Sam Altman’s World Crypto Project Launches in US With Eye-Scanning Orbs in 6 Cities

Sam Altman’s controversial blockchain project, World, is launching in the U.S. – and said it intends to roll out 7,500 eye-scanning “orbs” in cities across the country by the end of the year. World’s orbs — chrome, bowling ball-shaped devices that scan a person’s eyeballs to confirm their identity — will initially be available to Americans … Read more

Galaxy Digital plans Nasdaq listing as crypto stocks post strong rebound

Key takeaways: Galaxy Digital plans to begin trading on the Nasdaq on May 16, pending shareholder and Nasdaq approval. Nasdaq-listed crypto firms posted strong gains in April after a period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz says the listing will broaden the company’s investor base and US presence. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) listed … Read more

Microsoft’s most capable new Phi 4 AI model rivals the performance of far larger systems

Microsoft launched several new “open” AI models on Wednesday, the most capable of which is competitive with OpenAI’s o3-mini on at least one benchmark. All of the new pemissively licensed models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — are “reasoning” models, meaning they’re able to spend more time … Read more

Crypto token failures soar, with 1 in 4 launched since 2021 dying in Q1: CoinGecko

About one in four crypto tokens launched since 2021 have failed in the first quarter of this year amid a crypto market downturn and token creation becoming easier than ever, says crypto data platform CoinGecko. Since 2021, nearly 7 million cryptocurrencies have been listed on CoinGecko’s token tracking tool GeckoTerminal, and over half, or 3.7 … Read more

Apple exec ‘outright lied’ during Epic trial

In her ruling banning Apple from charging a commission on purchases made outside the App Store, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says that an Apple executive “outright lied under oath.” According to Gonzalez Rogers, Alex Roman, vice president of finance at Apple, gave testimony that was “replete with misdirection and outright lies.” The judge writes that … Read more

World partners with Tinder, Visa to bring its ID-verifying tech to more places

World, the biometric ID company best known for its eyeball-scanning Orb devices, on Wednesday announced several partnerships aimed at driving sign-ups and demonstrating the applications of its tech. World is partnering with Match Group, the dating app conglomerate, to verify the identities of Tinder users in Japan using World’s identity verification system. Additionally, World has … Read more

Epic Games just scored a win against Apple

Epic Games notched a win in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple. The result could be Fortnite returning to the U.S. iOS app store as early as next week. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in a ruling Wednesday that Apple was in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that prohibited the company from anticompetitive pricing. … Read more

Amazon Bedrock Model Distillation: Boost function calling accuracy while reducing cost and latency

Amazon Bedrock Model Distillation is generally available, and it addresses the fundamental challenge many organizations face when deploying generative AI: how to maintain high performance while reducing costs and latency. This technique transfers knowledge from larger, more capable foundation models (FMs) that act as teachers to smaller, more efficient models (students), creating specialized models that … Read more