Reading List

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

Sources: MacBook Pros with touch screens, due this fall, will have a Dynamic Island and a refreshed, dynamic UI optimized for touch or point-and-click input (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

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Apple will block users in Australia, Brazil, and Singapore from downloading apps rated 18+ without age assurance and rolls out new age assurance tools for devs (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)

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Sources: Stripe, which is privately held, has expressed preliminary interest in a potential acquisition of PayPal or its assets; PYPL closed up 6.7% (Bloomberg)

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Sources: CoreWeave is seeking an ~$8.5B loan from banks, backed by a contract Meta signed last year to pay CoreWeave up to $14.2B for its services (Bloomberg)

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Source: Anthropic has no intention of easing Claude usage restrictions for military purposes, following Dario Amodei's meeting with Pete Hegseth (David Jeans/Reuters)

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Anthropic updates its Responsible Scaling Policy, including separating the safety commitments it'll make unilaterally and its recommendations for the industry (Billy Perrigo/Time)

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A California judge dismisses a lawsuit from xAI that accused OpenAI of stealing its trade secrets, with permission for xAI to refile the case at a later date (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

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Discord says it won't roll out age verification globally next month as previously announced, delaying the change until H2 after it adds verification options (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)

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YouTube updates its $7.99-per-month Premium Lite subscription to let users download videos for offline access and play videos in the background (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

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Sources: DOD told Anthropic it will invoke the Defense Production Act or label Anthropic a "supply chain risk", if not given unfettered Claude access by Friday (Axios)

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Waymo opens its robotaxi service to "select riders" in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando, expanding its operations to 10 US cities (Lora Kolodny/CNBC)

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Software stocks rebound as Anthropic announces partnerships integrating its AI tools with enterprise apps, including Slack, Intuit, Docusign, and FactSet (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

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SambaNova, which says its SN50 AI chip runs 5x faster than its rivals and will be deployed by SoftBank, raised a $350M Series E led by Vista Equity and Cambium (Bloomberg)

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Beverly Hills-based Subject, whose streaming-style, on-demand platform provides digital curriculum and learning insights for grades 6-12, raised $28M (Natalie Breymeyer/Axios)

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DOJ files reveal how Jeffrey Epstein ingratiated himself with top Microsoft executives, aiding his return to society after his release from prison in 2009 (New York Times)

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Slang AI, which develops voice-based software for the hospitality industry that answers inbound calls, manages reservations, and more, raised a $36M Series B (Natalie Breymeyer/Axios)

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Profound, which tracks how AI models recommend brands across millions of prompts, raised a $96M Series C at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $155M (Lily Mae Lazarus/Fortune)

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An Evercore ISI economist criticizes Citrini's AI report, calling its assumptions "extreme and improbable", but says it's a thought-provoking exercise (Robin Wigglesworth/Financial Times)

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Letter AI, whose sales software provides personalized, deal-specific guidance, raised a $40M Series B, four months after a $10.6M Series A (Geoff Weiss/Business Insider)

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Kraken launches what it claims are the first regulated perpetual futures contracts based on tokenized stocks, available to non-US users and trading 24/7 (Krisztian Sandor/CoinDesk)

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