Particle is a (new) news app that relies on AI summarization. I’ve been testing it from the beginning and it is the most reliable AI implementation for news, and the most eye candy. This is a fascinating and well written article by Particle, on how they work on AI summaries errors. Reality checks: These checks require that all of the claims in the summary remain faithful to the source material, even with respect to nuances, as described earlier.

McSeeney’s: “The Trump administration is expected to purchase $400 million worth of armored Tesla vehicles, according to a new State Department document detailing procurement for fiscal year 2025”— NPRLink The American State is a buddy of Musk’s.

Fabric is one of my most loved apps; I've been beta testing for quite some time, and it kept improving constantly. Now it holds everything important to me, from IDs, to documents, notes, ideas, saved articles. I have used almost all note-taking, article-saving, PDF-annotating, second and third brain apps. Fabric stayed with me, mainly for four reasons: good product concept, development persistence, good support, all platforms availability (web, win, macOS, iOS, Android).

The Atlantic, about DOGE (US Department of Government Efficiency, led by the impetuous Elon Musk): DOGE representatives have obtained or requested access to certain systems at the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with eyes toward others, including the Federal Aviation Administration. “This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week.

UK orders Apple to open up users’ encrypted cloud data, report says | Reuters: Britain has ordered Apple to give it unprecedentedly broad access to encrypted user data stored on Apple’s data cloud, the Washington Post newspaper reported on Friday. The UK government’s “technical capability notice” requires blanket access rather than merely assistance to access a specific account, the paper reported, citing unnamed sources.A backdoor is a backdoor for everybody, not only for the chosen ones.

Perplexity’s answer to my prompt about DeepSeek R1 being hosted in the US. Perplexity AI has integrated DeepSeek R1 into its platform, offering users access to advanced AI capabilities with a focus on data security and freedom from censorship [1, 3]. This move allows users to leverage DeepSeek’s technology without the privacy concerns associated with data processing in China [5, 6]. Data Security and Privacy A key advantage of using DeepSeek R1 through Perplexity is that all data processing occurs on servers located in the U.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman had an AMA session on Reddit, reported by Perplexity: OpenAI’s Future Strategy: OpenAI’s future strategy is poised for significant changes as the company reevaluates its approach to AI development and competition. Key aspects of OpenAI’s evolving strategy include:Embracing a hybrid model that combines elements of open and closed-source approaches to leverage community contributions while maintaining proprietary advantages1Exploring new revenue streams, such as professional services, support, or enhanced enterprise features built on open platforms1Focusing on developing robust safeguards to prevent misuse of AI technologies while adhering to ethical standards1Enhancing ChatGPT’s memory and reasoning capabilities, with plans to ship AI agents in 20252Improving existing features like context length, introducing a “grown-up mode,” and increasing personalization options23Addressing the growing importance of transparency in AI advancements, potentially following Meta’s strategic shift towards open-source development4Balancing the need for innovation with regulatory expectations and industry standards to maintain OpenAI’s reputation as a leader in ethical AI development1

BBC: Four new laws will tackle the threat of child sexual abuse images generated by artificial intelligence (AI), the government has announced. The Home Office says the UK will be the first country in the world to make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM), with a punishment of up to five years in prison. The government should ban “nudify” apps and tackle the “normalisation of sexual activity with young-looking girls on the mainstream porn sites”, she said, describing these videos as “simulated child sexual abuse videos”.

Via Financial Times (paywall): Link

Financial Times (paywall): Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang met US President Donald Trump for the first time at the White House on Friday, as Washington and Silicon Valley weigh their responses to Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough. The meeting between Trump and Huang was to include discussion of AI policy, according to a person familiar with the discussion. On his first day in office, Trump revoked a Biden administration executive order focused on AI safety and has generally been seen by tech executives as accelerating America’s advances in the fast-moving technology.

The Information (paywall): Paid subscribers to OpenAI’s ChatGPT nearly tripled to 15.5 million last year from 5.8 million a year earlier, The Information reported. Based on pricing for ChatGPT, that growth implies that the popular chatbot was likely generating at least $333 million in revenue per month by the end of last year, or at least $4 billion on an annual basis.That is a great news, especially because they predicted $2 bn a year for 2025, while already at $3.

Search Engine Journal, about Perplexity hosting DeepSeek-R1 in US and Europe: Aravind Srinivas, Cofounder and CEO of Perplexity, commented on LinkedIn about the controversy: “All DeepSeek usage in Perplexity is through models hosted in data centers in the USA and Europe. DeepSeek is open-source. None of your data goes to China.”Link I’ve been using Perplexity Pro, with DeepSeekR1 hosted in the US (and ChatGPT-o3-mini, also hosted in the US); it is a great reasoning model, but I bet my shorts it is a distilled ChatGPT version.

Financial Times (paywall): A small Chinese artificial intelligence lab stunned the world this week by revealing the technical recipe for its cutting-edge model, turning its reclusive leader into a national hero who has defied US attempts to stop China’s high-tech ambitions. DeepSeek, founded by hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, released its R1 model on Monday, explaining in a detailed paper how to build a large language model on a bootstrapped budget that can automatically learn and improve itself without human supervision.

9to5Mac: Dozens of subreddits have opted to block links to X in their communities over the last 24 hours in a movement that appears to be gaining momentum across Reddit […] These include large subreddits, like r/formula1, which has nearly 5 million members […] Hundreds more appear to be actively discussing or considering a similar move with their members.Link Nah, it’s Roman. Try this when you reach your office, everybody will know it’s Roman, even HR.

404 Media: A pseudonymous coder has created and released an open source “tar pit” to indefinitely trap AI training web crawlersin an infinitely, randomly-generating series of pages to waste their time and computing power. The program, called Nepenthes after the genus of carnivorous pitcher plants which trap and consume their prey, can be deployed by webpage owners to protect their own content from being scraped or can be deployed “offensively” as a honeypot trap to waste AI companies’ resources.

Lowfaremedia via DaringFireball, on the risks Oracle and Akamai are taking by re-enavling TikTok service, and facing a possible huge (legal) penalty: Could a future administration enforce these violations regardless of Trump’s current promises? The stakes are enormous — nearly a trillion dollars in potential liabilityLink My take is: No, they don’t risk penalties. The relationship Trump has with Oracle (and, apparently, Akamai) is very different from the one with Apple and Google.

Perplexity summary: UBTech Robotics and Foxconn are transforming iPhone production through a groundbreaking partnership that integrates advanced humanoid robots like the Walker S1 and its upgraded successor, the Walker S2, into manufacturing. With plans for enhanced robot capabilities, streamlined workflows, and smarter automation, this collaboration aims to address labor challenges, boost efficiency, and set new benchmarks for the electronics industry. Link So now people will start complaining the poor kids that were working for iPhone will be missing even the petty money they were making before the robots took their jobs.

John Gruber: Basically: is the law the law, or is Donald Trump’s word the law? Oracle and Akamai are seemingly good with the latter. Lastly, it’s worth pointing out that the immediate public clamor is about whether the app works or not, not whether it’s available to download or update in app stores. Once Oracle and Akamai started restoring service, the headlines went up that “TikTok is back”, even though it’s not back in app stores.

David Lynch was one of the Greats. From Chacun son cinema, Lynch’s view.

To spite the Supreme Court (that may or may not ban TikTok in the U.S. this Sunday, the 19th of Jan 2025), TikTok users are moving in troves to... another Chinese platform, called RedNote. Not only they are moving in blind, not knowing what this platform's capabilities are, but the client app is not even translated in English. Therefore: TechCrunch: TikTok U.S. users have been learning Chinese on Duolingo in increasing numbers amid their adoption of a Chinese social app called RedNote ahead of the TikTok ban.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of illegally seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial, had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue. (Quote from New York Times)But Joe Biden deserves blame for the fact that Trump wasn’t tried before the 2024 election.

MacRumors: In a new post on Medium, Kuo said that the foldable ‌iPhone‌ remains in “the planning stage.” The device will reportedly be eSIM-only, just like Apple’s upcoming ultra-slim iPhone 17 model. Kuo said that the two devices will likely face hurdles in the Chinese market unless Apple modifies the design to support physical SIM cards. Kuo said in 2021 that Apple would introduce the first foldable ‌iPhone‌ in 2025or later, and display analyst Ross Young said in 2022 Apple had delayed its foldable iPhone until 2025.

Wall Street Journal: The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Missouri, alleges that abuse occurred at their family home in Clayton, Mo., from approximately 1997 through 2006. Ann Altman was 3 years old, and Sam Altman was 12 at the start of the alleged abuse, which included forced sexual assault and battery, according to the complaint.Link I would take this with a grain of salt. Family issues are complicated, family members’ psihiatric health even more so.

Emanuel Maiberg for 404Media.co: In early December I got the kind of tip we’ve been getting a lot over the past year. A reader had noticed a post from someone on Reddit complaining about a very graphic sexual ad appearing in their Instagram Reels. I’ve seen a lot of ads for scams or shady dating sites recently, and some of them were pretty suggestive, to put it mildly, but the ad the person on Reddit complained about was straight up a close up image of a vagina.

Politico: The contract would last five years and has already been approved by the Italian intelligence services and Ministry of Defense. If successful, SpaceX would provide encryption services for the government and communications infrastructure for the military and emergency services. Musk's Italy representative Stroppa said in his post that the deal would save Italy more than €8 billion and would be up and running in a few months, rather than the eight to 10 years it would take competitors.