About: blatcho

Emily Chang / Bloomberg: An interview with Sundar Pichai on playing the long game on AI, how Gemini image generation “got it wrong”, AI search, the US DOJ lawsuits, layoffs, and more  —  In this episode of The Circuit with Emily Chang, the Alphabet CEO explains how he’s in it for the long haul—and won’t […]

Bloomberg: Sources: Alphabet has been progressing in talks to acquire marketing software provider HubSpot and has discussed terms; HubSpot has a $30B market cap  —  Google parent Alphabet Inc. has been progressing in talks to acquire marketing software provider HubSpot Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: French AI startup Mistral AI is nearing a deal to raise ~$600M at a $6B valuation, after raising $500M at a $2B+ valuation in December 2023  —  Mistral AI is nearing a deal to raise funds at a $6 billion valuation—nearly tripling its level from six months ago.

A new robotic hand can withstand being smashed by pistons or walloped with a hammer. It was designed to survive the trial-and-error interactions required to train AI robots

Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School have developed a potential new treatment for alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss and affects people of all ages, including children. For most patients with this type of hair loss, there is no effective treatment. The team developed a microneedle patch […]

OpenAI released draft guidelines for how it wants the AI technology inside ChatGPT to behave—and revealed that it’s exploring how to ‘responsibly’ generate explicit content.

An internal email from FBI deputy director Paul Abbate, obtained by WIRED, tells employees to search for “US persons” in a controversial spy program’s database that investigators have repeatedly misused.

A Kremlin-aligned network called Doppelganger has used faked versions of real news sites to push both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel disinformation.

Dallin Grimm / Tom’s Hardware: Some Stack Overflow users say their account was suspended after they attempted to alter their posts in protest of its OpenAI partnership to supply data for AI  —  Stack Overflow is overflowing with salt.  —  Stack Overflow, a legendary internet forum for programmers and developers …

Dade Hayes / Deadline: Disney and WBD announce a streaming bundle of Disney+, Hulu, and Max, with ad-supported and ad-free plans, beginning this summer in the US, with pricing to come  —  Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are breaking ground in streaming with a bundled offering featuring Disney+, Hulu and Max in a single package.

Pratik Jain / Reuters: US hospital operator Ascension reports disruptions to its clinical operations due to a suspected cybersecurity incident and engages Mandiant to help investigate  —  Hospital operator Ascension reported disruptions to its clinical operations on Wednesday due to a suspected cybersecurity incident …

The latest version of the AlphaFold AI can help biologists predict how proteins interact with each other and other molecules, which is a boon to pharmaceutical research

When scientists look for an earthquake’s cause, their search often starts underground. As centuries of seismic studies have made clear, it’s the collision of tectonic plates and the movement of subsurface faults and fissures that primarily trigger a temblor. But MIT scientists have now found that certain weather events may also play a role in […]

Lean into being a facilitator — not an expert.

Surprising insights from EY’s survey of its U.S. hybrid, full in-person, and fully remote employees.

Their corporate culture often focuses on unconventional solutions to hard business problems.

The cold-brew feature is a letdown, but this De’Longhi makes great espresso—if you help it out a little.

Despite Cyber Army of Russia’s claims of swaying US “minds and hearts,” experts say the cyber sabotage group appears to be hyping its hacking for a domestic audience.

Bloomberg: Chinese government data: foreign-branded smartphones shipments, most of which are iPhones, grew 12% YoY to 3.75M in March, reversing a 37% drop in early 2024  —  – The performance marks an improvement from the start of 2024  — The bounce emerged after Apple and its resellers cut prices

Manya Saini / Reuters: Data collaboration software maker Atlan raised a $105M Series C led by Singapore’s GIC and Meritech at a $750M valuation, taking its total funding to $206M  —  Atlan said on Wednesday it had raised $105 million in a funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC …

Spencer Soper / Bloomberg: Shopify reports Q1 revenue up 23% YoY to $1.9B, GMV up 23% YoY to $60.9B, and expects gross margins to drop by ~50 basis points YoY in Q2; SHOP plummets 18%+  —  The company posted a loss of $273 million, after a profit of $68 million a year earlier.  The loss […]

Apple’s latest stylus will only work with its newest iPads. The long-running second-gen Apple Pencil—which the company still sells—will not.

The ACP provided a broadband subsidy for millions of Americans. Now Congress has a plan to reinstate it.

Tesla’s gigafactory in Germany has temporarily paused production as protests ramp up.

Mike Murphy / IBM Research: IBM open sources its Granite code models for code generative tasks, trained on 116 programming languages, with models ranging in size from 3B to 34B parameters  —  Release  —  IBM is releasing a family of Granite code models to the open-source community.  The aim is to make coding as easy […]

Steven Church / Bloomberg: FTX says it will have as much as $16.3B to distribute once it finishes selling all of its assets; it owes customers and other non-governmental creditors ~$11B  —  – Crypto customers to get interest on what FTX owes them  — Bankrupt firm updates plan to divide cash among creditors

Demetri Sevastopulo / Financial Times: The US revokes some licenses that allow companies to ship chips and other goods to Huawei; sources say the decision affects Intel and Qualcomm  —  Move marks latest effort by Biden administration to target the country’s tech sector  —  The Biden administration has revoked export licences …

Software that has been blocked from connecting to the internet should be secure from hacking attempts, but now researchers have found a way to sneak data out by varying the speed of the computer’s processor

“AI Comes Out of the Closet” is a large learning model (LLM)-based online system that leverages artificial intelligence-generated dialog and virtual characters to create complex social interaction simulations. These simulations allow users to experiment with and refine their approach to LGBTQIA+ advocacy in a safe and controlled environment. The research is both personal and political to lead […]

Since 2014, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has advanced interdisciplinary research aimed at solving the world’s most pressing water and food security challenges to meet human needs. In 2017, J-WAFS established the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Water Solutions Fellowship and the J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship. These fellowships provide support to outstanding […]

The allure of whales has stoked human consciousness for millennia, casting these ocean giants as enigmatic residents of the deep seas. From the biblical Leviathan to Herman Melville’s formidable Moby Dick, whales have been central to mythologies and folklore. And while cetology, or whale science, has improved our knowledge of these marine mammals in the […]

Despite dramatic progress in LGBTQ+ rights over the last 20 years, many of these new-won freedoms are now at risk.

How chef Ferran Adrià and his restaurant team balance innovation with business objectives.

Advice backed by three decades of research into thousands of team conflicts around the world.

Help the whole family catch more z’s with soothing background noise from our favorite sound machines.

Musi’s free music streaming app is a hit with thrifty teens. The app claims to tap content on YouTube, but some in the music industry question the legitimacy of that model.

Amazon’s newest delivery drones will take off from just outside Phoenix but don’t count on rush ordering a fan on a hot day. The fleet can’t fly when the temperature exceeds 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Akamai agrees to acquire Noname Security, which finds and fixes API vulnerabilities, for ~$450M, closing in Q2 2024; Noname was valued at $1B in December 2021  —  A couple of weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that Akamai was in discussions to acquire Noname Security, a specialist in API security, for […]

Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg: UK banking app Revolut launches Revolut X, a crypto trading service to let “experienced traders” buy and sell 100+ different tokens, with 0% to 0.09% fees  —  The new platform, called Revolut X, will allow “experienced traders” to buy and sell over 100 different tokens, according to a statement on […]

Deepa Seetharaman / Wall Street Journal: OpenAI releases a tool to detect DALL-E 3-created images, claiming 98% accuracy for unaltered images, and joins Microsoft and Adobe’s content credentials group  —  Startup’s new tool detects 98% of pictures generated by its DALL-E 3 system, but success drops if the images are altered

We are living in a very noisy world. From the hum of traffic outside your window to the next-door neighbor’s blaring TV to sounds from a co-worker’s cubicle, unwanted noise remains a resounding problem. To cut through the din, an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers from MIT and elsewhere developed a sound-suppressing silk fabric that could […]

Boeing’s first ever human-crewed spacecraft is launching tonight. You can watch it live right here.

You can play Supergiant’s hotly anticipated roguelike right now—if you’re a PC player.

Seven years behind schedule, on Monday Starliner will send two astronauts to space on a mission for NASA. The troubled company still has lots of catching up to do.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Apple has been working on its own chip designed to run AI software in data center servers; the project is internally codenamed Project ACDC  —  The company is leaning on its long history of chip development in the effort, code-named Project ACDC  —  Apple has been working …

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch: UK-based Wayve, which is developing a self-learning system for autonomous driving, raised a $1.05B Series C led by SoftBank, the UK’s largest AI fundraise ever  —  Wayve, a U.K.-born startup developing a self-learning rather than rule-based system for autonomous driving …

Forbes: A look at the trademark dispute over the name AGI House between two rival hacker houses, one in Hillsborough and the other in Twin Peaks in the Bay Area  —  Two rival hacker houses, both claiming the name “AGI House,” have attracted the attention of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.

A robot that moves around by balancing on a ball could prove a better assistant for wheelchair users than humanoid robots that walk on two legs

A quantum bit inspired by Schrödinger’s cat can resist making errors for an unprecedentedly long time, which makes it a candidate for building less error-prone quantum computers

MIT professor William H. Green has been named director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI). In appointing Green, then-MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber highlighted his expertise in chemical kinetics — the understanding of the rates of chemical reactions — and the work of his research team in reaction kinetics, quantum chemistry, numerical methods, […]