Reading List

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

Grok's website is exposing the underlying prompts for its AI personas, including one for a "crazy conspiracist" persona that spends "a lot of time on 4chan" (Joseph Cox/404 Media)

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Samsung announces the Galaxy Buds3 FE, with a new AirPods Pro-like design, improved ANC, and upgraded audio quality, launching September 4 for $149.99 (Max Buondonno/The Shortcut)

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A survey by Google Cloud and The Harris Poll finds 87% of game developers are using AI agents in their workflows; 63% expressed concerns about data ownership (Vic Hood/GamesIndustry.biz)

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Grammarly debuts AI agents for writing and grading assistance, like an AI grader agent and a citation finder agent, available to Grammarly Free and Pro users (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

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NYC-based IVIX, which uses AI to help regulators detect financial fraud, raised a $60M Series B led by OG Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $85M (Marc Vartabedian/Wall Street Journal)

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Digital bank Monzo, which has 13M UK customers, plans to launch a mobile phone service; Revolut and Klarna, each with ~11M UK customers, announced similar plans (Financial Times)

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Medallion, which automates health care back-office operations and compliance, raised $43M led by Acrew at a ~$440M valuation, bringing its total raised to $130M (Amy Feldman/Forbes)

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Medallion Raises $43 Million to Expand AI Infrastructure and Launch the First National Credentialing Clearinghouse (Medallion)

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Humanoid Robot Games highlighted robotics advancements but also limitations, with robots tripping over each other; one robot ran faster than many amateur humans (Yan Zhuang/New York Times)

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Sources: the EU and the US have delayed formalizing their trade deal partly over "non-tariff barriers", like relaxing the DSA, which the EU sees as a red line (Financial Times)

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SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will still run the plant and make AI servers as part of Softbank's $500B Stargate project with OpenAI and Oracle (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

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China's podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in 2025, up from <700K five years ago, driven by grassroots hosts instinctively navigating China's red lines (Edward White/Financial Times)

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As boards and executives mandate using AI to make their businesses more efficient and competitive, many have yet to fully integrate it into their own workdays (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)

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Australia's ACCC says Google agreed to pay a AU$55M fine over deals with Telstra and Optus to preinstall only Google Search on Android phones from 2019 to 2021 (Himanshi Akhand/Reuters)

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A profile of Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner, who has led the EHR software company for 46 years, building it into one of the largest private US tech companies (Ashley Capoot/CNBC)

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A look at OpenAI's campaign over the past year to turn its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation, led by a team of Democratic insiders in California (Politico)

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Cybercriminals, spies, researchers, and corporate defenders are increasingly using AI, feeding into an escalating cat-and-mouse game of finding software flaws (Kevin Collier/NBC News)

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An interview with Trent Brunson, R&D director at cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits, which won $3M and second in DARPA's AI Cyber Challenge, behind Team Atlanta (Patrick Howell O'Neill/Bloomberg)

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How Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent are gaining on Netflix in Southeast Asia through original productions and free, ad-supported services (Nikkei Asia)

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NYC-based Protege, which prepares and sells real-world datasets like lab results and sports footage for AI training, raised a $25M Series A led by Footwork (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)

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