Reading List

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

Avatar: Fire and Ash reveals the wild making of its biggest action scene

Polygon - All

Crimson Desert players missed a massive shortcut for the Sealed in Stone mission

Polygon - All

Mistral launches Voxtral TTS, an open-source enterprise text-to-speech model that supports nine languages, including Hindi and Arabic, based on Ministral 3B (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

KPop Demon Hunters 2 directors to make a fortune from massive Netflix deal

Polygon - All

Defense tech startup Shield AI raised $2B at a $12.7B valuation, up from $5.3B after raising $240M in March 2025; half of its business is autonomous software (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)

Techmeme

Interviews with 37 Anduril sources detail safety concerns and project challenges at Anduril's manufacturing operations; Anduril calls the claims "inaccurate" (Paresh Dave/Wired)

Techmeme

DJI’s Avata 360 is a more functional, flexible 360 drone

The Verge - All Posts

Theia Insights raises $8M to replace the static industry classification systems

The Next Web

OpenAI shelves erotic chatbot ‘indefinitely’

The Verge - All Posts

The European Commission opens a DSA investigation into Snap for failing to protect kids on Snapchat, including whether it does enough to assess its users' ages (Eliza Gkritsi/Politico)

Techmeme

The EU accuses Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos of failing to protect kids from exposure to pornographic content, in preliminary DSA investigation findings (Barbara Moens/Financial Times)

Techmeme

As US lawmakers struggle to pass online safety laws, LA and New Mexico juries take the lead, holding social media companies accountable for harming young users (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)

Techmeme

Meituan reports Q4 revenue up 4.1% YoY to ~$13.3B and a ~$2.2B adjusted net loss, vs. ~$1.9B est., amid an intense food delivery fight with Alibaba and JD.com (Luz Ding/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

OpenAI shelves its erotic chatbot "indefinitely" as it refocuses on its core products, sources say after technical issues as well as staff and investor concerns (Financial Times)

Techmeme

Revolut says it aims to base ~40% of its global workforce in India by the end of 2026, increasing its local headcount to 5,500; Revolut has 12K staff globally (Haripriya Suresh/Reuters)

Techmeme

Sources: Chinese chipmaker CXMT hit ~$8B in 2025 revenue, up 130% YoY, and projects ~$435M in adjusted net income, excluding one-time items, ahead of an IPO (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Melania Trump appeared alongside Figure AI's Figure 3 humanoid robot at the White House to push integrating tech into US children's educational and social lives (Katie Rogers/New York Times)

Techmeme

Book excerpt: how Google acquired DeepMind for $650M in 2014, beating Facebook to the deal; Mustafa Suleyman used poker-style bluffing to secure a safety board (Sebastian Mallaby/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Uber, Pony.ai, and Rimac’s Verne announce Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service

The Next Web

Sources: Google's top India counsel Bijoya Roy resigned after 16 months to start a new venture, a high-profile exit in a market where it faces regulatory issues (Aditya Kalra/Reuters)

Techmeme