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June 18, 2025, 3:15 PM
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Top News

Financial Times:
Sources: lobbyists for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta back a campaign for a 10-year US state AI regulation ban, a move dividing the AI industry and the GOP  —  Call by Amazon, Google and Microsoft lobbyists for a ‘moratorium’ has split industry and the Republican party
More: AppleInsider, The Hill, and PYMNTS.com
Bluesky: @elizkolbert.  X: @pawlega.  Forums: r/politics, r/artificial, and r/technology
Hayden Field / The Verge:
A look at California's 52-page California Report on Frontier Policy, which proposes an AI regulatory framework based on transparency, risk assessments, and more
Vanessa Hand Orellana / CNET:
An interview with Samsung SVP Dr. Hon Pak on the Galaxy Watch getting a first-ever blood analysis feature, AI health tools, and a potential monthly subscription  —  With a first-ever blood analysis feature and four new AI-powered health tools, the Galaxy Watch is shaping up to be a smarter ally …
John Voorhees / MacStories:
Hands-on with Apple's new Speech framework components in the macOS Tahoe beta: the APIs deliver transcription speeds significantly faster than OpenAI's Whisper  —  Late last Tuesday night, after watching F1: The Movie at the Steve Jobs Theater, I was driving back from dropping Federico off at his hotel when I got a text:
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The DOJ announces the seizure of $225.3M in crypto, the largest-ever US seizure of cryptocurrency linked to confidence schemes known as “pig butchering”  —  The Justice Department announced Wednesday the largest-ever U.S. seizure of cryptocurrency linked to so-called “pig butchering” …
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Waymo applied for a NYC permit to test its cars with safety drivers and plans to start collecting mapping data with manually driven cars in Manhattan in July  —  The company wants to change state law so it can operate vehicles without safety drivers.  That will be a challenge.
Matt Kapko / CyberScoop:
A cyberattack claimed by pro-Israel hacktivist group Predatory Sparrow has reportedly disrupted services at Iran's state-owned Bank Sepah, including its website  —  The attack introduces a clear cyber element with immediate consequences for the country's critical infrastructure amid a growing conflict between Israel and Iran.
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
The Iranian government says it has restricted internet access in response to Israeli cyberattacks; some Western communication apps have reportedly been blocked
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google rolls out the ability to have back-and-forth voice conversations with AI Mode, available in the Google app by tapping the Live button  —  Google is rolling out the ability for users to have a back-and-forth voice conversation with AI Mode, its experimental Search feature that lets users ask complex, multi-part questions.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
On a podcast, Sam Altman said Meta made “giant offers to a lot of people on our team ... like, $100M signing bonuses”, and “none of our best people” have accepted  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on something of a hiring spree lately, trying to staff up Meta's …
Wall Street Journal:
A look at the Catholic Church's decadelong dialogue with Silicon Valley on AI, as Pope Leo prepares to make AI's potential threat to humanity a signature issue  —  The new pope is making the potential threat of artificial intelligence to humanity a signature issue—but Silicon Valley is trying to win him over
CNN:
President Trump plans to sign an executive order this week to grant TikTok a 90-day extension in enforcement of the sale-or-ban law, marking his third extension  —  New York CNN —  —  TikTok just got another lifeline from the White House, with President Donald Trump set to delay enforcement …
Kristina Partsinevelos / CNBC:
AWS says Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 launched on its Trainium2 GPUs, and Project Rainier, AWS' supercomputer built for Anthropic, uses 500K+ Trainium2 chips  —  Amazon Web Services is set to announce an update to its Graviton4 chip that includes 600 gigabits per second of network bandwidth …
Financial Times:
Netflix signs a landmark deal with France's TF1 to show linear TV for the first time; TF1 will broadcast all five of its channels, showing live sports and more  —  Deal will be closely watched by broadcasters, who are losing millions of viewers to streaming giants  —  Daniel Thomas and Hannah Murphy in Cannes
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI details why “emergent misalignment”, where training on wrong answers in one area can lead to misalignment in others, happens and how it can be mitigated  —  OpenAI researchers say they've discovered hidden features inside AI models that correspond to misaligned “personas …
Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
The NAACP plans to sue xAI over a lack of permits for its Memphis data center's gas turbines, which it claims pollute nearby predominantly Black neighborhoods  —  The company, xAI, has installed several dozen turbines in Memphis without proper permits, the group said, polluting a nearby community.
Bloomberg:
Sources: xAI is burning through $1B per month, expects to burn through ~$13B in 2025, and projects its revenue to be just $500M in 2025, rising to $2B+ in 2026

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From Mediagazer

Matthew Belloni / @mattbelloni:
Sources: Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers are leaving Netflix for Paramount; the deciding factor was Paramount's support for theatrical releases

Free Press:
A coalition of press freedom groups urges Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to release Atlanta journalist Mario Guevara, detained by ICE for two months

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Memo: PBS is cutting its current budget by 21% and reducing dues paid by local stations by $35M to deal with Congress' decision to eliminate ~$500M in funding

More News

Earlier Picks

Michelle Kim / Rest of World:
Ten current and former Samsung semiconductor engineers say many are leaving for SK Hynix and other rivals due to long hours, heavy workloads, and lower bonuses
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
The US Senate passes the GENIUS Act, which establishes the first federal regulatory framework for dollar-pegged stablecoins; the bill now heads to the House
Marc Vartabedian / Wall Street Journal:
Pano AI, which uses AI and computer vision to offer active wildfire detection, raised a $44M Series B led by Giant Ventures, bringing its total funding to $89M
More: FinTech Global, Salesforce Ventures, and Pano AI
Bluesky: @prietschka.  X: @salesforcevc.  LinkedIn: Abe Yokell and Garry Tan
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