Apple unveils new child safety features, including updated age ratings, simplified setup for Child Accounts, and an API to let developers confirm age range — Apple today said that it is implementing new features that are designed to make children safer online, including an updated age rating system …
Microsoft identifies hackers in the US, Iran, the UK, Hong Kong, and Vietnam who bypassed guardrails on AI tools and sold access to other malicious groups — US and overseas hackers sold access to tools, which were then used to generate harmful content, Microsoft says.
Letter: US DNI Tulsi Gabbard calls the UK's order for Apple to add an iCloud backdoor an “egregious” violation of Americans' rights and plans a legal review — British order demanding access to encrypted storage on Apple devices opens up “a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation,” she said.
Microsoft rolls out unlimited access to Voice and Think Deeper, powered by Open AI's o1 model, to all Copilot users for free — You won't hit any limits using OpenAI's o1 reasoning model inside Copilot anymore. … Microsoft made OpenAI's o1 reasoning model free for all Copilot users last month …
Resignation letter: 21 DOGE staffers, who previously worked at the USDS, say they won't use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services” — More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency …
Perplexity teases a web browser “for agentic search” called Comet that is “coming soon” — AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it's building its own web browser. — In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn't yet available.
An investigation details how Chinese cybercrime groups are turning phished payment card data into new Apple or Google wallets for online and in-store use — Carding — the underground business of stealing, selling and swiping stolen payment card data — has long been the dominion of Russia-based hackers.
OpenAI says it found evidence of an AI-powered surveillance tool used by a Chinese security operation to identify anti-China posts on social media in the West — The company said a Chinese operation had built the tool to identify anti-Chinese posts on social media services in Western countries.
Apple releases visionOS 2.4 developer beta, adding Apple Intelligence, a guest mode, a Spatial Gallery app, an iPhone app for remote installs, and more — visionOS 2.4 will bring Apple Intelligence to Vision Pro, a Spatial Gallery app, an iPhone app for remote installs, and a new iPhone/iPad-driven guest flow.
Sources: SoftBank VF and others marked up ByteDance's valuation to $400B+; SoftBank puts zero value on TikTok's US operations but factored in AI business Doubao — - DeepSeek-driven China tech rally set to buoy ByteDance value — Value tops $400 billion even as US TikTok unit marked at zero
Sources: the Trump administration targets officials fighting foreign interference in US elections, including those focused on cybersecurity and false content — The Trump administration has reassigned or forced out several dozen government employees who had been working to fight foreign interference …
Sources: NIST plans to cut 497 people, including 74 postdocs and most staff at its Chips for America program; the AI Safety Institute faces an uncertain future — Exit Content Preview … - The cuts come at a time when the U.S. is looking to lead in AI development and stave off competition from China.
AheadComputing, a startup co-founded by former Intel execs and engineers that aims to build RISC-V chip technology, raised a $21.5 seed led by Eclipse Ventures — Newly formed chip startup AheadComputing on Wednesday said it had raised $21.5 million in seed funding.
An investor group plans to build an AI data center in South Korea that uses up to 3 gigawatts of power, starting with a $10B investment that could grow to $35B — An investor group is planning one of the world's largest data centers for artificial intelligence in South Korea …
Starting Feb. 19, Meta will store Facebook Live broadcasts for 30 days instead of storing them indefinitely and will remove videos currently older than 30 days — Facebook announced on Tuesday that live videos will now only be stored on the social network for 30 days, after which they will be deleted.
Arkham: FTX users with claims below $50K have started to receive funds via Kraken and BitGo, expected to total $1.2B; users with $50K+ claims will be paid in Q2 — What to know: Creditors with claims below $50,000 have started receiving payouts with 9% interest since November 2022.
X challenges a German court order requiring it to share metrics such as likes and shares with researchers before the February 23 election, in a test of EU's DSA — Elon Musk's X has challenged a German court decision that instructed the platform to share data with researchers, the court confirmed to POLITICO.
A look at sim racing, Formula One world champion Max Verstappen's passion for the sport, and his efforts to bring sim drivers to physical racing — Race teams always look up and down the motorsports ladder to identify rising stars. But Formula One world champion Max Verstappen sees untapped potential in the virtual world.
Match's head of trust and safety Yoel Roth says it is using AI in its apps like Tinder to detect men's “off-color” messages and “drive behavioral change” — Online dating group is using the technology to detect ‘off-colour’ messages, says safety chief Yoel Roth
Romance scams may rise as isolation grows and generative AI helps scammers scale; the FBI says US victims lost nearly $4.5B to such scams over the past decade — Romance scams cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars a year. As people grow increasingly isolated, and generative AI helps scammers scale …
Italy accuses Amazon of evading €1.2B in VAT payments; sources: the claim is linked to the sale of goods from China and other non-EU countries from 2019 to 2021 — Tech giant hit by total claim worth €3bn amid investigation over sale of goods from non-EU countries including China
Plasma, which is developing a bitcoin-based network designed to handle stablecoin transactions efficiently with zero-fee USDT transfers, raised a $20M Series A — The project, which also claims Tether's Paolo Ardoino as an investor, aims to enhance stablecoin adoption through a Bitcoin sidechain that allows zero-fee USDT transactions.
Sources: Apple will unveil an Android app for Apple TV+ as early as Wednesday as it looks to boost subscriptions and compete with Netflix and Disney+ — Apple Inc. is set to announce that it's expanding the TV+ streaming video service to Android phones for the first time, according to people familiar with the move.
Sources: Meta is in talks to acquire South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI, which has raised ~$115M since its 2017 founding; the deal could close this month — Seoul-based FuriosaAI was founded in 2017 and is led by June Paik, who previously worked at Samsung Electronics and AMD.
NXP Semiconductors announces a $307M deal to acquire Kinara, which makes NPUs and related software for edge AI applications — NXP Semiconductors Neural Processing Unit edge AI artificial intelligence (AI) — NXP Semiconductors announced its third acquisition in as many months …
Lyft says it will launch a fleet of robotaxis, using self-driving tech from Intel's Mobileye, in Dallas “as soon as 2026” — Lyft is working with Mobileye and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni to manage the fleet. — Lyft is working with Mobileye and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni to manage the fleet.
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg : Sources: Seoul-based AI chip designer FuriosaAI seeks to raise a $300M-$500M Series D to fund mass production of...
