Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:
Q&A with pseudonymous AI researcher Gwern Branwen on anonymity, the grand theory of intelligence, seeing LLM scaling early, AGI timelines, blogging, and more — Legacy & Anonymity in the Age of AGI — Gwern is a pseudonymous researcher and writer. He was one of the first people to see LLM scaling coming.
Adam Mosseri says Threads had “more than 15M signups in November alone” and it is “going on three months with more than a million signups a day” (Jay Peters/The Verge)
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Adam Mosseri says Threads had “more than 15M signups in November alone” and it is “going on three months with more than a million signups a day” — Bluesky might be on the rise, but Instagram and Threads boss Adam Mosseri wants you to know that Threads is still much bigger.
The EU publishes its first draft of a Code of Practice under the AI Act for general-purpose AI models, including provisions for copyright and systemic risk (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
The EU publishes its first draft of a Code of Practice under the AI Act for general-purpose AI models, including provisions for copyright and systemic risk — A first draft of a Code of Practice that will apply to providers of general-purpose AI models under the European Union’s AI Act has been published …
Echoing TikTok’s gifting, YouTube is rolling out “jewels” that users can buy to support creators during livestreams, for those in the YouTube Partner Program (Umar Shakir/The Verge)
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Echoing TikTok’s gifting, YouTube is rolling out “jewels” that users can buy to support creators during livestreams, for those in the YouTube Partner Program — YouTube is taking a page out of the TikTok playbook by adding “jewels” you buy to exchange for gifts for your favorite creators during livestreams.
Amazon One Medical expands telehealth services with low-cost treatment plans and medication delivery for beauty and lifestyle issues like hair loss, skin care (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Amazon One Medical expands telehealth services with low-cost treatment plans and medication delivery for beauty and lifestyle issues like hair loss, skin care — Amazon One Medical is expanding its telehealth services with the launch of upfront and low-cost treatment plans and medication delivery …
BitSight, the cybersecurity startup last valued at $2.4B, acquires Cybersixgill, which gathers threat intelligence data from the dark web, for $115M (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
BitSight, the cybersecurity startup last valued at $2.4B, acquires Cybersixgill, which gathers threat intelligence data from the dark web, for $115M — More consolidation is afoot in the world of cybersecurity. BitSight, the startup last valued at $2.4 billion when ratings firm Moody’s took …
Sources: the CFPB moves to place Google under formal federal supervision, an extraordinary move that may lead to regular inspections; Google fiercely resisted (Tony Romm/Washington Post)
Tony Romm / Washington Post:
Sources: the CFPB moves to place Google under formal federal supervision, an extraordinary move that may lead to regular inspections; Google fiercely resisted — The agency aims to conduct more rigorous direct oversight of the tech firm, a major move that Google has resisted in the final months of the Biden administration.
The EU fines Meta €797.72M for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook and “imposing unfair trading conditions” on rival websites, the first such fine for Meta (Javier Espinoza/Financial Times)
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times:
The EU fines Meta €797.72M for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook and “imposing unfair trading conditions” on rival websites, the first such fine for Meta — Facebook is undermining rivals by ‘tying’ its free Marketplace services with the social network, Brussels says
Snap unveils new Snapchat location and privacy tools, including letting parents request their teen’s location and view their location-sharing settings (Quentyn Kennemer/The Verge)
Quentyn Kennemer / The Verge:
Snap unveils new Snapchat location and privacy tools, including letting parents request their teen’s location and view their location-sharing settings — Once known only for its self-destructing pics, in recent years Snapchat has sneakily evolved into a location-oriented social media app.
Google releases a new free Gemini app for iOS, letting users ask questions and chat via text, voice, or camera, as well as use conversational Gemini Live (David Pierce/The Verge)
David Pierce / The Verge:
Google releases a new free Gemini app for iOS, letting users ask questions and chat via text, voice, or camera, as well as use conversational Gemini Live — In the AI chatbot world, ubiquity is everything. Companies have raced to build desktop and mobile apps for their bots …