Reading List

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

Sources: Tencent Music is in advanced talks to buy Chinese podcasting startup Ximalaya in a $2.4B deal (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Two of 2024’s most innovative horror movies are now on Hulu

Polygon - All

ChatGPT is getting a ‘lightweight’ version of its deep research tool

The Verge - All Posts

Baidu CEO Robin Li says demand for text-based models like DeepSeek's is "shrinking" and claims its model had a higher propensity for "hallucinations" (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)

Techmeme

Toshiba Europe researchers say they used quantum key distribution cryptography to send messages over a 250km German commercial telecommunications network (Michael Peel/Financial Times)

Techmeme

Microsoft made an ad with generative AI and nobody noticed

The Verge - All Posts

Brazil's AI-based social security app, launched in 2018, has cut bureaucracy in some cases but wrongly rejected hundreds of vulnerable people over minor errors (Gabriel Daros/Rest of World)

Techmeme

Three European scientific funding agencies have put research programs with China on hold since 2021 due to concerns over the country's Data Security Law (Andrew Silver/Reuters)

Techmeme

JD.com's costly bid to challenge Meituan in food delivery, while the latter enters the e-commerce space, has led to a loss of ~$70B in combined market value (Charlotte Yang/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

OpenAI expands deep research usage for Plus, Pro, and Team users with an o4-mini-powered lightweight version, which also rolls out to Free users today (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Baidu rolls out Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo, new versions of its flagship foundation and reasoning models, as it looks to take on Alibaba's Qwen and DeepSeek (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Adobe says Firefly users can now generate images using OpenAI's GPT, Google's Imagen 3 and Veo 2, and Flux 1.1 Pro, in addition to its own Firefly image models (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)

Techmeme

Sources: Apple plans to move assembly of all US-sold iPhones, ~60M/year, to India by the end of 2026, as President Trump's trade war pushes a pivot from China (Financial Times)

Techmeme

YouTube is testing a new AI Overviews carousel in its search results for queries focused on products and location information, for some US Premium subscribers (Danny Goodwin/Search Engine Land)

Techmeme

Sources: the US is conducting a criminal antitrust probe into TP-Link's pricing strategies and whether the router maker represents a national security threat (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

The Verge - All Posts

Tabletop game companies sue Trump to stop tariffs

The Verge - All Posts

Source: Alphabet's Q1 profit was boosted by $8B in unrealized gains from an investment in SpaceX; Alphabet has been a major SpaceX investor since at least 2015 (Davey Alba/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Netflix rolls out subtitles with just spoken dialog, without audio cues or speaker names, and says ~50% of US viewing hours happen with subtitles or captions on (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Techmeme

Bluesky is back up after a major outage

The Verge - All Posts