Contemplations News
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- Sources: Virgin Media O2 and VodafoneThree have deployed tech to disable phones stolen from their stores, after phone makers resisted broader antitheft measures (Kieran Smith/Financial Times)
- Sources: Anduril has begun exploring the possibility of establishing operations in Israel and is in talks to recruit a local manager (Sophie Shulman/CTech)
- Sources: John Ternus gets ready to put his firm imprint on Apple's industrial design team, which has lost a true seat at Apple's exec table over the past decade (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
- SoftBank says it is struggling to find startups in Latin America ready for major investments and has completed only two new deals over the past two years (Bloomberg)
- Investigation: Polymarket is paying creators to make deceptive videos about winning bets, targeting users in the US, where its primary crypto platform is banned (Wall Street Journal)
- Inside Palantir's fight to save its £330M, seven-year contract with NHS England, as public and political pressure grows to end the deal via a 2027 break clause (Financial Times)
- Brazil takes its National Civil Defense warning platform offline after suspected hackers send an unauthorized alert to mobile phones in several states (Mariana Catacci/CNN)
- A speculative scenario titled "Europe 2031" projects economic and political instability in the EU if it fails to keep pace with the US and China in the AI race (Aisha Down/The Guardian)
- How success of AI-related companies in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan is driving stock gains, bigger bonuses, and a retail investing frenzy in Asian markets (Wall Street Journal)
- Granta says it will stop publishing short story contest winners or join publishing partnerships it doesn't control after AI use allegations against a winner (Ella Creamer/The Guardian)
- Claude Guillemot, co-founder of Ubisoft and chairman of gaming hardware company Guillemot Corporation, died at 69 after a plane crash in France (Angela Cullen/Bloomberg)
- An interview with Smartbird CEO Nadia Carlsten about the shoe company Allbirds becoming an AI infrastructure company, plans to deploy compute clusters, and more (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch)
- A look at Russia's push to develop homegrown AI talent, as the country is hampered by scarce access to AI hardware and a brain drain of top technical talent (Nikita Ostrovsky/Time)
- Q&A with Signal's Meredith Whittaker on why online child safety efforts risk mass surveillance, leaving the markets that demand weakening of encryption, more (Mishal Husain/Bloomberg)
- Sources: the UK government is expected to consult as early as this month on rules to make public service news more prominent on social media and video platforms (Financial Times)
- Sources: PC makers, including HP, are in talks with their supply-chain partners about using CXMT's memory chips in products bound for Asia as DRAM prices soar (Wall Street Journal)
- Paris-based Kyber, which develops a low-latency remote device control SDK and is founded by VLC lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf, raised $5M led by Lightspeed (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
- Sources: Bain Capital stands to make $15B+ in profits on its 2018 Kioxia buyout, a ~20x return, as Kioxia's stock has surged 5,000%+ since its December 2024 IPO (Financial Times)
- An interview with Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki on his early decision not to prioritize ad revenue, whether every mega platform becomes an everything app, and more (Tyler Cowen/Conversations with Tyler)
- Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis says the phonemaker won't launch a new phone this year in its budget-focused CMF Phone series due to surging memory prices (Ben Schoon/9to5Google)