Month: February 2025
SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son says AGI will arrive ‘much earlier’ than he thought
SoftBank isn’t just part of the group investing $500 billion into Project Stargate to build American AI infrastructure capacity for OpenAI. It’s also making a Japanese joint venture with OpenAI, will spend $3 billion deploying OpenAI tech across SoftBank companies, and claims it will revolutionize business with AI agents through a new AI system called … Read more
Algorithms as Ammunition And the Danger of It All
The thing about the Open Money framework is that it’s not only about money. The Open Money framework is also about identity, ownership, data integrity, and censorship resistance—all designed to preserve the mechanisms of individual freedom while preventing the destruction of value. At the core of all of this is the idea that data systems … Read more
Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF Flows Fall Amid Crypto Market Chaos
Ethereum is struggling to recover after a tech sell-off, impacting ETF flows, while Bitcoin has recovered after a rocky start to the week.
Sony and CBS are in a Jeopardy! distribution feud
Sony Pictures Television says it’s taking over the distribution rights for top game shows Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! from Paramount-owned CBS starting the week of February 10th, reports Bloomberg, while CBS is fighting back by seeking a temporary restraining order. In October, Sony sued CBS for allegedly not putting in enough effort to grow … Read more
Stripe brings aboard new head of ‘startup and VC partnerships’
Asya Bradley, a former fintech founder and investor, has joined payments giant Stripe as its new head of Startup & Venture Capital Partnerships. Bradley announced the news on February 2 in a post on LinkedIn, though her bio shows that she joined Stripe back in November. Neither Stripe nor Bradley were immediately available for comment. … Read more
Trump Dump: Could the Trade War Nuke Dogecoin and Meme Coin Mania?
The crypto trenches were lined with disappointment as Trump’s tariffs nuked the charts. Can Dogecoin and other meme coins withstand a full-blown trade war?
Naver-backed Cinamon wants to make 3D video animation easier using AI
It’s never been easier to create and publish art than it is now, and if you believe the companies building tech around AI, the production process is going to get even more efficient. That’s especially the case with video production, with companies of all sizes using large language models to build tools that let you … Read more
Shein and Temu depend on a 100-year-old tariff loophole that Trump wants to close
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff threats have been touch and go. As it stands currently, the 25 percent tax on goods from Mexico and Canada is on ice for a month, but a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods is set to take effect on Tuesday, via an executive order of questionable legality. Nestled within … Read more
Trump to Create US Sovereign Wealth Fund—Could It Lead to a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?
Other similar government-owned funds have invested in Bitcoin and crypto-related projects. So will this one do it too?
In Praise of Subspecies
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US senator hints Trump’s latest EO could mean the US buying Bitcoin
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis suggested Donald Trump’s executive order creating a US sovereign wealth fund was a “big deal” for Bitcoin.
10 Commandments for Federal Securities Laws
U.S. financial markets have long been burdened with a patchwork of outdated, overly complex, paternalistic rules. Meanwhile, the government’s failure to establish a regulatory regime for digital assets, coupled with its aggressive persecution of the industry, has stifled innovation. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world surged ahead, leaving the U.S. behind. Now, under President Trump’s … Read more
The AI Arms Race in Cybersecurity: Trust Nothing, Verify Everything
The battle between cybercriminals and cybersecurity professionals is increasing daily. A cybersecurity report states that cybercrime could cost as much as $10.5 trillion yearly by 2025. Artificial intelligence has become the weapon in this arms race. As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Microsoft with over 15 years of experience in cybersecurity, I have … Read more
No, DeepSeek isn’t uncensored if you run it locally
DeepSeek’s model is censored at both the application and training layers, a Wired investigation shows. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Meta says it may stop development of AI systems it deems too risky
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to make artificial general intelligence (AGI) — which is roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can — openly available one day. But in a new policy document, Meta suggests that there are certain scenarios in which it may not release a highly capable AI … Read more
Are Audiobooks A Waste of Time and Money?
While I love “normal books,” audiobooks are a tool in the Lifehacker’s war chest for high-leverage learning and do offer some special benefits. Notably, audiobooks help improve listening comprehension. By listening to audiobooks, one can improve their comprehension by hearing the language. Audio learning helps stimulate the imagination, increase reading fluency, and provide a model … Read more
‘Full-Throated Demand’ for Crypto ETFs Yet to Emerge on Wall Street
“Do we have the kind of market penetration that you would expect in a $3 trillion asset,” one expert asked on a panel. “The answer is decidedly no.”
How to Build a Tiny Language Model (TLM) in Ruby: A Step-by-Step Guide
In this article, we will walk through how to create a very simple language model using Ruby. While true Large Language Models (LLMs) require enormous amounts of data and computational resources, we can create a toy model that demonstrates many of the core concepts behind language modeling. In our example, we will build a basic … Read more
Apple’s attempt to intervene in the Google Search antitrust trial is denied
US District Court Judge Amit Mehta denied Apple’s emergency request to halt the Google Search monopoly trial that could dismantle their lucrative search that’s reportedly worth as much as $18 billion a year. The order came in late Sunday, with Judge Mehta saying Apple hasn’t demonstrated satisfactory reasons for its emergency motion to stay that … Read more
Hulu might be rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer
It looks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is coming back from the dead (again) as part of a new Hulu series. Deadline reports that Hulu is close to finalizing a pilot order for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer follow-up set to be directed by Chloé Zhao and written by Nora and Lilla Zuckerman (Poker Face). … Read more
Post-Quantum Cryptography: Securing the Future of Encryption
As technology gets better and better, quantum computing threats are becoming a big problem. They can break our current ways of keeping data safe. This makes us need new, strong ways to protect our information from these threats. Quantum computers can crack the codes we use now. This means our data could be at risk. We must … Read more