Technology

Mark Rober just set up one of the most interesting self-driving tests of 2025, and he did it by imitating Looney Tunes. The former NASA engineer and current YouTube mad scientist recreated the classic gag where Wile E. Coyote paints a tunnel onto a wall to fool the Road Runner. Only this time, the test […]

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.17-204842/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-17/reddit-rated-sell-as-redburn-flags-risk-from-google-algorithm

The user growth experienced by Reddit Inc. is a “gift” from Alphabet Inc.’s Google that may have led to excessive bullishness on the social-media company, according to analysts who have become the stock’s biggest bear.

Redburn Atlantic’s James Cordwell and Joseph Barker initiated coverage of Reddit with a sell recommendation, saying that while the financial performance since its initial public offering has been “stellar,” Wall Street is not appreciating the vulnerability of its growth to Google Search. Additionally, the analysts see user growth stalling in 2025.

“The reality, in our view, is that Reddit’s potential, breadth of appeal and thus value as a company are being overstated,” Cordwell and Barker wrote in a note published on Monday.

Shares fell 2% on Monday and is down 23% this year. It now has 15 buy-equivalent recommendations, seven holds and three sells among analysts tracking the stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Cordwell and Barker’s price target of $75 is the lowest.

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Bumble is finally catching up with competitor Tinder with a new ID verification feature as dating app users urge for more safety measures. In addition to Bumble launched a new ID verification feature as dating app users urge for more safety measures.

Bumble is finally catching up with competitor Tinder with a new ID verification feature as dating app users urge for more safety measures. 

In addition to ID verification, the company also released three more features, including a feature that flags inappropriate messages in chat before users hit send and the ability to share date details with friends. Bumble also launched a “Discover” page dedicated to helping users find matches with similar interests.

Bumble’s new verification feature lets users submit a picture of a government-issued ID to authenticate their identity and earn a badge for their profile. This allows users to sort profiles according to those who are ID verified and also to ask their matches to complete the verification process.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.17-153712/https://www.404media.co/ai-slop-is-a-brute-force-attack-on-the-algorithms-that-control-reality/

The best way to think of the slop and spam that generative AI enables is as a brute force attack on the algorithms that control the internet and which govern how a large segment of the public interprets the nature of reality. It is not just that people making AI slop are spamming the internet, it’s that the intended “audience” of AI slop is social media and search algorithms, not human beings. 

What this means, and what I have already seen on my own timelines, is that human-created content is getting almost entirely drowned out by AI-generated content because of the sheer amount of it. On top of the quantity of AI slop, because AI-generated content can be easily tailored to whatever is performing on a platform at any given moment, there is a near total collapse of the information ecosystem and thus of "reality" online. I no longer see almost anything real on my Instagram Reels anymore, and, as I have often reported, many users seem to have completely lost the ability to tell what is real and what is fake, or simply do not care anymore.

Archive: https://archive.is/20250316144923/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-16/turkish-fortune-tellers-find-their-future-includes-tax-audits

Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Ministry is using artificial intelligence to track down money earned by psychics and fortune tellers as part of a broader drive to combat the informal economy and boost tax revenue. 

The ministry has turned its attention to the rapid growth of online services such as astrology, spiritualism, star charting, magic, meditation, and numerology — many of which operate without clear regulation.

According to state-run Anadolu Agency, AI technologies have been engaged to track digital footprints across multiple platforms, including social media, online payment systems, and messaging services such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

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Silicon Valley is bullish on AI agents. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said agents will “join the workforce” this year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted that agents will replace certain knowledge work. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that Salesforce’s goal is to be “the number one provider of digital labor in the world” via the company’s various “agentic” services.

But no one can seem to agree on what an AI agent is, exactly.

In the last few years, the tech industry has boldly proclaimed that AI “agents” — the latest buzzword — are going to change everything. In the same way that AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT gave us new ways to surface information, agents will fundamentally change how we approach work, claim CEOs like Altman and Nadella.

That may be true. But it also depends on how one defines “agents,” which is no easy task. Much like other AI-related jargon (e.g. “multimodal,” “AGI,” and “AI” itself), the terms “agent” and “agentic” are becoming diluted to the point of meaninglessness.

The GSM Association announced that the latest RCS standard includes E2EE based on the Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol, enabling interoperable encryption between different platform providers for the first time.

Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.13-104103/https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/citigroup-plans-slash-it-contractors-hire-staff-improve-controls-2025-03-13/

LONDON/NEW YORK, March 13 (Reuters) - Citigroup (C.N), opens new tab plans to dramatically reduce its reliance on information technology contractors and hire thousands of employees for IT as the lender grapples with regulatory punishments over data governance and deficient controls.

Citigroup's head of technology Tim Ryan told staff in recent weeks that the bank aims to cut back external contractors to 20% of those working in IT from the current 50%, according to an internal presentation to employees seen by Reuters. The briefing did not give a precise time horizon for the changes.

It’s not entirely surprising that YC would come out in explicit public support of the DMA. After all, the accelerator markets itself as a champion of “Little Tech” — an American venture-backed ecosystem of technology startups.

YC argues in the letter that the DMA opens up key avenues to create opportunities for American startups in AI, search, and consumer apps, and prevents Big Tech companies from boxing out smaller ventures.

Specifically, YC in its letter points to Apple reportedly delaying its LLM-powered version of Siri until 2027, years after competitors brought generative AI voice assistants to market. YC argues this represents a lack of competitive pressure, noting that third-party developers of AI voice assistants are unable to integrate their services into Apple’s operating systems

In a proposal for the U.S. government’s “AI Action Plan,” the Trump Administration’s initiative to reshape American AI policy, OpenAI called for a U.S. copyright strategy that “[preserves] American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.”

“America has so many AI startups, attracts so much investment, and has made so many research breakthroughs largely because the fair use doctrine promotes AI development,” OpenAI wrote.

It’s not the first time OpenAI, which has trained many of its models on openly available web data, often without the data owners’ knowledgeor consent, has argued for more permissive laws and regulations around AI training.

[edit]

Oh my, I picked the wrong news outlet for this. It’s so juicy!

OpenAI calls DeepSeek ‘state-controlled,’ calls for bans on ‘PRC-produced’ models (new Tech Crunch one)

OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use (Ars Technica)