Journals

Financial Times: Chinese factories that transformed rural communities by selling goods on Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall are turning to rival platforms like Pinduoduo to stay afloat  —  Rural communities transformed by Jack Ma’s group say buying across sites is the… Read More »Chinese factories that transformed rural communities by selling goods on Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall are turning to rival platforms like Pinduoduo to stay afloat (Financial Times)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple’s longest-serving senior industrial designer, Bart Andre, told colleagues this month that he is retiring; Andre joined in 1992 alongside Jony Ive  —  – Bart Andre retiring after three decades on design team  — Departure… Read More »Sources: Apple’s longest-serving senior industrial designer, Bart Andre, told colleagues this month that he is retiring; Andre joined in 1992 alongside Jony Ive (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge: A look at Slack 10 years after its launch: early success, going public in 2019, being acquired by Salesforce, and how the service changed work culture  —  A decade later, it’s clear that Slack changed… Read More »A look at Slack 10 years after its launch: early success, going public in 2019, being acquired by Salesforce, and how the service changed work culture (Elizabeth Lopatto/The Verge)

Thomas Germain / Gizmodo: A Mozilla study of 11 AI romance chatbots finds that they harvest personal information extensively, and that 10 of them may sell or share the data they collect  —  The privacy mess is troubling because the… Read More »A Mozilla study of 11 AI romance chatbots finds that they harvest personal information extensively, and that 10 of them may sell or share the data they collect (Thomas Germain/Gizmodo)

Bloomberg: Sony reports Q3 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$25.11B, operating income up 10% YoY to ~$3.1B, meeting est., and 8.2M PS5s sold, roughly 1M units lower than projected  —  – Company reversing course after taking the unit private in… Read More »Sony reports Q3 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$25.11B, operating income up 10% YoY to ~$3.1B, meeting est., and 8.2M PS5s sold, roughly 1M units lower than projected (Bloomberg)

Alistair Barr / Business Insider: A typo in Lyft’s Q4 release mistakenly forecast a 500 BPS of EBITDA margin improvement for 2024, causing a stock surge, before the error was corrected to 50 BPS  —  – Lyft mistakenly forecast 500… Read More »A typo in Lyft’s Q4 release mistakenly forecast a 500 BPS of EBITDA margin improvement for 2024, causing a stock surge, before the error was corrected to 50 BPS (Alistair Barr/Business Insider)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters: TikTok plans to launch an in-app local language Election Centre in March in all 27 EU countries, to fight fake news ahead of the European Parliament elections  —  ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok said on… Read More »TikTok plans to launch an in-app local language Election Centre in March in all 27 EU countries, to fight fake news ahead of the European Parliament elections (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

Bloomberg: SoftBank Vision Funds co-CEO Alex Clavel says the fund is “looking very carefully” at generative AI firms, as SoftBank embraces a cautious investment approach  —  Once known for bestowing ten-figure valuations, the firm is now embracing a more modest… Read More »SoftBank Vision Funds co-CEO Alex Clavel says the fund is “looking very carefully” at generative AI firms, as SoftBank embraces a cautious investment approach (Bloomberg)

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: In a research paper, Apple researchers detail a new AI tool called Keyframer, which uses LLMs to animate static images through natural language prompts  —  Apple researchers have unveiled a new AI tool called “Keyframer,” which… Read More »In a research paper, Apple researchers detail a new AI tool called Keyframer, which uses LLMs to animate static images through natural language prompts (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat)

The Information: AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, leaves the company; Karpathy was developing a product that he described as an AI assistant  —  Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, has left… Read More »AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, leaves the company; Karpathy was developing a product that he described as an AI assistant (The Information)