Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 5/8/25. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
Here is the daily technology #threadcast for 5/8/25. The goal is to make this a technology "reddit".
Drop all question, comments, and articles relating to #technology and the future. The goal is make it a technology center.
What is the most interesting thing you managed to do/create with AI? I'm hearing that people are using it for coding games and apps but it sucked every time I tried to use it for coding
I am a basic user, doing it mostly for research.
There is a skill required to getting these things to work as one wants. To start, there is a difference between models, with some excelling in areas where others lack. Secondly, prompting is an art, to get the model to operate properly.
True, you mentioned the two main factors that influence the results we get from AI tools.
The model and the prompt.
I took some months to study prompting, although I'm not a master yet, but I can currently engineer it to produce almost human quality responses which requires minimal human editing to be perfect
I get that but I'm not a complete newb when it comes to HTML and I couldn't get it to make some basic stuff work
Btw nice seeing you again Task. Your consistency is on an insane level lol
Trump crypto advisor David Bailey launching $300 million bitcoin investment company
David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc. and a Trump crypto advisor, has raised $300 million to launch a publicly traded bitcoin investment company.
David Bailey, CEO of media group BTC Inc., and a key crypto advisor to President Donald Trump, has raised $300 million to launch a publicly traded bitcoin investment company, CNBC has confirmed.
The deal, which has been in the works since January, consists of $200 million in equity funding and $100 million in convertible debt, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the fundraise hasn't been announced. The Information was first to cover the story.
Bailey's company is named Nakamoto, a tribute to the pseudonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. It will focus on acquiring and holding bitcoin and is set to merge with an existing Nasdaq-listed company in a transaction that's expected to be announced early next week, the person said. The company's public listing is expected this summer.
Nakamoto plans to buy companies around the world, including in Brazil, Thailand and South Africa, and invest its bitcoin into them, the source said. The venture is backed by a roster of well-known investors, with an advisory board that includes prominent figures, the person said.
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The judge dismissed nearly all of the claims against the "Celebrity Defendants," which include sports stars and others. The court also cleared the "YouTuber Defendants," including influencers who allegedly marketed FTX through social media, of most claims.
The ruling comes after a protracted legal battle in which plaintiffs alleged that the celebrities and influencers were liable for promoting unregistered securities and engaging in deceptive practices.
Earlier this year Nintendo slashed its forecast for sales of the Switch to 11 million units for the year ended Mar. 31. Nintendo on Thursday said it sold 10.8 million units of the Switch in the year, just shy of its own forecast and down 31% year-on-year.
Market research firm Omdia expects Nintendo to sell 14.7 million Switch 2 units in 2025 alone, which would be about 10% ahead of the original Switch's debut year.
"Switch 2 will launch into a stronger position than its predecessor, with over 100 million active Switch users providing a strong foundation for adoption," George Jijiashvili, Omdia's senior principal analyst, told CNBC by email.
Investors are now focused on how the successor to the console, the Switch 2, will perform following its launch. The Switch 2 will start at $449.99 in the U.S. and has improved features compared with its predecessor.
As well as the 15 million unit sales forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026, Nintendo said it expects to sell 45 million units of software during the same period.
Games are important for the success of any console and Nintendo said the Switch 2 will launch with two titles — "Mario Kart World" and "Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour." There will also be Switch 2 versions of existing games such as "Zelda: Breath of the Wild." Nintendo is leaning on its popular characters such as Mario and Zelda to boost the appeal of the Switch 2.
"This forces Apple to compete," Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said shortly after last month's decision. "This is what we wanted all along."
Apple said in the filing that "non-party developers are already seizing upon the Order to reduce consumer choice (and damage Apple's business) by, among other things, impeding the use of" in-app purchases.
Rogers made a criminal referral in the case, saying that Apple misled the court and that a company vice president "outright lied" about when and why Apple decided to charge 27% for external payments. The real decision, the judge said, took place in meetings involving Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Jack Mallers, who rose to fame by launching the Strike payments app, has secured billions of dollars for his bitcoin-holding venture Twenty One, which is backed by SoftBank and Tether.
"What we really pride ourselves on is being blue-chip credibility with startup upside," Mallers told CNBC's Crypto World this week. "We feel like we're big enough to win entering the market with billions of dollars of capital upon launch, but we're small enough to grow and we're small enough to post bitcoin-denominated returns in what's becoming a really competitive capital markets appetite for bitcoin exposure."
The advertising tech company will also obtain a roughly 20% ownership stake in Tripledot Studios, which makes mobile games like Sudoko Friends, Puzzletime and Solitaire Classic. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.
AppLovin said it expects second-quarter sales in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.22 billion, trailing analyst expectations of $1.38 billion.
The company reported first-quarter net income of $576 million, or $1.67 per share, up from $234 million, or 67 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2024.
AppLovin's total costs and expenses for the first quarter came in at $820.55 million, representing a 14% increase from the previous year during the same quarter.
But the lawsuit also threatens to ensnare Apple. Google pays the iPhone maker billions of dollars per year — as much as $20 billion per year back in 2022, according to testimony in the trial — to be the default search engine on iPhones. It's lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users. Apple shares fell 2% during trading Wednesday.
Cue's comments cast doubt on the long-term stability of the relationship. Cue said he believes Google should remain the default search option on Safari, saying he has lost sleep over the possibility of losing the revenue share from the two companies' agreement, according to the report.
The Apple executive said searches on Safari declined for the first time in April, which Cue attributed to the rise in people using AI, according to the report.
A solar-driven water cycle
In a bid to address the global challenge of access to safe drinking water, the team, including scientists from five Chinese research institutions, drew inspiration from the natural porosity of wood, enhancing it with smart materials to engineer a device that captures water more efficiently than most existing technologies, all powered solely by sunlight.
“Our team has invented a device comprising wood’s spongy scaffolding, lithium chloride, iron oxide nanoparticles, a carbon nanotube layer and other specialised features,” Hao emphasized, adding that they also used AI to optimize the material’s performance under varying environmental conditions.
Affordable, biodegradable, and scalable
Hao stressed that the device, despite being small, could be ideal for emergency situations, such as natural disasters that disrupt water supplies, provided the team can scale up and optimize the modular design.
“The current demonstration unit size is 15 cubic millimeters,” Hao said. “It would be very easy to prepare a larger unit, or we can use the units to form an array.”
According to Hou, the device continued to function after being stored at – 4 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 days, demonstrating freeze resistance, and maintained stable performance over repeated use with minimal efficiency loss.
The acquisition positions Coinbase as an international leader in crypto derivatives by open interest and options volume, Greg Tusar, vice president of institutional product, said in a blog post – which could allow it take on big players like Binance. Coinbase operates the largest marketplace for buying and selling cryptocurrencies within the U.S., but has a smaller share of the global crypto market, where activity largely takes place on Binance.
Deribit facilitated more than $1 trillion in trading volume last year and has about $30 billion of current open interest on the platform.
!summarize #ai #technology
Steph Curry, Tom Brady and other celebrities excluded from most FTX investor claims, judge rules
A Florida judge ruled that the investors failed to prove the celebrities knew about FTX and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s misconduct when endorsing the platform.
A Florida federal judge has dismissed most of the claims against high-profile celebrities and YouTubers who promoted the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, including stars like Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Kevin O'Leary, and Stephen Curry.
The ruling narrows the scope of a sprawling multidistrict litigation accusing them of using their fame to market a fraudulent platform.
The lawsuit stemmed from FTX's catastrophic collapse in November 2022, which wiped out billions of dollars in customer funds and triggered investigations worldwide. The plaintiffs accused the stars of being paid millions of dollars to endorse FTX without disclosing their financial incentives, a violation of federal and state advertising laws.
In an order filed Wednesday, U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore ruled that the plaintiffs, a group of FTX investors, failed to demonstrate that the celebrities had sufficient knowledge of FTX and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried's misconduct to be held liable for promoting the exchange.
Nintendo forecasts sales of 15 million Switch 2 consoles as it gears up for launch
Nintendo said it expects to sell 15 million units of its new Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.
Nintendo said Thursday that it expects to sell 15 million units of its new Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.
It is the first forecast for sales from the Japanese gaming giant since it announced the successor to its successful Switch device, which is due to go on sale in June.
Nintendo also reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year. Here's how Nintendo did in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Mar. 31 versus LSEG estimates:
Revenue: 208.7 billion Japanese yen ($1.45 billion), compared with 216.16 billion yen expected.
Net profit: 41.6 billion yen, versus 33.91 billion yen expected.
Revenue fell 24.7% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, while profit plunged nearly 50%. This was largely expected as Nintendo fans await the Switch 2 and hold off on buying the current console.
Apple says Epic Games contempt ruling could cost 'substantial sums'
Apple wants a court to pause a decision in its case against Epic Games, and allow it to charge commission on in-app transactions that link out for payment.
Apple is asking a court to pause a recent decision in its case against Epic Games and allow the iPhone maker to once again charge a commission on in-app transactions that link out for payment.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland found that Apple had violated her original court order from the Epic trial, originally decided in 2021, that forced Apple to make limited changes to its linking out policy under California law.
Judge Rogers' new ruling is more expansive, ordering Apple to immediately stop imposing its commissions on purchases made for iPhone apps through web links inside its apps, among other changes.
Apple is now looking to get a stay on that order, as well as another one from the case that prevents it from restricting app developers from choosing the language or placement of those links, until the entire decision can be appealed. Apple says that required changes in their current form will cost the company "substantial sums."
"This is the latest chapter in Epic's largely unsuccessful effort to use competition law to change how Apple runs the App Store," Apple said in the emergency motion for a stay. The motion cites a previous order in the case that found that new linking policies would cost Apple "hundreds of millions to billions" of dollars annually.
Arm shares drop on weak forecast
Arm beat on earnings and revenue but issued a disappointing forecast in its quarterly report on Wednesday.
Arm shares dropped more than 8% in extended trading on Wednesday after the chip-design company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter.
Here's how the company did in the fiscal fourth quarter compared with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 55 cents, adjusted vs. 52 cents expected
Revenue: $1.24 billion vs. $1.23 billion
While Arm topped estimates for the quarter ended March 31, Wall Street is looking ahead to the company's forecast for the first quarter.
Arm said revenue will be between $1 billion and $1.1 billion. The middle of the range is below the $1.1 billion average analysts estimated, according to LSEG. Earnings per share will be between 30 cents and 38 cents, while analysts were expecting 42 cents.
SoftBank controls about 90% of Arm, and took the company public in 2023. It now has a market cap of over $130 billion as of Wednesday's close.
Arm designs the fundamental architecture upon which many chips are built, and sells licenses for its designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, charging royalty fees on each sale they make. The company claims 99% of premium smartphones are powered by Arm technology.
Smart sponge smaller than a paper clip pulls water from air with 94% efficiency
The device functioned reliably across humidity levels of 30 to 90 percent and temperatures between 41 and 131 degrees Fahrenheit.
Researchers from Australia and China have designed a smart spongy device capable of capturing water from thin air and releasing it in a cup using the sun’s energy, with impressive performance even in dry climates where most other systems fail.
The innovative water-from-air device uses a sponge-like material made from modified balsa wood – the lightest and softest commercial hardwood timber – enhanced with salts, nanoparticles, and a carbon nanotube layer.
Derek Hao, PhD, a materials scientists and environmental engineer at Australia’s RMIT University, and one of the study’s co-authors, revealed that the material absorbs moisture from the atmosphere, and using solar energy, releases the collected water directly into a cup.
The device achieved an impressive water collection efficiency of up to 94 percent in outdoor testing. It additionally remained effective across a broad range of environmental conditions, including humidity levels ranging from 30 to 90 percent, and temperatures between 41 and 131 degrees Fahrenheit.
This, according to the senior researcher, further highlights its potential for use in off-grid and disaster-stricken areas.
Alphabet shares sink 7% after Apple’s Cue says AI will replace search engines
Eddy Cue, Apple's services chief, said he believes AI services will eventually replace standard search engines such as Google, according to a report Wednesday.
Alphabet and Apple shares sank Wednesday after Eddy Cue, Apple's services chief, said he believes that AI search engines will eventually replace standard search engines such as Google, according to Bloomberg.
Cue said he expects to add artificial intelligence services from OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic as search options in Apple's Safari browser in the future, according to the report.
The Apple executive was testifying in a federal court in Washington as part of the Justice Department's lawsuit against Alphabet. Last year, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Google had illegally dominated advertising technology markets, and now the judge is looking to determine what penalties or actions should be taken against the search company.
One major focus on the case is Google's practice of paying platform providers such as Apple to become the default search engine on their platform.
The lawsuit and any potential remedies threaten Google's lucrative advertising business, and Alphabet shares sank more than 7% on Wednesday.