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August 31, 2025, 11:10 AM
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memeorandum
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| Joshua Rothman / New Yorker: |
A look at the potential future of personalized, AI-generated entertainment, and how it could both submerge human originality and enable new forms of expression — We're used to algorithms guiding our choices. When machines can effortlessly generate the content we consume, though, what's left for the human imagination?| Phil Hoad / The Guardian: |
An inside look at how Netflix's use of data led to generic “algorithm films” intended for broad appeal, with AI set to further entrench the production style — When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs.
More: Us Weekly, Links I Would Gchat …, CBR, and Collider
Bluesky: @philtinline, @berthac, @arjun, and @abdecker. Mastodon: @Ruth_Mottram@fediscience.org. Forums: r/movies
| Wall Street Journal: |
Xi Jinping is pushing the country's tech industry to be oriented toward applications for AI, charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI — With growing fears of an AI bubble, Beijing is charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of artificial superintelligence| Ryan Weeks / Bloomberg: |
Crypto and tech entrepreneurs are attending Network School, founded by Balaji Srinivasan in Forest City, Malaysia, to test his concepts about the Network State — Balaji Srinivasan wants to design a new kind of nation state, and he's making a troubled megaproject a testbed for his ideas.
LinkedIn: Anders Melin and Ryan Weeks
| Noah Smith / Noahpinion: |
A critique of two contrasting research papers on AI's impact on US employment trends, along with caveats from a Stanford study on jobs in AI-exposed fields — Some top economists claim AI is now destroying jobs for a subset of Americans. Are they right? — The debate over whether AI …
More: San Francisco Chronicle, Futurism, and Forbes
| Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: |
The price per token for AI models has fallen, but costs for developers are rising as newer reasoning models require more tokens to complete tasks — With models doing more ‘thinking,’ the small companies that buy AI from the giants to create apps and services are feeling the pinch| Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph: |
El Salvador has split its 6,000+ bitcoin across 14 wallets, describing the move as a precaution against quantum attacks, a merely theoretical threat for now — El Salvador has transferred its 6,274 Bitcoin into 14 new wallet addresses as part of a security measure to protect against the threat of quantum attacks.
More: Reuters, Crypto Briefing, CoinGape, The Block, Bitcoin Insider, ZyCrypto, CryptoNinjas, CoinDesk, Coinspeaker, BeInCrypto, CoinGape, The Crypto Times, and Coinpedia Fintech News
X: @bitcoinofficesv, @nneuman, @jacobkinge, and @sujaljethwani. Bluesky: @cam.bio. Forums: r/CryptoMarkets
| Tor Blog: |
How Turkmenistan turned censorship into a lucrative extortion scheme by intentionally restricting internet access in order to sell its own VPNs to citizens — In July 2021, a sudden drop in Tor usage in Turkmenistan called our attention. Tor would come to understand that this marked …
Mastodon: @torproject@mastodon.social
| Geoff Weiss / Business Insider: |
AI startup Aurasell, which aims to automate sales tools built on top of CRM software like Salesforce, emerges from stealth with $30M seed led by Next47 — - Aurasell is emerging from stealth with $30 million in seed funding. — The one-year-old AI startup wants to disrupt legacy sales software.| Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: |
An interview with Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd on AI being the “most emotionally intelligent matchmaker”, planning an AI-powered matchmaking app, and more — She's spent nearly all of her working life atop the dating-app business, and believes artificial intelligence could be the matchmaker we all need| Song Jung-a / Financial Times: |
PUBG developer Krafton is eyeing major expansion in India, seeking acquisitions as growth slows in China and the US, and plans to invest at least $50M annually — South Korea's Krafton faces a tough fight to wring revenues from price-sensitive players — The South Korean games developer …
More: The Economic Times
| Tamara Djurickovic / Tech.eu: |
Cambridge, UK-based Paragraf, which makes graphene-based electronics using standard semiconductor processes, raised a $55M Series C to scale its manufacturing — Paragraf pioneers graphene-based electronics with standard semiconductor processes, producing magnetic sensors and GMS while developing advanced devices.
More: New Electronics, The Engineer, Silicon Canals, Paragraf, and UKTN
| Stefanno Sulaiman / Reuters: |
TikTok suspends its live feature for the “next few days” in Indonesia, citing “increasing violence in protests” over lawmakers' pay — ByteDance's TikTok has suspended its live feature for the “next few days” in Indonesia following protests in the country, its spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.
More: Tempo, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Metro.co.uk, Bloomberg, Tech in Asia, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, Antara News, Al Jazeera, Yahoo Finance, GB News, The Straits Times, and New York Times
X: @wisnu_prasetya, @toomuchidea, @akunyakul, @0xtequilaa, @veronicakoman, @vngnc, and @dwnews
Bluesky: @finnigans and @amusuk
| Dina Bass / Bloomberg: |
A study focused on OpenAI's GPT-4o mini found that LLMs can be persuaded to comply with objectionable requests using the same tactics that persuade humans — AI chatbots can be manipulated much in the same way that people can, according to researchers. But first... Three things to know:| David Gilbert / Wired: |
Purgatory, tied to online community The Com, claims responsibility for swatting attacks on US universities, airports, and more, charging $20 to $95 per incident — WIRED spoke to a self-proclaimed leader of an online group called Purgatory, which charged as little as $20 to call in fake threats against schools.
More: New York Times, NewsNation, and Fox News
X: @daithaigilbert. Bluesky: @andyjabbour, @waldo.net, @nirebryce.breadthcharge.net, and @davidgilbert. Forums: Slashdot
| Cory Weinberg / The Information: |
Filing: StubHub, which is planning a September IPO, says revenue grew 3% to $828M in H1, missing its earlier projection of $885M, with adjusted EBITDA down 7% — Even as StubHub makes a renewed push to go public, its business isn't expanding as quickly as it had hoped.
More: The Times
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