Ronan Farrow / New Yorker:
The Trump administration’s promises of mass deportations may lead to increased use of spyware like Graphite; ICE has a $2M contract with Graphite maker Paragon — Other Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target political opponents, activists, journalists, and other vulnerable groups.
Baidu reports Q3 revenue down 3% YoY to $4.78B, net income up 14% YoY to $1.09B, and online marketing revenue up 12% YoY to $1.1B, driven by AI cloud business (Evelyn Cheng/CNBC)
Evelyn Cheng / CNBC:
Baidu reports Q3 revenue down 3% YoY to $4.78B, net income up 14% YoY to $1.09B, and online marketing revenue up 12% YoY to $1.1B, driven by AI cloud business — BEIJING — Chinese tech giant Baidu on Thursday posted a 3% annual drop in third-quarter revenue, nevertheless beating market expectations amid AI cloud growth.
CFPB will supervise tech companies offering digital wallets, like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Venmo, by treating companies with 50M+ annual transactions as banks (Paige Smith/Bloomberg)
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
CFPB will supervise tech companies offering digital wallets, like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Venmo, by treating companies with 50M+ annual transactions as banks — The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will now treat those companies more like banks as long as they handle …
Sources: Huawei plans to start mass-producing its most advanced AI chip, the Ascend 910C, in Q1 2025, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US curbs (Fanny Potkin/Reuters)
Fanny Potkin / Reuters:
Sources: Huawei plans to start mass-producing its most advanced AI chip, the Ascend 910C, in Q1 2025, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US curbs — China’s Huawei plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence chip in the first quarter of 2025 …
Q&A with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora about the role of the tech industry in Trump’s administration, AI, the future of cybersecurity, and more (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
Q&A with Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora about the role of the tech industry in Trump’s administration, AI, the future of cybersecurity, and more — The Scene — While Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora and his firm are more under the radar than Silicon Valley’s consumer companies …
Four former Google executives say innovation by rivals is key to breaking Google Search’s dominance, and ChatGPT-like tools will one day supplant Google Search (Paresh Dave/Wired)
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Four former Google executives say innovation by rivals is key to breaking Google Search’s dominance, and ChatGPT-like tools will one day supplant Google Search — Despite shared concerns about Google’s power, critics of the company and former executives express little agreement on what …
London-based Lighthouse, which offers tools to help hotels analyze market demand and rates, raised a ~$370M Series C led by KKR, sources say at a $1B+ valuation (Swetha Gopinath/Bloomberg)
Swetha Gopinath / Bloomberg:
London-based Lighthouse, which offers tools to help hotels analyze market demand and rates, raised a ~$370M Series C led by KKR, sources say at a $1B+ valuation — Lighthouse, a startup that helps hotels analyze market demand and rates, has raised about $370 million in a funding round led by private equity firm KKR & Co.
Google says the US DOJ’s “wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision”, would hurt US consumers and jeopardize US’ global tech leadership (Kent Walker/The Keyword)
Kent Walker / The Keyword:
Google says the US DOJ’s “wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision”, would hurt US consumers and jeopardize US’ global tech leadership — President, Global Affairs & Chief Legal Officer, Google & Alphabet — As part of its lawsuit over how we distribute Search …
A look at biometric ID company Clear, as it works to expand its face-based line-cutting service at retailers, banks, doctor’s offices, and other places (Eileen Guo/MIT Technology Review)
Eileen Guo / MIT Technology Review:
A look at biometric ID company Clear, as it works to expand its face-based line-cutting service at retailers, banks, doctor’s offices, and other places — If you’ve ever been through a large US airport, you’re probably at least vaguely aware of Clear. Maybe your interest (or irritation) …
Jensen Huang says “foundation model pretraining scaling is intact” and models like OpenAI’s o1 could play a larger role in Nvidia’s business moving forward (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Jensen Huang says “foundation model pretraining scaling is intact” and models like OpenAI’s o1 could play a larger role in Nvidia’s business moving forward — Nvidia raked in more than $19 billion in net income during the last quarter, the company reported on Wednesday …
