Drone shows are increasingly replacing fireworks displays; research: the global drone light show market is projected to grow from $1.3B in 2021 to $2.2B in 2031 (New York Times)

New York Times: Drone shows are increasingly replacing fireworks displays; research: the global drone light show market is projected to grow from $1.3B in 2021 to $2.2B in 2031  —  The light displays are quieter, safer and better for the environment.  —  Like many in the fireworks industry, Stephen Vitale is in the family business.

Red Hat’s new source code policy doesn’t violate the GPL itself but makes it harder to verify the company’s GPL compliance, angering the open-source community (Kevin Purdy/Ars Technica)

Kevin Purdy / Ars Technica: Red Hat’s new source code policy doesn’t violate the GPL itself but makes it harder to verify the company’s GPL compliance, angering the open-source community  —  A (reasonably) condensed version of two weeks’ worth of heated GPL argument.  —  When CentOS announced in 2020 that it was shutting …

Valve says it won’t approve Steam games that use copyright-infringing AI artwork, contrary to reports claiming the company planned to completely ban AI art (Wes Davis/The Verge)

Wes Davis / The Verge: Valve says it won’t approve Steam games that use copyright-infringing AI artwork, contrary to reports claiming the company planned to completely ban AI art  —  On Thursday, various outlets reported on a June Reddit post from user potterharry97 saying that Steam would no longer be publishing games with AI-generated content.

Q&A with Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, on the whirlwind first two weeks under Elon Musk, Twitter’s content moderation approach, and more (Poynter)

Poynter: Q&A with Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, on the whirlwind first two weeks under Elon Musk, Twitter’s content moderation approach, and more  —  Yoel Roth explains how moderation rules evolved at Twitter, the fight against harassment and why he no longer drives a Tesla

Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are temporarily limited to reading 6K posts/day, unverified 600, and new unverified 300, due to “extreme” data scraping (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Elon Musk says verified Twitter accounts are temporarily limited to reading 6K posts/day, unverified 600, and new unverified 300, due to “extreme” data scraping  —  Twitter is putting limits to how many tweets its users can read as the Elon Musk-owned service suffers extended outage …

Tracxn: Indian startups raised $5.46B in H1 2023, down from $17.1B in H1 2022 and $13.4B in H1 2021; Tiger Global made just one deal while SoftBank made none (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Tracxn: Indian startups raised $5.46B in H1 2023, down from $17.1B in H1 2022 and $13.4B in H1 2021; Tiger Global made just one deal while SoftBank made none  —  Several high-flying Indian startups, including Byju’s, Swiggy and PharmEasy, have experienced a dramatic downward adjustment in their valuations

Generative AI can make experienced programmers more productive, potentially eliminating tasks done by junior developers as companies use the tech to save money (Christopher Mims/Wall Street Journal)

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: Generative AI can make experienced programmers more productive, potentially eliminating tasks done by junior developers as companies use the tech to save money  —  Artificial-intelligence software is eating the software industry, as companies turn to generative AI tools to save money on programmers.

The FBI says it formed an online database in May to prevent swatting by facilitating coordination between police departments and law enforcement agencies (NBC News)

NBC News: The FBI says it formed an online database in May to prevent swatting by facilitating coordination between police departments and law enforcement agencies  —  Advances in technology allow callers to mask their voices, phone numbers or IP addresses (also called “spoofing”) or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.

Fidelity, Invesco, VanEck, and WisdomTree refile for a spot bitcoin ETF with Coinbase as market surveillance provider, to answer the US SEC’s objections (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: Fidelity, Invesco, VanEck, and WisdomTree refile for a spot bitcoin ETF with Coinbase as market surveillance provider, to answer the US SEC’s objections  —  In a flurry of Friday afternoon activity, Fidelity Investments, Invesco, VanEck and WisdomTree filed a fresh set of applications …

VMware partners with Samsung, AMD, and the RISC-V Keystone community to accelerate the adoption of confidential computing, which encrypts data as it’s processed (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: VMware partners with Samsung, AMD, and the RISC-V Keystone community to accelerate the adoption of confidential computing, which encrypts data as it’s processed  —  VMware Inc. stepped up its efforts to accelerate the adoption of confidential computing today, announcing an alliance …

Educating national security leaders on artificial intelligence

Understanding artificial intelligence and how it relates to matters of national security has become a top priority for military and government leaders in recent years. A new three-day custom program entitled “Artificial Intelligence for National Security Leaders” — AI4NSL for short — aims to educate leaders who may not have a technical background on the basics of […]

Hackers claim responsibility for an attack on Russian satellite service Dozor-Teleport; IODA project says the network has been offline since 10pm EST on June 28 (Daryna Antoniuk/The Record)

Daryna Antoniuk / The Record: Hackers claim responsibility for an attack on Russian satellite service Dozor-Teleport; IODA project says the network has been offline since 10pm EST on June 28  —  A group of previously unknown hackers has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the Russian satellite communications …

An Indian court dismisses Twitter’s challenge to government content rules and fines the company ~$61K after it failed to explain its delayed compliance (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: An Indian court dismisses Twitter’s challenge to government content rules and fines the company ~$61K after it failed to explain its delayed compliance  —  An Indian court has dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit against the federal government that sought to challenge New Delhi’s block orders on tweets and accounts.

Sources: Linda Yaccarino advocated for Twitter to rejoin Tech Coalition, which helps fight CSAM, and approved $40K in dues; Twitter’s membership lapsed in March (Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal)

Alexa Corse / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Linda Yaccarino advocated for Twitter to rejoin Tech Coalition, which helps fight CSAM, and approved $40K in dues; Twitter’s membership lapsed in March  —  CEO Linda Yaccarino approved $40,000 annual cost to participate in group as part of her efforts to reassure advertisers

Researchers teach an AI to write better chart captions

Chart captions that explain complex trends and patterns are important for improving a reader’s ability to comprehend and retain the data being presented. And for people with visual disabilities, the information in a caption often provides their only means of understanding the chart. But writing effective, detailed captions is a labor-intensive process. While autocaptioning techniques […]

Court docs: Satya Nadella said Azure’s cloud server business made $34B in revenue in the year ended June 2022, less than half of AWS’ revenue in the same period (Aaron Holmes/The Information)

Aaron Holmes / The Information: Court docs: Satya Nadella said Azure’s cloud server business made $34B in revenue in the year ended June 2022, less than half of AWS’ revenue in the same period  —  For years Microsoft has kept a lid on details about the true size of its Azure cloud server rental business […]

NYC-based Venn Software, which is developing a Secure Enclave product that can be installed on remote employee laptops, raised a $29M Series A led by NewSpring (Ryan Naraine/SecurityWeek)

Ryan Naraine / SecurityWeek: NYC-based Venn Software, which is developing a Secure Enclave product that can be installed on remote employee laptops, raised a $29M Series A led by NewSpring  —  New York startup scores early stage financing to build new technology to replace virtual desktop infrastructure.

Meta plans to let people in the EU directly download apps through Facebook ads; a pilot is set to start as soon as this year with select Android app developers (Alex Heath/The Verge)

Alex Heath / The Verge: Meta plans to let people in the EU directly download apps through Facebook ads; a pilot is set to start as soon as this year with select Android app developers  —  Meta is planning to let people in the EU directly download apps through Facebook ads, setting the company up […]

Transatlantic connections make the difference for MIT Portugal

Successful relationships take time to develop, with both parties investing energy and resources and fostering mutual trust and understanding. The MIT Portugal Program (MPP), a strategic partnership between MIT, Portuguese universities and research institutions, and the Portuguese government, is a case in point. Portugal’s inaugural partnership with a U.S. university, MPP was established in 2006 […]

Summer 2023 recommended reading from MIT

Summer is the perfect time to curl up with a good book — and MIT authors have had much to offer in the past year. The following titles represent a selection of books published in the past 12 months by MIT faculty and staff. In addition to links for each book from its publisher, the […]

Sources: Tiger Global rejected hundreds of bids for its private assets in recent months; as of January 1, the firm managed $51B, including $37B via its VC unit (Hema Parmar/Bloomberg)

Hema Parmar / Bloomberg: Sources: Tiger Global rejected hundreds of bids for its private assets in recent months; as of January 1, the firm managed $51B, including $37B via its VC unit  —  Tiger Global Management turned down hundreds of bids for its private assets in recent months because it felt the offers were too […]

Activists and researchers file a GDPR complaint against Pornhub in Italy, claiming the company is “illegally” handling user data; the process may take years (Matt Burgess/Wired)

Matt Burgess / Wired: Activists and researchers file a GDPR complaint against Pornhub in Italy, claiming the company is “illegally” handling user data; the process may take years  —  Complaints filed in the European Union claim the porn site fails to follow basic data-collection policies under GDPR.

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan plans to acquire AI startup Light Year from Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen for ~$233.7M in cash and ~$50.7M in debt (John Biju/Reuters)

John Biju / Reuters: Chinese food delivery giant Meituan plans to acquire AI startup Light Year from Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen for ~$233.7M in cash and ~$50.7M in debt  —  Chinese food delivery giant Meituan (3690.HK) said on Thursday that it is acquiring artificial intelligence (AI) company Light Year …