Reading List

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

Source: the CEO and the chief people officer of Astronomer were put on leave after a video of them cuddling on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert went viral (Eleanor Hawkins/Axios)

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Adobe updates its Firefly video model and adds a beta Generate Sound Effects tool that can create custom sounds from text prompts and the user's voice (Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET)

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Sources: Cursor maker Anysphere acquired Koala, an AI-powered CRM startup that raised a $15M Series A five months ago; Koala plans to shut down in September (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)

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Clothing inventory monetization startup CaaStle's ex-CEO Christine Hunsicker is charged with defrauding investors of more than $300M over the past six years (Larry Neumeister/Associated Press)

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President Trump signs the GENIUS Act, and says the first federal bill to regulate stablecoins will "secure the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency" (Bloomberg)

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SPAC Insider: SPACs are booming in 2025, with 74 blank check companies going public so far in 2025, raising about $14.7B and beating 2022 total of $13.4B (Lucinda Shen/Axios)

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Google files a lawsuit in the US against 25 unnamed individuals in China, accusing them of operating the BadBox 2.0 botnet, compromising 10M+ devices worldwide (Jessica Lyons/The Register)

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BrightAI, an AI-powered service using custom chips and devices to monitor critical infrastructure, raised a $51M Series A, source says at a $300M valuation (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

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Microsoft shuts down the Movies & TV storefront on the Microsoft Store on Windows and Xbox; users will continue to be able to access their past purchases (Zac Bowden/Windows Central)

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Germany-based Q.ANT, which is developing energy-efficient photonic processors for AI and high-performance computing, raised a €62M Series A (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)

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SEC Chairman Paul Atkins says the GENIUS Act is a "historic step" and the SEC is weighing an "innovation exemption" from regulations to incentivize tokenization (Bloomberg)

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Total crypto market value surpassed $4T for the first time, driven by altcoin rallies and US legislative momentum; Ether jumped 22% over the past five days (Sidhartha Shukla/Bloomberg)

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Ted Sarandos says The Eternaut featured the first GenAI final footage in a Netflix original and that the VFX costs would have been too high otherwise (Osmond Chia/BBC)

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Joel Kaplan says Meta won't sign EU's AI code of practice, calling its guidelines overreach that will throttle development and deployment of AI models in Europe (Gian Volpicelli/Bloomberg)

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The EU issues guidelines to help AI models with systemic risks comply with the AI Act, after criticism from some companies about lack of clarity (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

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A lawmaker who regulates Russia's IT sector warns WhatsApp to "prepare to leave" Russia; Moscow recently approved development of a state-backed messaging app (Reuters)

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Lenovo Legion Go S review: SteamOS is a huge improvement over Windows, but battery life falls behind Windows-based handhelds and its touchpad is nearly useless (Sean Hollister/The Verge)

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Analysis: nearly 70 Trump administration officials and nominees held crypto or investments in blockchain or digital-asset firms at the time of their selection (Washington Post)

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Apple sues YouTuber Jon Prosser and an Apple staffer's friend over iOS 26 leaks, for allegedly accessing the staffer's iPhone; Prosser denies the claim (Eric Slivka/MacRumors)

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Sources: the US State Department has effectively dismantled its three-year-old Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, firing between nine and 11 staffers (Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive)

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