Reading List

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

A look at the ~$377 TranscribeGlass smart glasses, which weigh 36g and use AI to subtitle conversations in nearly real time, for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (Boone Ashworth/Wired)

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Uber drivers in British Columbia joined a union, seeking to negotiate Canada's first bargaining agreement for rideshare drivers; Uber has agreed to meet (Thomas Seal/Bloomberg)

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Sources: Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd says Bumble's "centre of gravity" will move to the US where the "talent pool is right now"; 70% of its staff are UK-based (Financial Times)

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Baidu overhauls its search engine with AI features and a voice function in its most sweeping revamp in years, and rolls out its first image-to-video model (Bloomberg)

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Some Chinese universities are using AI detection tools to screen papers, but false positives force students to "dumb down" content or pay for rewriting services (Peiyue Wu/Rest of World)

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Siemens says it has restored full access to its chip design software for its Chinese clients after the Trump admin lifted export curbs, initially imposed in May (Mackenzie Hawkins/Bloomberg)

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Datadog is joining the S&P 500, replacing Juniper Networks after HPE acquired Juniper, before trading on July 9; DDOG jumps 10% (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

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xAI has been granted a permit to operate 15 gas turbines at its Memphis campus until 2027, despite protests and a potential NAACP lawsuit over air pollution (Molly Taft/Wired)

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OpenAI says the tokenized OpenAI shares that Robinhood has started offering are not equity: "We did not partner with Robinhood ... and do not endorse it" (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)

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Ripple applies for a US national banking license, which would place Ripple's dollar-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, under the US OCC's regulatory remit (Vicky Ge Huang/Wall Street Journal)

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Microsoft cuts hundreds of Xbox jobs across studios, sources say including Halo Studios and King, and cancels games like Perfect Dark and Everwild (Eddie Makuch/GameSpot)

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Sources: Netflix has held talks with Spotify about partnering on projects such as a music awards show, as it adds content that was core to the cable bundle (Jessica Toonkel/Wall Street Journal)

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Sources: OpenAI will rent additional computing power from Oracle, totaling about 4.5 gigawatts of US data center power, as part of its Stargate initiative (Bloomberg)

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Analysis: crypto ventures have added at least $620M to President Trump's fortune in months, overshadowing traditional real estate licensing deals (Bloomberg)

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Perplexity launches a $200/month Max plan with unlimited Labs access, early access to features like Comet browser, and priority use of models like o3-pro (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)

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TikTok lays off workers from the US division of TikTok Shop, the third round of layoffs for the team since April, after a year of missing internal sales targets (Bloomberg)

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TikTok users are posting AI-generated videos, seemingly made with Google's Veo 3, depicting racist and antisemitic tropes that have garnered millions of views (Abbie Richards/Media Matters for America)

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ICEBlock, an app for reporting sightings of ICE officials, was the top free app in the US App Store on Tuesday; the app claims to collect no personal data (Emma Roth/The Verge)

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A French court finds three ex-Ubisoft executives, including the chief creative officer, guilty of enabling a culture of sexual and psychological harassment (Angelique Chrisafis/The Guardian)

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Berlin-based Talon.One, which provides software for brands to run personalized promotions and loyalty schemes, raised $135M (Freya Pratty/Sifted)

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