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 …

In court, Satya Nadella says he’d love to end “exclusives on consoles”; Bobby Kotick says making CoD exclusive would cause “revolt” and “reputational damage” (Kellen Browning/New York Times)

Kellen Browning / New York Times: In court, Satya Nadella says he’d love to end “exclusives on consoles”; Bobby Kotick says making CoD exclusive would cause “revolt” and “reputational damage”  —  In federal court, Satya Nadella and Bobby Kotick opposed an attempt by the F.T.C …

Celestial AI, which offers optical interconnect tech for compute, memory, and data transmission, raised a $100M Series B, bringing its total funding to $165M+ (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Celestial AI, which offers optical interconnect tech for compute, memory, and data transmission, raised a $100M Series B, bringing its total funding to $165M+  —  David Lazovsky and Preet Virk, technologists with backgrounds in semiconductor engineering and photonics, came …

Internal messages: Reddit tells protesting mods that their communities won’t remain private beyond the timeframe set for this week to confirm reopening plans (Jay Peters/The Verge)

Jay Peters / The Verge: Internal messages: Reddit tells protesting mods that their communities won’t remain private beyond the timeframe set for this week to confirm reopening plans  —  / ‘This community will not remain private beyond the timeframe we’ve allowed for confirmation of plans here.’

Gamifying medical data labeling to advance AI

When Erik Duhaime PhD ’19 was working on his thesis in MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, he noticed his wife, then a medical student, spending hours studying on apps that offered flash cards and quizzes. His research had shown that, as a group, medical students could classify skin lesions more accurately than professional dermatologists; the […]

Carl Pei’s Nothing raised $96M led by Highland ahead of its Phone (2) announcement, taking its total funding to $250M; sources put 2022 revenue at $200M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Carl Pei’s Nothing raised $96M led by Highland ahead of its Phone (2) announcement, taking its total funding to $250M; sources put 2022 revenue at $200M  —  Smartphone sales are in decline as handset makers grapple with saturated markets and a tough consumer economic climate.

DoorDash announces new features for couriers, including “earn by time” for a guaranteed hourly minimum rate, real-time location sharing, and Dash Along the Way (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge: DoorDash announces new features for couriers, including “earn by time” for a guaranteed hourly minimum rate, real-time location sharing, and Dash Along the Way  —  DoorDash is making a big change to the way couriers get paid.  In an announcement on Wednesday …

UK convenience stores are increasingly using facial recognition to combat shoplifting, something critics say is a disproportionate solution for minor crimes (New York Times)

New York Times: UK convenience stores are increasingly using facial recognition to combat shoplifting, something critics say is a disproportionate solution for minor crimes  —  British merchants are increasingly using the technology to combat shoplifting, raising questions about its spread as artificial intelligence rapidly improves it.

MIT researchers devise a way to evaluate cybersecurity methods

A savvy hacker can obtain secret information, such as a password, by observing a computer program’s behavior, like how much time that program spends accessing the computer’s memory. Security approaches that completely block these “side-channel attacks” are so computationally expensive that they aren’t feasible for many real-world systems. Instead, engineers often apply what are known […]

EU countries and lawmakers reach a provisional agreement on the Data Act, establishing rules on how Big Tech and other firms use EU consumer and corporate data (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: EU countries and lawmakers reach a provisional agreement on the Data Act, establishing rules on how Big Tech and other firms use EU consumer and corporate data  —  EU countries and EU lawmakers on Tuesday agreed on rules that govern how Big Tech and other companies use European consumer and […]

OpenAI’s ChatGPT iOS app adds Bing for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, letting them get answers on information that extend beyond ChatGPT’s original training data (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI’s ChatGPT iOS app adds Bing for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, letting them get answers on information that extend beyond ChatGPT’s original training data  —  ChatGPT on mobile can now surf the web.  But only via Bing.  —  Today, OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus …

TikTok admits that it’s funding the TikTok creators’ lawsuit in Montana challenging the state’s ban of the app, but says it’s not paying the creators directly (Sapna Maheshwari/New York Times)

Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times: TikTok admits that it’s funding the TikTok creators’ lawsuit in Montana challenging the state’s ban of the app, but says it’s not paying the creators directly  —  The popular video service had deflected questions about its involvement in the creators’ lawsuit for more than a month.

Uncovering the invisible pressures shaping language

Sihan Chen’s fascination with languages began when he was a teenager in his high school choir in his hometown of Shenzhen, China. “We sang religious and folk songs in different languages like Mandarin, English, Albanian, and Latin, and I would look up how to pronounce words in different languages,” he says. These early experiences planted […]

The EU launches four “crash test” facilities for AI tools, funded by a €220M investment, which will let companies test AI and robotics in real-life settings (Sanne Wass/Bloomberg)

Sanne Wass / Bloomberg: The EU launches four “crash test” facilities for AI tools, funded by a €220M investment, which will let companies test AI and robotics in real-life settings  —  The Europe Union is introducing “crash test” systems for artificial intelligence to ensure new innovations are safe before they hit the market.

Sources: US government official Kurt Campbell confronted Sequoia’s Don Vieira in DC over the VC firm’s ties to China, eventually leading to the three-way split (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Sources: US government official Kurt Campbell confronted Sequoia’s Don Vieira in DC over the VC firm’s ties to China, eventually leading to the three-way split  —  Scrutiny from Washington aggravated tensions within the venture-capital firm, fueling its decision to break up

Tel Aviv-based NoTraffic, an AI-based traffic management service, raised a $50M Series B led by M&G Investments, following a $17.5M Series A in July 2021 (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Tel Aviv-based NoTraffic, an AI-based traffic management service, raised a $50M Series B led by M&G Investments, following a $17.5M Series A in July 2021  —  AI-based traffic management platform NoTraffic has bagged $50 million in Series B funding as it picks up momentum in cities across …