~techmeme | Bookmarks (1054)

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 …