi Hays, co-hosts of “TBPN,” a daily tech news talk show that has captured the attention …

Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal: A look at the rise of “sovereign AI”, wherein countries invest directly in chip companies like Nvidia and AMD, making AI chips a highly politicized business  —  As Nvidia and others strike deals with sovereign nations, their business will become politicized as never before

Phoebe Liu / Forbes: Metaverse startup Infinite Reality, which claims a $15B+ valuation, told shareholders it is rebranding as Napster, an “AI-powered digital experiences” provider  —  Florida-based metaverse startup Infinite Reality, which claimed to have raised one of this year's largest funding rounds …

Ryan Barwick / Axios: Utah-based Awardco, which makes HR software that helps AT&T, Adobe, and other clients manage employee rewards, raised a $165M Series B at an over $1B valuation  —  Awardco announced Tuesday it has raised a $165 million Series B, valuing the employee rewards platform at more than $1 billion.

Financial Times: Sources: Builder.ai collapsed after it revised its 2024 revenue estimate from $220M to ~$55M and restated its previously reported 2023 sales from $180M to ~$45M  —  Failed UK start-up revised down revenues to just a quarter of prior estimates  —  Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Daniel Kuhn / The Block: Polygon cofounder Mihailo Bjelic steps down from the project's development studio, Polygon Labs, and from the foundation board, marking the third founder exit  —  - Mihailo Bjelic is stepping back from his active role developing Polygon and from the foundation's board, according to an announcement on Friday.