Reading List

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

Amadeus IT Group, which operates the world's largest travel booking system, plans to acquire French biometrics company Idemia Public Security, for €1.2B in cash (Javi West Larrañaga/Reuters)

Techmeme

Ask.com shutters, as its owner IAC "continues to sharpen its focus"; a dot-com era icon, Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, a year before Google (Chase DiBenedetto/Mashable)

Techmeme

Maryland becomes the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores, as other states including CO, CA, MA, IL, and NJ consider similar bills (Sanya Mansoor/The Guardian)

Techmeme

Analysis: after Trump's World Liberty raised $550M from investors, tokens worth hundreds of millions in USD were privately sold in "white glove" transactions (Olga Kharif/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Investigation: Nobitex was founded by two brothers from Iran's elite Kharrazi family; the crypto exchange processed hundreds of millions beyond US sanctions (Reuters)

Techmeme

A Chinese court ruled that companies cannot terminate staff just to replace them with AI, following a similar ruling by another Chinese court in December 2025 (Victor Swezey/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Study: OpenAI's o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of emergency room patients using electronic records and a few sentences from nurses, vs. to 50-55% for triage doctors (Robert Booth/The Guardian)

Techmeme

Sources: Nigerian mobile payments service OPay is preparing for a US IPO at a $4B valuation with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase advising (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Sources: Anthropic is in early talks to buy AI inference chips from UK-based Fractile when they become available in 2027 (The Information)

Techmeme

A look at casino-style games, considered gambling in some US states, where player "whales" spend tens of thousands via IAP on Apple, Google, and Meta platforms (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

A profile of OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, who sources say helped keep OpenAI's Microsoft deal on track and has privately suggested waiting until 2027 for an IPO (Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Ripple Labs investor and exec Chris Larsen plans to spend $3.5M to help Alex Bores, a NY congressional candidate at the center of a proxy war over AI regulation (New York Times)

Techmeme

Sources: GameStop is preparing to make an offer for eBay after quietly building a stake; GameStop had a market cap of ~$11B as of May 1, while eBay had ~$45B (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Avoca, whose AI agents let physical services businesses handle inbound calls and dispatch, raised $125M+ across seed, Series A, and Series B at a $1B valuation (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)

Techmeme

A UK court orders Samsung to pay ZTE $392M for patents needed to enable phone network access; Samsung faces similar suits from ZTE in China, Germany, and Brazil (Sam Tobin/Reuters)

Techmeme

Waymo says it is continuing to "refine" its system preventing kids under 18 from riding alone, after adult riders reported new age-verification checks (Aarian Marshall/Wired)

Techmeme

xAI launches Grok 4.3, featuring "always-on reasoning", 1M token context window, and low API pricing, and releases a voice cloning suite called Custom Voices (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)

Techmeme

Servers operated by Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical have been down for more than a day, following a "sustained, cross-border attack" (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Techmeme

Apple has stopped offering a 256GB storage option for the Mac mini globally; Mac mini now starts at 512GB for $799 in the US (Joe Rossignol/MacRumors)

Techmeme

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issues new rules saying acting and writing must be performed by humans and not AI to be eligible for Oscars (Lisa Richwine/Reuters)

Techmeme