Google releases Gemini Ultra 1.0, its largest and most capable LLM, and renames Bard to Gemini, which now has a dedicated Android app and, soon, an iOS app
Google is famous for having a million similar products with confusingly different names and seemingly nothing in common.
Google adds a $20 per month AI Premium plan to Google One, offering Gemini Advanced with the Ultra 1.0 model, and rebrands Duet AI as Gemini for Workspace
Sundar Pichai announced last week that Google One is about to cross 100 million subscribers. Google One is now getting a new AI Premium plan that costs $19.99.
In his new book, a16z GP Chris Dixon fails to identify a single blockchain project that has successfully provided a non-speculative service at any kind of scale
Prominent crypto venture capitalist Chris Dixon provides an unconvincing bible for blockchain solutionists. — 1×
Disney plans to invest $1.5B for a stake in Epic Games and collaborate on a new “universe” connected to Fortnite with content from Disney, Pixar, and more
- Disney is investing $1.5 billion for an equity stake in Epic Games in its biggest jump yet into the gaming world.
The US says OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Palantir, and over 200 others are joining the new AI Safety Institute Consortium
The Biden administration on Thursday said leading artificial intelligence companies are among more than 200 entities joining …
Meta challenges the EU's DSA supervisory fee of 0.05% of Meta's annual net income that cover regulators' costs, disagreeing with how the fees are calculated
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters :
The Biden administration names White House economic adviser Elizabeth Kelly to lead the NIST's newly formed AI Safety Institute to develop AI testing standards
Josh Boak / Associated Press :
SEC filing: NYSE-listed Bakkt, a crypto trading platform backed by the Intercontinental Exchange, warns that it might not be able to stay in business in a year
The institutional digital asset trading platform unveiled in 2018 amid huge fanfare has just disclosed it “might not be able to continue as a going concern.”
A leaked image allegedly shows the Google Pixel Fold 2, including a narrower cover screen, a squarer inner screen aspect ratio, and redesigned camera bump
Here's a very early look at what could be Google's second-generation foldable phone. — • — TL;DR
An interview with Sundar Pichai on the evolving web, training Gemini to be a multimodal AI, future paid and ad-supported generative AI, hallucinations, and more
like YouTube — to plot out what the next few years of information-at-your-fingertips might look like X: @wired : WIRED's @laurengoode sat down with Google CEO Sundar Pichai to discuss the company's ju...
Google Gemini Advanced hands-on: clearly a GPT-4 class model, but doesn't obviously blow away GPT-4 in benchmarks; Gemini is better than GPT-4 at explanations
And then there were two. — Right around the time you are getting this email, Google finally released their long-awaited powerful AI …
TikTok joins Meta in challenging the EU's DSA in the General Court, arguing the levy is unfair as some firms pay nothing; Meta must pay €11M of the €45M total
Social media giants Meta and TikTok are suing the European Union over a levy that bankrolls the enforcement …
Pakistan suspended mobile services across the country as voters went to the polls on February 8; the Interior Ministry cited a deteriorating security situation
Outages in name of security fuel suspicion over polls' legitimacy — Poll workers walk past police officers outside a voting station in Peshawar on Feb. 8.
The Danish data protection authority orders schools to stop sending student data to Google via Chromebooks and Workspace, after an over four year investigation
The Danish data protection authority (Datatilsynet) has issued an injunction regarding student data being funneled to Google through …
Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker steps down to focus on AI and internet safety as chair of the nonprofit; Mozilla board member Laura Chambers will be interim CEO
Mozilla has named a new CEO effective immediately. — Mozilla Corp., which manages the open-source Firefox browser …
Filing: the FTC seeks a pause in Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition, arguing layoffs in Microsoft's gaming division contradict Microsoft's prior claims
The FTC isn't done questioning gaming's biggest acquisition. — One week after Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees …
The FCC outlaws scam robocalls featuring fake, AI-created voices, giving state AGs more legal tools to pursue illegal robocallers that use such voices
The Federal Communications Commission said Thursday it is immediately outlawing scam robocalls featuring fake, artificial intelligence-created voices …
Google debuts a pilot program in Singapore to prevent users from sideloading certain apps that abuse Android app permissions to read one-time passwords
To reduce financial scams, Google has started a new program to prevent users from sideloading certain apps in Singapore.
Plaid names Jen Taylor as its first president as it readies itself for an IPO; Taylor was most recently chief product officer at Cloudflare
- Firm names Cloudflare's product head Jen Taylor as president — Her hiring comes months after fintech announced its first CFO
Apple Vision Pro teardown: 50 Vision Pro pixels fit into a single iPhone 15 Pro pixel, the display is not technically 4K, has a ~100° field of view, and more
Battle for the Bird book excerpt: how Jack Dorsey's plan to get Elon Musk to save Twitter failed, as Musk dismantled the company after taking over, and more
An excerpt from Battle for the Bird shows how Twitter's two most prominent leaders contributed to its current dilemma.
US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand advisory: China-backed hacking group Volt Typhoon has had access to some major US infrastructure for over five years
Sam Sabin / Axios :
Microsoft partners with Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, which is building LLMs that support Indian languages, for developing voice-based generative AI tools
Microsoft (MSFT.O) will support the development of voice-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications through a partnership …
Sources: OpenAI is developing two types of agent software: one to automate tasks by effectively taking over a user's device, and the other for web-based tasks
OpenAI's first major product, ChatGPT, proved so popular that it sparked a generation of wannabes.
TikTok quietly removed view counts for hashtags in January, after researchers used them to show the disparity in views of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian videos
The change came after researchers cited TikTok's video-view counts to discuss the relative prominence of pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian videos on the app.
Microsoft updates Copilot with a redesigned look, a new AI model for Copilot's Balanced mode called Deucalion, and new AI image creation and editing features
https://lnkd.in/... Forums: r/Android : Delivering Copilot for everyone - The Official Microsoft Blog
Arm reports Q3 revenue up 14% YoY to $824M, vs. $761.6M est., and forecasts Q4 sales and adjusted profit above expectations; ARM jumps 21%+
Amsterdam-based payments giant Adyen reports H2 2023 net revenue up 23% YoY to €887M and processed volume up 29% YoY to €544.1B; ADYEN.AS jumps 22%+
Sarah Jacob / Bloomberg :
Adam Mosseri says Threads is testing the ability to save posts, a “heavily requested feature” that allows users to bookmark posts and revisit them later
SoftBank reports Q3 net profit of $6.4B, after four quarters of losses, lifted by a T-Mobile US shares windfall; the Vision Fund unit reported a ~$2.85B gain
Bloomberg :
An excerpt from Kara Swisher's upcoming book, Burn Book: covering digital media in the '90s, Facebook and Google becoming information gatekeepers, and more
Kara Swisher / New York Magazine :
Google joins the C2PA steering committee to develop a standard to label AI content via metadata alongside Adobe, the BBC, Microsoft, Sony, and others
Tiffany Hsu / New York Times :
An interview with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo, who runs 2,000+ AI-generated news sites, often hosted on once-popular domains, and claims to have ~12 human editors
Spotify paid out $9B to music rights holders in 2023, a “figure that has tripled over the past six years”, and more than $48B since its founding
Jem Aswad / Variety :
Q&A with Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine on Medium expecting to turn a profit in 2024, distribution, training LLMs, AI-generated content, media layoffs, and more
Reed Albergotti / Semafor : Mastodon: @nicol@social.coop . X: @nbj914 , @emilybell , @bigmeaninternet , @seamushughes , @te_rowley , and @semaforben See also Mediagazer Mastodon: Nicol Wistreich / @n...
PayPal reports Q4 revenue up 9% YoY to $8B, vs. $7.87B est., and total payment volume up 15% YoY to $409.8B, vs. $404.45B est.
German startup Daedalus, which uses AI to help manufacture precision parts in its Karlsruhe factory, raised a $21M Series A led by Nokia-funded NGP Capital
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch :
US House investigation: GGV, GSR, Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia, and Walden invested $1B+ in China's chip industry across 150+ deals between 2001 and August 2023
New York Times :
PitchBook: in 2021, 223 male-founded video game startups raised $4.1B, five women-founded startups raised $1.2M, and 62 mixed-gender startups raised $400.9M
and even worse for studios led by marginalized devs. Even at a peak in 2021, $4.1B in VC funding went to 223 companies led by men, while $1.2M went to 5 companies led by women. https://www.polygon.com...
Microsoft's Threat Analysis Center says Iran's cyber operations in Israel show how Iran could target the 2024 US elections, including AI-generated fake news
Filings: SoftBank's stake in Paytm was ~5% in January vs. ~18.5% around Paytm's 2021 IPO; SoftBank says it sold most of its stake due to regulatory scrutiny
Min Jeong Lee / Bloomberg :
Paris-based Pennylane, a maker of cloud-based accounting software that can import data from Stripe, Dropbox, and other services, raised €40M at a €1B+ valuation
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch :
Mechanical Orchard, which helps companies migrate systems from mainframes to the cloud, raised a $24M Series A led by Emergence Capital at a $95M valuation
The UN is probing 58 suspected cyberattacks worth ~$3B by North Korea on crypto companies; the stolen crypto allegedly helped fund the country's nuclear weapons
Michelle Nichols / Reuters : Forums: r/Buttcoin Forums: r/Buttcoin : Cyber-attacks by North Korea raked in $3bn from cryptocurrency ransoms to build nuclear weapons, UN monitors suspect | North Kore...
A look at AI use in Indonesia ahead of the February 14 elections, as vendors and campaigns push the limits of guidelines issued by OpenAI, Midjourney, and more
making a cuddly cute avatar of a General running for office in Indonesia. There's a lot more in here that's likely also covert - bots etc - but worth reading some reaction commentary from people cons...
AI data security company Cohesity agrees to acquire the data protection unit of multi-cloud data management company Veritas, valuing the combined entity at $7B
Shopify: Revolutionizing Commerce with Winter Edition '26
Over 150+ new features transform how merchants build, design, and grow—with technology that amplifies creative vision.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.