Reading List

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

Letter: 100+ Google DeepMind and other AI employees urge Jeff Dean to block US military deals that use Gemini for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)

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CISA's interim director Madhu Gottumukkala is reassigned as DHS' director of strategic implementation; executive assistant director Nick Andersen will take over (Luke Barr/ABC News)

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xAI co-founder Toby Pohlen is leaving the company, the seventh of 12 xAI co-founders to depart; Elon Musk put Pohlen in charge of Macrohard earlier this month (Tamsin McMahon/Bloomberg)

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OpenAI says it will overhaul safety protocols and establish direct contact with Canadian police, after not alerting authorities about the Tumbler Ridge suspect (Mickey Djuric/Politico)

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Q&A with Terence Tao on AI-generated Erdős solutions, "cheap wins", hybrid human AI contributions, push-of-a-button workflows, new ways of doing math, and more (Matteo Wong/The Atlantic)

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Sources: two members of Thinking Machines Lab's founding team, Christian Gibson and Noah Shpak, left the startup and have been working at Meta for a few weeks (Business Insider)

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Dario Amodei says Anthropic cannot "in good conscience" accede to DOD's request to remove safeguards and will work to ensure a smooth transition if offboarded (Anthropic)

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Duolingo reports Q4 revenue up 35% YoY to $282.9M, forecasts FY 2026 bookings below est. as it shifts focus to faster user growth; DUOL drops 20%+ after hours (Reuters)

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Block reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $6.25B, gross profit up 24% to $2.87B, driven by a 33% surge in Cash App, and forecasts Q1 gross profit up 22% to $2.8B (Reuters)

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Intuit reports Q2 revenue up 17% YoY to $4.65B, vs. $4.53B est., and forecasts Q3 revenue growth of ~10% and EPS below expectations; INTU drops 5%+ after hours (Kelly Cloonan/Wall Street Journal)

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Source: Meta has signed a multiyear deal to rent Google's TPUs to develop new models and has also been in talks to buy TPUs for its data centers as soon as 2027 (The Information)

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Anthropic says new DOD "contract language" made "virtually no progress" on preventing Claude's use for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons (Axios)

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Netflix walks away from a deal to buy WBD's studio and streaming assets after WBD deemed Paramount's $31/share bid to be superior; NFLX jumps 8%+ after hours (CNBC)

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The Pentagon says it has offered compromises to Anthropic, including putting in writing that laws already bar the military from mass surveillance of Americans (Jennifer Jacobs/CBS News)

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Social media addiction trial: 20-year-old plaintiff KGM testifies her social media use, which began in childhood, exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts (Associated Press)

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CoreWeave reports Q4 revenue up 110% YoY to $1.57B, vs. $1.55B est., and adjusted loss of $284M, vs. $258.9M est.; CRWV drops 5%+ after hours (Reuters)

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Dell reports Q4 revenue up 39% YoY to $33.4B, vs. $31.73B est., and forecasts FY 2027 revenue above estimates; DELL jumps 10%+ after hours (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)

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Block says it is laying off 4,000+ of its 10,000+ employees, saying AI tools have changed "what it means to build and run a company"; XYZ jumps 23%+ after hours (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

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Sources: Meta last week scrapped the most advanced AI chip it was developing, after struggling with the design, and shifted its focus to a less complicated chip (The Information)

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The head of Intel Foundry, Kevin O'Buckley, leaves to join Qualcomm after just two years at the company; Intel Foundry will now be headed by Naga Chandrasekaran (Anton Shilov/Tom's Hardware)

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