Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Google says the Gemini app now offers personalized Nano Banana image generation, previously limited to Plus, Pro, and Ultra users, to eligible US users for free (Lauren Forristal/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Sources: hundreds of Meta contractors posed as minors to probe how competitor chatbots responded to prompts involving suicide, sex, and other high-risk subjects (Wired)

Techmeme

Tidal adopts an AI policy that blocks wholly AI-generated music from earning royalties and removes AI-generated music that impersonates artists (Murray Stassen/Music Business Worldwide)

Techmeme

Digital Realty says it plans to acquire a majority stake in three fully leased Northern Virginia data centers from Blackstone-managed funds in a $7.8B deal (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)

Techmeme

Source: Taiwanese authorities raided Super Micro's Taiwan office as part of a probe into the alleged smuggling of Nvidia chips to China; SMCI closed down 8.1% (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

As a new law bars DOD from working with companies whose lobbyists also represent blacklisted entities, DC lobbying firms drop companies like Alibaba and Tencent (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Waymo and Uber quietly ended their partnership in Phoenix in May; Uber says it is readying the launch of a separate autonomous vehicle partnership in the city (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Sources: component and supplier lists, and photos of iPhone 18 Pro models, are among files a ransomware group stole from Apple's Indian supplier Tata (Reuters)

Techmeme

Baz releases Baz Planner, which uses four specialized AI agents to analyze code at the planning stage, and extends its seed funding by $9M to $17M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)

Techmeme

California strikes a deal with Anthropic to expand the use of Claude products across state agencies and local governments at a 50% discount (Christine Mui/Politico)

Techmeme

In Q2, there were thirteen $1B+ US venture-backed startup exits, either through acquisition or IPO, the most exits since the 2021 market peak (Joanna Glasner/Crunchbase News)

Techmeme

Quantifind, whose AI products help banks combat financial crimes such as money laundering, raised $200M led by Summit Partners (Laura Kreutzer/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

Sources: Amazon is weighing using OpenAI's and its own Nova models to cut costs after Anthropic raised prices for using its models in Amazon products (Catherine Perloff/The Information)

Techmeme

SCOTUS limits the law enforcement use of "geofence" warrants, saying people have "a reasonable expectation of privacy" in their cell-phone location data (TechCrunch)

Techmeme

WhatsApp rolls out username reservations globally, allowing users to claim a unique name before the privacy-focused feature launches later this year (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)

Techmeme

Changpeng Zhao says Binance's MiCA application in Greece was fully compliant and close to approval by at least one EU regulator, but "other forces" opposed it (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block)

Techmeme

Straiker, which develops tech for securing enterprise AI agents, raised a $64M Series A, bringing its total funding to $85M (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Techmeme

SCOTUS finds that Trump's 2025 firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause was lawful, placing independence of several agencies in doubt (NPR)

Techmeme

Rocket Lab plans to acquire Iridium for $8B and combine Rocket Lab's launch services with Iridium's satellite-based communications network to rival SpaceX (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Techmeme

Filing: Strategy paused its bitcoin acquisitions last week, instead topping up its USD reserve to $2.55B and announcing a $1B digital credit buyback program (James Hunt/The Block)

Techmeme