Amazon unveils Alexa+, a generative AI update with vision capabilities and more, in preview in March 2025 for $20 per month or free to Prime subscribers
Arriving more than a year after it was first announced, Alexa is finally catching up to Google's Gemini.
Apple says it is working to fix an issue after users said its automatic dictation system was transcribing the word “racist” as “Trump”, before correcting itself
The company said it was working to fix the problem after iPhone users began reporting the issue.
Amazon's Panos Panay demoed Alexa+ in a flowing ongoing conversation and says it can book concert tickets, make restaurant reservations, and text a babysitter
Amazon.com Inc. has rebooted Alexa with artificial intelligence. — The rollout is the biggest overhaul of the voice-activated …
Framework Desktop hands-on: the tiny 4.5-liter gaming desktop looks cool, good frame rates at 1440p thanks to its AMD Ryzen AI Max CPU, expandable I/O, and more
Is this neat thing a new sub-category or a one-off? … Framework's mission is to “fix consumer electronics, one category at a time” …
A live blog of Amazon's Alexa event
Amazon's set to announce a big update to Alexa. … Amazon is set to announce new Alexa features beginning at 10AM ET this morning — and we hope a few devices accompany them. There isn't a way to watch...
Framework unveils the Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300, priced at $1,099 for a pre-built model, and Framework Laptop 12 with a touch screen, price TBA
Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware :
Trump says “Apple should get rid of DEI rules, not just make adjustments to them” in a Truth Social post, after Apple investors rejected a proposal to end DEI
- Investors turned down outside proposal to scrap DEI efforts — Trump escalates campaign against diversity hiring practices
WBD closes three game studios and cancels a highly anticipated Wonder Woman title in a bid to boost the profitability of its interactive entertainment business
- Company halts work on highly anticipated Wonder Woman title — Closures follow several disappointing releases last year
How the hackers behind the $1.5B Bybit crypto heist used UI manipulation of employee devices and social engineering to gain control of ETH multisig cold wallets
The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday's heist, likely by North Korea …
Valve's Steam Deck, launched in 2022, has been dominating the handheld PC gaming market, with about 50% market share in 2024, according to IDC
Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw: The Steam Deck is bigger than them combined. … Today is the third anniversary of Valve's Steam Deck …
YouTube says it now has 1B+ monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide; users watched 400M+ hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices in 2024
Podcasts started as an audio-only phenomenon. … According to the Google-owned video giant, YouTube now has more than 1 billion monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide.
Sources: Meta is in talks to build a new data center campus for AI that could cost over $200B, based on the number of chips and the amount of power for the site
Meta Platforms is in talks to build a new data center campus for its artificial intelligence endeavors that would dwarf anything …
Indonesia says Apple signed a deal to invest in Indonesia and will issue it a permit, paving the way for resuming iPhone 16 sales after a five-month tussle
The agreement was announced by Minister for Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita in a media briefing in Jakarta on Wednesday, as reported by Bloomberg Technoz.
Sources: DeepSeek, which planned to release R2 in May 2025, now wants R2 out as soon as possible; DeepSeek owner High-Flyer built a 10K A100 GPU cluster in 2021
DeepSeek is looking to press home its advantage. — The Chinese startup triggered a $1 trillion-plus sell-off …
Amazon says Alexa+ will be able to navigate through movies on Prime Video due to Alexa, Prime Video, and Fire TV's integration, including “jump to a scene”
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
Lasso: 20,000+ once-public GitHub repositories from Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM, Tencent, and 16,000+ other companies are still accessible via Copilot
Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots …
DeepSeek cuts API prices in off-peak times, between 00:30 and 08:30 in Beijing, by 75% for R1 and 50% for V3; the times are during US and Europe daylight hours
Eduardo Baptista / Reuters :
After backlash, YC deletes a demo video from X and LinkedIn of Optifye.AI, a startup it backs that is building AI performance monitoring for factory workers
A demo from Optifye.AI, a member of Y Combinator's current cohort, sparked a social media backlash that ended up with YC deleting it off its socials.
Amazon says Alexa+ is “model agnostic”, using Amazon Nova models and Anthropic's models, and picks the “best” AI model for a task, drawing on Amazon Bedrock
Amazon says that the new and improved Alexa unveiled on Wednesday, Alexa+, is powered by a “model agnostic” … X: @maxwinebach , @joannastern , @maxwinebach , and @stevemoser X: Max Weinbach / @maxwine...
A survey of 2,000 US adults finds 42% say that search engines like Google are becoming less useful, 60% view the state of social media negatively, and more
- Platform Shifts — Defining Connection — Content Matters (Especially in Communities) — Brands Matter.AI May Complicate
Survey: 92% of UK undergrad students use AI to help them with their studies, up from 66% a year ago, raising questions about how universities assess their work
Rapid spread of technology raises questions about how to assess undergraduate work — The number of UK undergraduate students …
Court records: FTX paid nearly $948M to 12+ firms working on its bankruptcy, one of the costliest Chapter 11 cases in US history; users are set to get back 118%
- Lack of records, corporate controls sent adviser fees higher — Most creditors poised to get back 118% of what they were owed
Apple removing ADP in the UK is a pyrrhic victory for Apple, and UK users' muted response suggests they may not care about privacy as much as the company thinks
If the tech giant hopes that killing encryption will cause public upset and deter other governments, it's probably wrong.
Alibaba releases Wan 2.1, a family of open-source AI models for generating images and videos, available globally on Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope and Hugging Face
Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba (9988.HK) said on Wednesday its video- and image-generating artificial intelligence model Wan 2.1 …
Uniswap Labs says the US SEC has closed its probe into the company and will not file enforcement actions, after the SEC dropped OpenSea and Robinhood probes
WSJ: BBG John E Deaton / @johnedeaton1 : Hayden lays out the problem when it comes to regulators more interested in pushing a political agenda than enforcing the law. Hayden mentions the personal toll...
Access Now: 54 countries imposed internet shutdowns at least 296 times in 2024, led by Myanmar, displacing India from the top spot for the first time since 2018
Ina Fried / Axios :
The American Psychological Association warns the US FTC that AI chatbots “masquerading” as therapists could drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others
The nation's largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots … Bluesky: @mjcrockett and @hypervisible . LinkedIn: Daniel Oberhaus . Forums: r/therapists Bl...
Patreon's 2025 creator economy report shows the future may be direct-to-fan instead of direct-to-consumer, but the hurdles in place are more seismic than ever
The future may be direct-to-fan instead of direct-to-consumer, but the hurdles in place are more seismic than ever — Beware all studies.
A US federal judge dismisses a lawsuit against TikTok and YouTube over “choking challenge” videos, saying the case failed on its merits and citing Section 230
Mothers who sued TikTok and YouTube over “choking challenge” videos that allegedly led to their children's deaths failed …
xAI released a new Grok 3 voice mode featuring different personalities, including an 18+ “Unhinged” option and a “Sexy” one that role-plays sexual scenarios
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica :
IBM plans to acquire DataStax and its cloud database development platform to expand IBM's Watsonx AI portfolio; Crunchbase says DataStax has raised $342.6M
IBM has announced plans to acquire DataStax, the company behind Langflow! 🎉 — A huge thank you to our incredible developer community …
AppLovin's stock falls 10%+ after two short sellers released reports questioning the integrity of the company's AI-powered AXON ad software
Shares of AppLovin tumbled 13% Wednesday as two short-seller reports cast doubt on the integrity of the company's AI-powered AXON advertising software …
Q&A with Jürgen Schmidhuber, the controversial AI pioneer and director of AI at Saudi Arabia's KAUST, on the kingdom's AI ambitions, DeepSeek, AGI, and more
With a long track record of groundbreaking research, outspoken opinions, and grand visions, Jürgen Schmidhuber …
Sources: in July 2024, Microsoft told top GOP officials that Chinese hackers had accessed the RNC email system for months; the RNC chose not to alert the FBI
The news that Microsoft was infiltrated another time by Chinese hackers makes it clear that Elon's carelessness is putting your information at risk. — www.wsj.com/politics/nat... … Dustin Volz / @du...
A profile of Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian tech executive involved in a $93M insider trading scheme and released by the US in a 2024 prisoner swap with Russia
and, I think, an indication of how the new Moscow-DC axis will tilt. — www.wired.com/story/russia... @wired.com : His life? A rags-to-riches fairy tale. A lavish wedding, a beautiful wife, five ki...
A profile of Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who led the company from trailing eBay and Apple in online sales to becoming the world's second-largest e-commerce firm
Bloomberg : X: @alephblog and @tgarcianyc LinkedIn: Deena Shanker and Jaewon Kang X: David Merkel / @alephblog : The world's largest retailer has built an Apple-esque corporate campus in Bentonville,...
China's aggressive expansion into mature chips, expected to account for 28% of the market in 2025, is driving prices down to previously unthinkable levels
Nikkei Asia :
A survey of US workers in October 2024: 52% are worried about AI's workplace impact, 32% think it will mean fewer job opportunities, 36% feel hopeful, and more
but few learned about AI The Boston Globe : American workers are skeptical AI will help them on the job LinkedIn: Luona Lin : Excited to share my recent work at Pew Research Center with Kim Parker - I...
Bridgetown Research, which aims to use AI agents to expedite data collection and research in due diligence, raised a $19M Series A led by Accel and Lightspeed
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch :
Estonia partners with OpenAI and Anthropic to launch an AI skills drive in schools for 20,000 students aged 16 and 17, aiming to help develop critical thinking
Financial Times :
Documents and a source: Indonesian agritech eFishery misrepresented its financials for years; backers like SoftBank are likely to recover <10% of investments
Investigators hired by the board of eFishery Pte. have determined the Indonesian startup is in far worse shape … Nelson Ng : Here's who most unfortunate on eFishery's case no one talks about. — The ...
Flow48, which provides revenue-based financing solutions for SME, raised a $69M Series A in debt and equity led by Breega and plans a Saudi Arabia expansion
Lucy Adams / Tech.eu : LinkedIn: Enrique Martinez Hausmann LinkedIn: Enrique Martinez Hausmann : Excited to see Flow48 secure a $69M Series A to expand into Saudi Arabia and strengthen its leadership...
Sensor Tower: in 2024, TikTok, including its Chinese counterpart Douyin, became the first non-game app to reach $6B in annual in-app purchase revenue
Also wild that 30% of that goes straight to Google & Apple before taxes. For TikTok, that's almost $2 billion in App Store fees. …
Analysts expect Amazon to spend up to $25B of its $100B capex in 2025 on its retail network, focusing on automation and efficiency, amid the AI spending boom
Rafe Uddin / Financial Times :
Sources: Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is aiming to raise $1B at a ~$9B valuation; the round is in progress and details could change
Business Insider : X: @julia_hornstein and @thebenbergman X: Julia Hornstein / @julia_hornstein : late-night scoop w @thebenbergman: mira murati's new ai startup, thinking machine labs, is aiming to ...
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.