Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Microsoft says it curtailed Chinese companies' access to advance vulnerability notifications via MAPP starting in July, after probing the SharePoint breach (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)

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Google hires NBA star Stephen Curry as a "performance advisor" for its Health, Pixel, and Cloud products, including testing Fitbit's new personal health coach (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

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FieldAI, which is developing "brains" for robots, raised $405M at a $2B post-money valuation from Nvidia and others; FieldAI raised an initial $91M in late 2024 (Dan Primack/Axios)

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Microsoft and Asus plan to launch the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds on October 16; leaks suggest the Ally and Ally X will cost €599 and €899, respectively (Tom Warren/The Verge)

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Sources: Amazon plans to revamp its Fire tablets and release a higher-end Android tablet as soon as 2026, after using its Android-forked Fire OS since 2011 (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)

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NYC-based Bluefish Labs, which analyzes prompt responses for large brands to understand how LLMs answer consumer questions, raised a $20M Series A led by NEA (Kyt Dotson/SiliconANGLE)

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Sources: China is considering allowing yuan-backed stablecoins to boost yuan adoption globally and its State Council may approve a roadmap later in August (Reuters)

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South Korea's Upstage, which offers AI document intelligence tools, raised a $45M Series B bridge led by the KDB, Amazon, and AMD, after a $72M Series B in 2024 (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

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Document: Microsoft's 2025 System Security Plan submitted to the DOD, dated February 28, failed to disclose China-based engineers maintaining DoD cloud systems (ProPublica)

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A look at the 2025 AI Film Festival, backed by Runway AI and screened by Imax; some cinephiles deride it while others say it's part of a natural tech evolution (John Semley/Wired)

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Grok's "share" button generates a unique URL that makes users' chats searchable on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo; Google has indexed 370K+ Grok conversations (Iain Martin/Forbes)

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Sources: Oracle is on the hook for tens of billions to build unprecedentedly large data centers, including $1B+ per year on a gas-powered megasite in West Texas (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)

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Sources: Elon Musk is quietly pumping the brakes on his plans to start a US political party, telling allies he wants to focus his attention on his companies (Brian Schwartz/Wall Street Journal)

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YouGov: 59% of US adults use AI assistants to check the weather, 51% to play music, 47% to get answers from the web, and 40% for timers, mirroring usage in 2018 (Rani Molla/Sherwood News)

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Baidu reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to ~$4.6B, slightly below est., and online ad revenue down 15% YoY to ~$2.3B, as Chinese companies rein in ad spending (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)

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Kick says it is "urgently reviewing" the circumstances around the death of a French livestreamer subjected to violence and sleep deprivation during streams (Tom McArthur/BBC)

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Analysis: Intel's stock, up 28% in August, is trading at a 53 forward P/E ratio, its highest since early 2002, reflecting its declining profits in recent years (Ryan Vlastelica/Bloomberg)

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Sources: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bets stablecoins will bolster demand for Treasuries, as talks with Tether and Circle help inform issuance decisions (Financial Times)

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Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus and an earlier product called Monica, says its annual revenue run rate has hit $90M, with Manus contributing the most (Bloomberg)

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PE firm Advent International agrees to acquire U-blox, a SIX Swiss Exchange-listed wireless and positioning chipmaker, for about $1.3B via public tender offer (Andrea Figueras/Wall Street Journal)

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