Reading List

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

Where Are Driverless Cars Going in New York City?

THE CITY - All

Sources: the US informs European countries that it is stepping back from joint efforts to combat disinformation from Russia, China, Iran, and other countries (Amy Mackinnon/Financial Times)

Techmeme

Windows 11 SSD issues blamed on reviewers using ‘early versions of firmware’

The Verge - All Posts

Hands-on with AI startup Friend's $129 always-listening pendant: feels like a beefy AirTag, runs Gemini 2.5, gives unhelpful commentary, and makes others uneasy (Wired)

Techmeme

Amnesty: Pakistan is spying on millions via phone tapping and a Chinese-built internet firewall, in one of the broadest surveillance programs outside China (Ariba Shahid/Reuters)

Techmeme

It’s time to change your Plex password again

The Verge - All Posts

How David Sacks emerged as the most effective advocate for tech, crypto, and AI in the Trump administration, using his tech expertise and All-In co-host status (Ben Smith/Semafor)

Techmeme

Mistral raised a €1.7B Series C at an €11.7B valuation; ASML led the round with €1.3B to become its biggest shareholder, joined by a16z, DST, Nvidia, and others (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Techmeme

Helsinki-based ReOrbit, which builds satellites and a software platform to help countries fully control their satellite systems, raised a €45M Series A (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

The UK Electoral Commission says it took three years and £250K+ to recover from an August 2021 hack that exposed 40M voters' private data to Chinese hackers (Joe Tidy/BBC)

Techmeme

The Nepalese government lifts its social media ban after local media reported 19+ deaths in clashes over anti-government demonstrations sparked by the ban (Gopal Sharma/Reuters)

Techmeme

Evan Spiegel says Snap is restructuring around small "squads" of 10 to 15 people to compete better; Snapchat+ now brings in $700M+ in ARR from 15M+ paying users (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Sources: OpenAI execs fear rising political scrutiny in California could hinder its for-profit plans and have discussed moving out of the state as a last resort (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

How VC firm 1789 Capital grew to $1B+ in assets with Donald Trump Jr. as a partner; its recent deals include investments in xAI, Neuralink, and Perplexity (Reuters)

Techmeme

A US federal judge postpones Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement over concerns that class lawyers are striking a deal behind the scenes to force on authors (Annelise Levy/Bloomberg Law)

Techmeme

Google announces Veo updates: support for vertical video and 1080p, lower pricing, and general availability of Veo 3 and Veo 3 Fast in the Gemini API (Google Developers Blog)

Techmeme

AMD’s AI-powered FSR 4 upscaling is now available in most FSR 3.1 games

The Verge - All Posts

I asked Vin Diesel for a Last Witch Hunter sequel, and he delivered

Polygon - All

SEC filing: Microsoft strikes a deal worth up to $19.4B through 2031 to get AI cloud computing power from Yandex spinoff Nebius Group; NBIS jumps 45%+ (Bloomberg)

Techmeme

SCOTUS tells ICE it can target people based on race

Vox - All