Telcos race to transition from ‘dumb pipes’ to tech players with help from AI

Telcos are talking up efforts to transform themselves into tech players, touting advances in AI, 5G and 6G networks, satellite internet and even smart cities.

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European tech industry coalition calls for ‘radical action’ on digital sovereignty — starting with buying local

A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc’s economic prospects, resilience, and security in increasingly fraught geopolitical times. In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der […]
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Shut vile death video site, families say, as Ofcom gets new powers

Families want a website showing deaths of their loved ones to be taken down, as the online regulator gets new powers.

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Apple reportedly considered building the iPhone 17 Air without ports

After reporting in January that Apple is adding an “Air” option to its iPhone lineup, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is offering more details about the upcoming slimmer iPhone. The iPhone 17 Air will launch this fall, Gurman says — and like the MacBook Air, it will be thinner than standard models, while combining high-end and low-end […]
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Meta takes aim at ex-employee’s memoir ‘Careless People’

Meta won a legal victory this week against Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta) […]
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People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images

Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit […]
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Baidu launches two new versions of its AI model Ernie

Chinese search engine Baidu has launched two new AI models — Ernie 4.5, the latest version of the company’s foundational model first released two years ago, as well as a new reasoning model, Ernie X1. According to Reuters, Baidu claims that Ernie X1’s performance is “on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,”, […]
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Photo calorie app Cal AI, downloaded over a million times, was built by two teenagers

Cal AI has generated over 5 million downloads in 8 months, it says. Founders Zach Yadegari and Henry Langmack are just 18.
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How the U.S. is losing ground to China in nuclear fusion, as AI power needs surge

For decades, the U.S. has led the race to clean, limitless nuclear fusion energy. Now China is catching up, spending twice as much and building projects faster.

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VC Aileen Lee highlights how the broader investor exodus is worsening woes for unicorn companies

In this week’s episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, veteran VC Aileen Lee was direct about a major consequence of the recent boom-and-bust cycle: many companies stuck in limbo aren’t just struggling to regain their footing after raising too much money at unsustainable valuations; they’ve also lost the champions who once backed them. Lee was […]
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