Reading List

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

Meta rolls out AI-powered voice translations for creators on Facebook and Instagram globally, supporting English-Spanish translations with lip syncing (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Robinhood, in partnership with Kalshi, launches a sports prediction market on Robinhood Derivatives, letting users trade on pro and college football games (RT Watson/The Block)

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Google will pay $30M to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it violated kids' privacy on YouTube by collecting data without parental consent for targeted ads (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)

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Sources: Meta considers downsizing its AI division, with some executives expected to leave, and is exploring using third-party models for its AI products (New York Times)

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Memo: Meta restructures Superintelligence Labs; Alexandr Wang heads TBD Lab, Robert Fergus heads FAIR, Nat Friedman heads products, Aparna Ramani heads Infra (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg)

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Google proposes Play Store changes in the EU, like making it easier for developers to direct users to websites and a new tiered fee structure, after EU scrutiny (Samuel Stolton/Bloomberg)

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Functionize, which offers a cloud platform that uses AI to speed up software testing, raised a $41M Series B, bringing its total funding to $67M+ (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)

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Tether hires Bo Hines, who stepped down as White House Crypto Council Executive Director earlier in August, as an adviser to help it expand in the US (Prakhar Srivastava/Reuters)

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What to expect from Google's "Made by Google" Pixel hardware event on August 20: four Pixel 10 phones, including a Pro Fold, Pixel Watch 4, and Pixel Buds 2A (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

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NYC-based Keychain, which makes AI-based software that helps manufacturers manage their product cycles, raised a $30M Series B, taking its total funding to $68M (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

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Bill Gates backs the Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize, which gives $1M to a team making AI to "accelerate breakthrough discoveries from existing Alzheimer's data" (Stephen Morris/Financial Times)

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A survey of 4,446 US adults on AI: 71% are concerned AI will put "too many people out of work permanently", 61% worry about electricity consumption, and more (Reuters)

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DeepSeek releases V3.1, adding a longer context window, with few other details; Chinese media blames CEO Liang Wenfeng's perfectionism and bugs for R2's delay (Bloomberg)

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NYC-based Eight Sleep, which makes the AI-powered Pod smart mattress cover for measuring sleep, raised $100M from HSG and others, after an $86M Series C in 2021 (Kate Park/TechCrunch)

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Sources: Nvidia is developing a new Blackwell-based AI chip for China, tentatively known as the B30A, that will be more powerful than its H20 model for China (Reuters)

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Xiaomi reports Q2 revenue up 31% YoY to ~$16.2B, above ~$16B est., and net income up 134% YoY to ~$1.6B, driven by EV sales countering slowing smartphone demand (Linda Lew/Bloomberg)

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Databricks is finalizing a Series K at a $100B valuation, up 61% from its December 2024 round; sources say it is co-led by Thrive and a16z plans to participate (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal)

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Sources: Masayoshi Son met Lip-Bu Tan to discuss SoftBank acquiring Intel's faltering foundry business in the weeks before announcing SoftBank's $2B investment (Financial Times)

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Sources: Apple is making all four iPhone 17 models in India ahead of debut, a first, as it expands to five factories to cut reliance on China for US-bound units (Bloomberg)

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Tim Sweeney says the UK's mobile app store regulation lags "well behind" other countries, and calls the CMA delaying its iPhone sideloading decision a "blunder" (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

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