~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Jowi Morales / Tom's Hardware: LG Display shows off a stretchable display prototype that can expand by up to 50%, more than doubling the previous record of 20% elongation  —  This stretchable display unlocks an infinite number of possibilities.  —  LG Display, one of the global leaders in display technologies …

Emma Roth / The Verge: iOS 18.2 public beta introduces Share Item Location, letting users share a link with the location of AirTags or Find My accessories with airlines and others  —  Apple will now let you share the location of a lost AirTag with other people.  The Find My feature, called Share Item Location …

Cristina Criddle / Financial Times: Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI companies create their own internal benchmarks as new models approach or exceed 90% accuracy on existing public tests  —  Rapidly advancing technology is surpassing current methods of evaluating and comparing large language models

Newcomer: San Francisco's next mayor, Dan Lurie, a Levi's heir with no political experience, wasn't tech leaders' top choice but is a moderate who aims to work with them  —  San Francisco venture capitalists didn't get all the results they'd hoped for in this week's local elections.

Reuters: Source: the US ordered TSMC to halt shipments of AI chips, of 7nm or more advanced designs, to Chinese customers starting on November 11  —  The U.S. ordered Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW) to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used …

Chun Han Wong / Wall Street Journal: A profile of Chen Yixin, a Xi Jinping protégé who heads the Chinese intelligence agency accused of likely steering the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks on the US  —  Agency accused of vast cyberattacks on U.S. has grown more powerful with trusted protégé of Chinese leader at the helm

The Information: Sources: the jump in quality from GPT-4 to Orion is far smaller than the jump from GPT-3 to GPT-4; Orion may not outperform predecessors in tasks like coding  —  The number of people using ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products is soaring.  The rate of improvement …

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal: Chegg lost 500K+ subscribers since ChatGPT's launch, and its stock is down 99% from early 2021, as students looking for homework help turn to free AI tools  —  Chegg's stock is down 99%, and students looking for homework help are defecting to ChatGPT  —  Most companies are starting to figure …

Bloomberg: FTX sues Anthony Scaramucci, Crypto.com, Zuckerberg's FWD.US, and others to recoup SBF's “investments” as part of his “campaign of influence-buying” in 2022  —  - Lawsuit says $67 million was invested into Skybridge endeavors  — FTX Says investments conveyed ‘little to no benefit’

Nikkei Asia: The Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association says Taiwan's semiconductor production is on track to increase 22% YoY to a record $165B in 2024 on AI demand  —  HSINCHU, Taiwan — Taiwan's semiconductor production is on track for a 22% increase this year to a record 5.3 trillion New Taiwan dollars …

Ben Holland / Bloomberg: Analysis: US private construction spending on data centers grew to ~$30B/year, over 2x the amount in late 2022; global spending is on track to reach $250B/year  —  US companies are plowing money into building data centers as they race to get ahead in artificial intelligence.

MK Manoylov / The Block: Data shows open interest on Polymarket fell 64% from $510.95M on November 5 to $184.16M by November 8, highlighting the platform's reliance on political betting  —  - Open interest on Polymarket soared to $510.95 million by Nov. 5 and subsequently fell to $184.16 million by Nov. 8, The Block's data shows.

Zeke Faux / Bloomberg: The 2024 US election cycle showed how crypto has turned out to be a practically perfect special interest group for an era of unlimited corporate spending  —  The industry made a $135 million bet on the election.  It paid off spectacularly.  —  On Nov. 5, a few dozen Bitcoiners …

Margaux Nijkerk / CoinDesk: Ethereum Foundation financial report: $970.2M in treasury as of Oct. 31, down from $1.6B in March 2022; ~80% of holdings in ETH, which declined 20%+ since 2022  —  The foundation has spent roughly $240 million since March 2022, and holds most of its treasury in ether, which has slid roughly 22% since the last financial report.

Nikkei Asia: Tencent partners with Visa to launch a palm biometric authentication payment service in Singapore, the technology's first expansion outside China  —  GUANGZHOU — China's Tencent Holdings announced that it is partnering with Visa to launch a palm biometric authentication payment service in Singapore …

Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Source: AI coding assistant startup Anysphere has received unsolicited offers valuing the company at as much as $2.5B from Benchmark, Index, a16z, and others  —  There isn't a shortage of AI-powered coding assistance startups.  They include Augment, Codeium, Magic, and Poolside.

Hritam Mukherjee / Reuters: Swiggy closes an oversubscribed ~$1.4B IPO, as investors bet on a quick commerce boom; analysts expect the company to make a muted stock market debut next week  —  Food and grocery delivery firm Swiggy's (SWIG.NS) $1.4 billion initial public offering was oversubscribed on Friday …

Reuters: Sources: Trump's transition team is considering Dan Gallagher, an ex-SEC commissioner and Robinhood's current legal chief, as SEC chair replacing Gary Gensler  —  Trump transition team officials are considering retail brokerage Robinhood's top lawyer, as well as bank regulators and corporate attorneys …

Sebastian Sinclair / Decrypt: Detroit plans to accept crypto, including BTC and ETH, for tax and fee payments starting mid-2025 via a PayPal-managed platform, the largest US city to do so  —  Starting in mid-2025, Detroit residents will be able to pay with popular cryptos like Bitcoin and Ethereum through a PayPal-managed platform.

David McCabe / New York Times: A US judge dismisses Ethan Zuckerman's lawsuit against Meta; Zuckerman sought to stop Meta from suing him over a tool to let users unfollow everyone on Facebook  —  A professor sued pre-emptively to release software that would let users automatically unfollow everyone in their Facebook feed.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Yelp agrees to buy RepairPal, a site for car repair estimates, for $80M in cash, with the deal expected to close by the end of 2024; RepairPal had raised $21.3M  —  Yelp, which made a name for itself giving restaurant recs, just bought an auto services website.

Bloomberg: Source: Baidu plans to unveil smart glasses with built-in cameras and voice support for AI model Ernie next week, launching as soon as early 2025 for under $299  —  China's search leader and longtime investor in artificial intelligence plans to showcase the product at its annual Baidu World event …

Aoyon Ashraf / CoinDesk: Block says it is investing less in music streaming app Tidal and winding down decentralized “Web5” venture TBD to focus on bitcoin mining and its crypto wallet  —  The firm is redoubling efforts to supply miners as that industry struggles with profits — and Donald Trump promises help.

Blake Brittain / Reuters: A US judge dismisses a copyright lawsuit by Raw Story and AlterNet against OpenAI over AI training, for now, saying the outlets couldn't show enough harm  —  A New York federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence giant OpenAI that claimed it misused articles …