Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: Amazon says it is rolling out a tougher approach to combat illegal sports streaming on Fire TV Stick devices, aiming to block apps that stream pirated content — Amazon is rolling out a tougher approach to combat illegal streaming, with the United States-based tech company aiming …
Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: How US-based ACE, led by the MPA, took down illegal sports streamer Streameast, which had 136M global users per month, £4.9M in ad revenue, and £150K in crypto — Online reaction to the news about September's takedown of Streameast, the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform, was instructive.
Niko Gallogly / New York Times: Gamma, which uses AI to help create presentations, social media posts, websites, and more, raised $68M at a $2.1B valuation and reports 600K+ paying users — The five-year-old start-up, which has just 52 employees and is profitable, is now valued at $2.1 billion by investors including Andreessen Horowitz.
Evan Gorelick / New York Times: A group of US lawyers document 509 cases of AI misuse in legal filings so far in 2025, including fabricated citations; judges and bar associations permit AI use — More lawyers are using artificial intelligence to write legal briefs. Some colleagues are publicizing the A.I.-generated errors.
Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: A YouGov survey estimates 9% of UK adults, or 4.7M people, watched sports via illegal streams in the six months to October, about 200K people more than in 2023 — Illegal streaming of football is on the rise in the UK and most fans want the Saturday 3pm blackout lifted, a new podcast released by The Athletic has revealed.
Kashmir Hill / New York Times: Seven lawsuits in California, including four wrongful death suits, claim ChatGPT encouraged dangerous discussions, leading to suicides and harmful delusions — Seven complaints, filed on Thursday, claim the popular chatbot encouraged dangerous discussions and led to mental breakdowns.
Reggie Ugwu / New York Times: Some podcasters are embracing AI voice clones from ElevenLabs and other startups, aiming to augment, translate episodes, and even replace in-studio performances — Are A.I. replicas a boon for productivity or a betrayal of the bond with listeners? — Benjamin Boster's plan was simple.
Anatoly Kurmanaev / New York Times: How the Venezuelan government is using crypto and stablecoins like USDT to manage the downturn; Venezuela sells most of its oil to China and is paid in crypto — President Nicolás Maduro's opponents hope a new period of economic pain will finally topple his government.
Noam Scheiber / New York Times: A profile of Aaron Greenspan, who has spent years on a crusade to expose what he believes are financial problems at Tesla and at big tech companies — In 2018, Aaron Greenspan was a 30-something tech entrepreneur wondering what he should do with the several million dollars in his pocket.
Keith Bradsher / New York Times: After Trump and Xi's meeting, China says it will suspend its rare earth export controls issued on October 9 for one year, but says nothing about earlier limits — China has suspended export controls announced this month, but was conspicuously silent about rules imposed earlier, which are snarling global supply chains.
New York Times: President Trump and Xi Jinping agree a yearlong truce that rolls back many contentious tariffs and retaliatory measures; the current deal expired on November 10 — China agreed to suspend for a year some of its limits on exports of rare earth metals, while the U.S. halved its fentanyl-related tariffs.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: Livestream marketplace Whatnot raised $225M at an $11.5B valuation, after raising $265M at a $4.97B valuation in January, taking its total funding to $968M — The start-up is among the biggest names in a fast-growing part of e-commerce that is effectively a kind of QVC for the TikTok era.
Steven Adler / New York Times: An ex-OpenAI staffer of four years says it isn't doing enough to protect users, especially those with mental health issues, and needs to offer more than words — I've read more smut at work than you can possibly imagine, all of it while working at OpenAI. — Back in the spring of 2021 …
New York Times: How Saudi Arabia is pouring money into data centers and working with US and Chinese tech giants, landing its AI ambitions in the middle of a geopolitical tussle — In northwest Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea, a planned $5 billion data center would provide enough computing muscle for coders …
Jordyn Holman / New York Times: Q&A with Bill Ready, who became Pinterest's CEO in 2022, about changes during his tenure, winning over Gen Z, Pinterest's business model, AI content, and more — Bill Ready, the company's chief executive, is shifting the virtual pinboard platform toward shopping and things that “make you feel better.”
Zachary Small / New York Times: Microsoft plans to bring its Halo franchise to the PlayStation for the first time with the launch of a 25th‑anniversary remake of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2026 — As part of a strategic shift away from exclusivity, Microsoft is bringing Halo to Sony's competing console for the first time.
Niki Kitsantonis / New York Times: Europe's startup ecosystem, which had 35,000 early-stage companies in the EU and the UK in 2024, per Atomico, is hindered by complex and varying regulations — Start-ups are booming in the European Union, but experts say bureaucracy keeps them from expanding across borders.
Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: UEFA joins the MPA-led anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the first sports governing body to join the group, which has 50+ members — UEFA has become the first sports governing body to join the world's largest anti-piracy coalition, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).
Karen Weise / New York Times: A look at Amazon's Sparrow, Cardinal, Proteus, and other warehouse robots, taking over roles like selecting and picking items, carrying shipping carts, and more — Meet Sparrow, Cardinal and Proteus. They're the robots that, step by step, are replacing human workers in the company's warehouses.
New York Times: Internal Amazon documents and sources: executives believe Amazon is on the cusp of replacing 500K+ jobs with robots and aims to automate 75% of its operations — Internal documents show the company that changed how people shop has a far-reaching plan to automate 75 percent of its operations.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: OpenEvidence, which makes an ad-supported AI chatbot for medical practitioners, raised $200M at a $6B valuation, up from $3.5B after raising $210M in July — The three-year-old artificial intelligence start-up has drawn investor attention, and money, as its use among doctors, nurses and others skyrockets.
Michael Paulson / New York Times: Ariel Emanuel's new company MARI acquires NYC- and London-based theater ticketing app TodayTix from PE firm Great Hill; TodayTix sells ~10M tickets per year — The ticketing company is already a significant player in the two big theater markets of New York and London.
New York Times: Tech companies' data center building spree is hurting communities globally; Synergy: nearly 60% of the 1,244 largest data centers as of June were outside the US — As tech companies build data centers worldwide to advance artificial intelligence, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts and water shortages.
Julia Black / New York Times: A profile of Katherine Boyle, an a16z partner and a friend to JD Vance, as Silicon Valley increasingly adopts her views, including embracing defense tech — Katherine Boyle, an influential venture capitalist who is a friend of the vice president, thinks the country's path forward involves …
Andy Newman / New York Times: Two Wikipedia contributors disarmed a gunman who threatened to kill himself at WikiConference to protest a policy banning editors who identify as pedophiles — After the man walked onto the stage at the “Wiki World's Fair” event and threatened to kill himself, witnesses said, two members of the audience jumped in to stop him.
Natallie Rocha / New York Times: The AI boom has pushed SF's residential rents up by the most in the US over the past year, as AI companies lease apartments and offer rent stipends to employees — The artificial intelligence gold rush has pushed San Francisco's residential rents up by the most in the nation …
Ryan Mac / New York Times: Online loans marketplace LendingTree says CEO and Chairman Doug Lebda died at 55 in an ATV accident on his family's farm; Lebda founded LendingTree in 1996 — Mr. Lebda died on Sunday after an all-terrain vehicle accident on his family's North Carolina farm, a company spokeswoman said.
Eshe Nelson / New York Times: Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt win the Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on how innovation and technological progress helps economic growth — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the prize for showing how “society must keep an eye on the factors that generate …
New York Times: Parisians and BHV Marais staff protest Shein's 1,000-square-meter store, set to open November 1, as France tries to curb the company's presence in the country — As the Chinese online fast-fashion retailer prepares to open a physical space in a venerable department store, France pushes to stem the company's presence in the country.
Stephen Witt / New York Times: Interviews with security researchers about AI's potential for large-scale destruction, as experts remain divided and global regulatory frameworks lag — How much do we have to fear from A.I., really? It's a question I've been asking experts since the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Heather Knight / New York Times: Marc Benioff says President Trump is “doing a great job” and believes National Guard troops should be deployed to San Francisco to help reduce crime in the city — Mr. Benioff, the Salesforce C.E.O. and owner of Time magazine, once supported Hillary Clinton and a business tax for homeless services.
New York Times: A profile of Singapore-based Megaspeed, which bought $2B of Nvidia chips and is under US probe for possibly helping Chinese companies evade export controls — An executive of a Singaporean firm called Megaspeed socialized with Nvidia's Jensen Huang. Now the company is being scrutinized by U.S. officials for its ties to China.
Emmanuel Morgan / New York Times: A profile of Twitch streamer Kai Cenat, who has 19M followers on the platform, many of them young people, and drew nearly 50M viewers to a monthlong stream — With his boisterous antics, Cenat has gained 19 million Twitch followers and the attention of celebrities who covet that audience.
Amos Zeeberg / New York Times: Researchers are investigating using synthetic diamonds to help cool AI data center chips; De Beers-owned Element Six has long used diamonds in satellite chips — Data centers squander vast amounts of electricity, most of it as heat. The physical properties of diamond offer a potential solution, researchers say.
Cade Metz / New York Times: Periodic Labs, co-founded by ChatGPT co-creator Liam Fedus, poaches 20+ researchers from Meta, OpenAI, DeepMind, and others to use AI for scientific discoveries — Founded by a co-creator of ChatGPT, Periodic Labs aims to build artificial intelligence that can accelerate discoveries in physics, chemistry and other fields.
Jordyn Holman / New York Times: Q&A with Oura CEO Tom Hale on why many CEOs love its rings, competition from Apple, and more; Oura sold 2.5M rings in 2024 and expects $1B revenue in 2025 — Oura Health makes a pricey smart ring that busy executives, celebrities and others use to track health measures like their sleep patterns.
New York Times: Larry Ellison is turning into a media magnate, potentially controlling CBS, CNN, TikTok, and more, amid a regulatory environment favorable to Trump allies — When Larry Ellison entered his ninth decade in 2024, his high-profile lifestyle seemed to be receding.
New York Times: Inside xAI's chaotic summer: Musk reorganized xAI on the fly, researchers left because xAI abandoned science in favor of attention-grabbing products, and more — Mr. Musk spent the summer at his artificial intelligence start-up xAI, trying to match the runaway success of OpenAI. The result was chaos.
Brian X. Chen / New York Times: A look at Live Translation on AirPods Pro, one of the strongest examples yet of how AI can be used in a seamless, practical way to improve people's lives — The technology is one of the strongest examples yet of how artificial intelligence can be used in a seamless, practical way to improve people's lives.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: An interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the first people to warn of AI risks, on AI benefits, using violence to stop AI, Rationalism, his new book, and more — Eliezer Yudkowsky has spent the past 20 years warning A.I. insiders of danger. Now, he's making his case to the public.
Stuart A. Thompson / New York Times: Watchdogs say fraudsters are extorting small businesses for hundreds of dollars each by posting or threatening to post phony one-star reviews on Google Maps — Movers, roofing companies and others are being bombarded with phony one-star reviews on Google Maps. Then they're asked to pay up.
Pranav Baskar / New York Times: Over 100K Nepali citizens gathered on Discord to help nominate an interim leader after protests sparked by a social media ban led to the government's collapse — “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” a user said of the platform popular with video gamers, where tens of thousands are debating the nation's future.
New York Times: Graphic videos of Charlie Kirk's shooting, first posted to X, also spread to Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and Telegram within hours, amassing millions of views — First posted to X, they amassed millions of views on Instagram, Threads, YouTube and Telegram within hours.
Cade Metz / New York Times: The UAE's Institute of Foundation Models open sources its K2 Think model, trained with only ~2,000 AI chips and designed for math, coding, and science research — The Persian Gulf nation has “open sourced” technology meant to compete with OpenAI and China's DeepSeek.
New York Times: Nvidia is attacking GOP-led proposals to limit AI chip sales to China, an unconventional lobbying blitz over what it calls left-wing paranoia from “AI doomers” — Rankling national security experts, the chipmaker has stepped up attacks on lawmakers who are pushing restrictions.
Steve Lohr / New York Times: The US v. Google ruling signals a cautious antitrust approach by courts and a reluctance to intervene too deeply, ahead of other Big Tech antitrust rulings — A federal judge ordered steps in the search monopoly case that will restrain Google but not break it up, signaling a cautious antitrust approach by courts.
Adam Leventhal / The Athletic: Anti-piracy organization ACE says a joint operation with Egyptian law enforcement shut down Streameast, the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform — Streameast — the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform — has been shut down after a year long investigation …
New York Times: An analysis of Grok's responses to 41 political questions in May and July shows it shifted to the right on 50%+ of them, often aligning with Elon Musk's views — Mr. Musk said he wanted xAI's chatbot to be “politically neutral.” His actions say otherwise.
Choe Sang-Hun / New York Times: South Korean lawmakers pass a bill to ban using mobile phones and other smart devices during classes at elementary and middle schools nationwide, starting 2026 — It becomes the latest country to restrict phone use in schools, with a law that will go into effect in 2026.
Ephrat Livni / New York Times: An interview with Alex Kachkine, who shook the art world in June with a research paper in Nature on restoring paintings using AI, as he works to refine the tech — Alex Kachkine spends his days working on microchip research — a skill set surprisingly similar to that needed for restoration.