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.
Some 2024 LLM takeaways: multimodal vision became common, LLM prices crashed, overall environmental impact worsened despite efficiency gains, and slop arrived
A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here's a review of things we figured …
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 …
A judge blocks parts of California's SB 976, finding it may infringe on First Amendment rights, but allows a provision banning “addictive feeds” for minors
Parts of the law will still take effect Wednesday. — SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday barred …
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 …
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 …
An investigation details how predatory men engage in the grooming of child influencers on Instagram under the guise of working as social media professionals
Photographers and other men offer to build online followings for young girls, but some are pedophiles who work with parents to sexualize them.
St. Louis-based tech services company World Wide Technology agrees to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in an all-cash deal valuing Softchoice 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 …
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 …
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.
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 :
OpenAI missed its goal to launch Media Manager, an opt-out tool for creators, by 2025; sources: the tool was rarely viewed as an important launch internally
Back in May, OpenAI said it was developing a tool to let creators specify how they want their works to be included in — or excluded from — its AI training data. Mastodon: @SuffolkLITLab@esq.social . F...
Link-Busters, an anti-piracy company working for big publishers, passed 2B URL takedown requests sent to Google and is behind 50%+ of Google takedown requests
Online piracy is a constant headache for copyright holders; one that's particularly hard to beat.
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
Press release: www.justice.gov/opa/pr/unite... [embedded post] Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : There's no such thing as a free lunch. The DOJ has taken action against the fintech Da...
KoBold Metals, which uses AI to sift through historical and scientific data to identify untapped mineral deposits, raised a $537M Series C at a $2.96B valuation
KoBold Metals aims to lead race for critical minerals needed for energy transition — A mining and artificial intelligence start …
Inside Apple labs testing and calibrating iPhone 16 series' audio and video features, including new Audio Mix editing tools and 4K slow motion capabilities
www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/a-billion- pixels-a-second-i-got-a-rare-look- inside-apples-secret-iphone-16-camera- labs/ Forums: MacRumors Forums : Apple Opens Doors to Its iPhone Audio and Video Testing C...
BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF surpassed $50B in assets in 11 months, marking the fastest-growing ETF debut ever, and helping BTC exceed $100K in mid-December
Blackrock's IBIT Becomes the Fastest Growing ETF of All Time Sujha Sundararajan / Cryptonews : BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Sees Unprecedented Growth, $50B in AuM in 11 Months Godfrey Benjamin / Coinspeaker ...
Alibaba sells Sun Art Retail stake to PE firm DCP for ~$1.6B, after paying ~$3.6B in 2020 to double the stake to 70%+, as it focuses on its core online business
- Sun Art had attracted interest from other private equity firms … China's e-commerce pioneer said it could receive gross proceeds …
As Beijing pushes for self-sufficiency in the $80B+ per year car chip business, sources say the use of homemade chips in Chinese cars has risen to around 15%
Wall Street Journal :
PitchBook: the number of VCs investing in US startups fell from a peak of 8,315 in 2021 to 6,175 in 2024; 9 firms raised 50%+ of the $71B raised by VCs in 2024
Risk-averse financial institutions concentrate money on biggest Silicon Valley VCs in trend that threatens smaller groups Bluesky: @radiobeartime.com Bluesky: Mark O'Neill / @radiobeartime.com : There...
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
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 :
Government data: users on Douyin, WeChat, and other short video apps in China dropped for the first time to 1.05B in June 2024, down ~300M from December 2023
Coco Feng / South China Morning Post :
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 :
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.