This is the best privacy setting that almost no one is using

September 6, 2024

(Washington Post) You have options to click one box to order companies not to blab your personal data. California might soon require it by law. Read more here.

Garry Tan weighs in on his potential candidacy for SF mayor

September 5, 2024

(NYT) In some ways, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan has already assumed the position of mayor of San Francisco’s tech world. But he shared his thoughts on running for the city’s chief executive job. Read more here.

OpenAI and Anthropic will share their models with the US government

August 29, 2024

(Verge) The companies will grant the AI Safety Institute access to major new models for safety testing. Read more here.

Troubled Hedge Fund Two Sigma Replaces Feuding Founders

August 28, 2024

(NYT) The multibillion-dollar trading firm said that its billionaire co-chief executives, John Overdeck and David Siegel, would step down. Read more here.

Anthropic publishes the ‘system prompts’ that make Claude tick

August 26, 2024

(TechCrunch) Anthropic has published the system prompts for Claude, its family of generative AI models. They instruct the model how it should — and shouldn’t — behave. Read more here.

Telegram Becomes Free Speech Flashpoint After Founder’s Arrest

August 25, 2024

(NYT) Pavel Durov, the founder of the app, which has more than 900 million users, was taken into custody by the French authorities. Read more here.

The fallout after Bolt’s aggressive fundraising attempt has been wild

August 24, 2024

(TechCrunch) After fintech Bolt surprised the industry with a leaked term sheet that revealed it is trying to raise at a $14 billion valuation, things got weird. Read more here.

Thanks to the Pentagon, the Lords of Silicon Valley Are Having a Moment

August 20, 2024

(Gizmodo) Twin profiles of Thiel-backed, defense-minded, Silicon Valley moguls give us a glimpse of the future of war, and America. Read more here.

What Could Stop AI Scaling?

August 20, 2024

(The Information) So far, many of the improvements in large language models’ capabilities have stemmed from a surprisingly simple concept: scaling laws. Essentially, researchers have noticed that the more computing power and data you use to train AI models, the better they perform.  Read more here.

Microsoft is building a data center in a tiny Indian village. Locals allege it’s dumping industrial waste

August 20, 2024

(ROW) “These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it.” Read more here.