Reading List

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

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

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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)

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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)

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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)

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Internal documents: Meta is placing strict limits on how engineers in its applied AI division can use Claude Code and Codex, fearing inadvertent distillation (Jyoti Mann/The Information)

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Japanese prediction market startups Miraima and Poyp are utilizing a "point-to-voucher" system to bypass strict anti-gambling laws, in a bid to rival Polymarket (Bloomberg)

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The US DOJ seizes nearly 400 domains for illegally streaming 2026 FIFA World Cup matches; last week, ACE, UEFA, and more shut down 44 domains linked to PirloTV (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

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Chinese robotics startup AI² Robotics raised ~$736M at a ~$2.9B valuation; Alibaba-backed X Square Robot raised an undisclosed amount at a ~$2.9B valuation (Bloomberg)

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Google VP of Security Engineering Heather Adkins warns the EU's DMA proposals to open Android and Search could lead to a significant rise in fraud within weeks (Matt Burgess/Wired)

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Adobe: online spending across all retailers in the US hit $26.4B during Amazon's four-day Prime Day event, up 9.3% YoY; Walmart and Target also hosted sales (Spencer Soper/Bloomberg)

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How a Polymarket dispute over a single syllable ignited a bitter debate; Polymarket uses Risk Labs' Optimistic Oracle to decide ~200K tough call bets per month (David Segal/New York Times)

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Verizon and the UK's BT agree to create a joint venture for their international businesses with ~$4B in combined yearly revenue; Verizon will pay $625M to BT (Bloomberg)

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How the UK is betting on IT and AI to combat slow economic and productivity growth, including moving beyond the Golden Triangle of London, Oxford, and Cambridge (Sam Fleming/Financial Times)

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Sources: CXMT and Tencent sign a ~$3B, three-year DRAM supply agreement for servers ahead of CXMT's IPO; CXMT is in talks with other major Chinese companies (Reuters)

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An interview with Axon CEO Rick Smith, who transformed the Taser maker into a policing software company, as its revenue from AI policing tools rises 700%+ YoY (Victoria Albert/Wall Street Journal)

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Academic papers and conference materials offer a deep dive into China's all-CPU LineShine, which pairs custom 304-core Arm CPUs with HBM to top the Top500 (Timothy Prickett Morgan/The Next Platform)

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Sources: disconnected US military databases may have led to the February 28 strike on an Iranian school; some see AI as a fix, others fear it amplifies errors (Katrina Manson/Los Angeles Times)

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A look at security flaws, police misuse, and other concerns over the 100K+ AI-enabled automated license plate readers installed across the US, mostly from Flock (Max Miller/Engadget)

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AI is forcing consulting firms to shift from hourly billing to fixed-fee or outcome-based pricing, a transition proving slow and difficult for the industry (Mark Maurer/Wall Street Journal)

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South Korea, Samsung, and SK Hynix say they plan to invest ~$590B to build a new chip complex, including four chipmaking plants and a chip packaging cluster (Song Jung-a/Financial Times)

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