Author: GT

Instagram on Thursday announced that it’s rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. Blends are invite-only and can be created with a singular friend or with a group chat. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day. The launch doesn’t come as a surprise, as TechCrunch reported in March 2024 that the social network was developing the feature. Once you join or accept a Blend invite, you will be able to browse through reels picked for each person in the chat. When someone in the…

A Florida draft bill that would require social media companies to provide encryption backdoors for law enforcement officials to access user accounts has cleared a key legislative hurdle and will now advance to the state’s Senate floor for a vote. Florida lawmakers unanimously approved pushing the bill through committee, per Florida Politics.  The “Social Media Use by Minors” (SB 868) bill, if passed into law, would require “social media platforms to provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena.” The bill would also require social media companies to allow parents or guardians access to a…

Bitcoin (BTC) is likely headed for a period of heightened volatility as 170,000 BTC — worth over $14 billion at its current price of $84,500 — have moved from wallets held for three to six months, a cohort often linked to market turning points, CryptoQuant warned in a post. On-chain behavior from this group has historically served as an early signal for major price action, according to the post. Mid-term holders are typically considered to be traders that hold a cryptocurrency for anywhere between three to 12 months. They tend to be more reactive to market conditions than long-term holders…

Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.” The team also pledged to continue to provide neutral testing grounds for AI not influenced by outside interests. Founded in 2023, Chatbot Arena has become something of an AI industry obsession. Primarily run by UC Berkeley-affiliated researchers, Chatbot Arena has partnered with companies such as…

Crypto exchange Kraken has launched FX perpetual futures, expanding into traditional markets with round-the-clock trading for major forex pairs, the company said in a blog post Friday. The first contracts, EUR/USD and GBP/USD, are now live on Kraken Pro, with more to follow. Unlike standard forex products, FX perps have no expiry and operate 24/7, mirroring crypto futures. With FX perps, Kraken is doubling down on serving institutional and professional traders looking for deeper exposure to fiat markets through a crypto-native platform, the company said. Crypto and traditional financial markets are increasingly converging. Kraken recently launched commission-free trading for U.S.-listed…

China is cracking down on how automakers advertise driver-assistance features, banning terms like “autonomous driving,” “self-driving,” and “smart driving,” Reuters reported, citing a transcript of a meeting between the government and industry representatives. The updated rule will also prohibit automakers from rolling out improvements via software updates to advanced driver-assistance systems in vehicles already in the hands of customers. Automakers must now test any upgrades or new features in ADAS and receive government approval before rolling it out via software update. Wireless software updates that improve or fix features in vehicles — and first popularized by Tesla — have become…

On Apr. 17, President Donald Trump said that he wasn’t keen on hiking tariffs on China because it could halt trade between the two countries. “At a certain point I don’t want them to go higher because at a certain point you make it where people don’t buy. So I may not want to go higher, or I may not want to even go up to that level,” Trump said. “I may want to go to less because, you know, you want people to buy.” Trump also told the reporters in the Oval Office that officials representing the Chinese President…

On Thursday, weeks after launching its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety evaluations. However, the report is light on the details, experts say, making it difficult to determine which risks the model might pose. Technical reports provide useful — and unflattering, at times — info that companies don’t always widely advertise about their AI. By and large, the AI community sees these reports as good-faith efforts to support independent research and safety evaluations. Google takes a different safety reporting approach than some of its AI rivals,…

Geoff Ralston, well-known in the startup community for his years at Y Combinator, is back in the formal investing ring, he announced Thursday. His new fund is called Safe Artificial Intelligence Fund, or SAIF, which is both an explanation of its thesis and a play on words. Ralston is specifically looking for startups that “enhance AI safety, security, and responsible deployment,” as his fund’s website describes. He plans to write $100,000 checks as a SAFE, “pun intended,” he says, with a $10 million cap. A SAFE is, of course, the invest now/price later pre-seed investment tool pioneered by Y Combinator…

“Choose your Fighter,” Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor asserted on X (formerly Twitter) on Apr. 18. Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), rebranded to Strategy, emphasized the astonishingly high return of 2,466% offered by his firm since August 2020, when it began acquiring Bitcoin. He called it the “BSE return.” The Bitcoin Standard Era, or BSE, is a conceptual metric introduced by Strategy that refers to the period since Aug. 10, 2020, when the firm adopted Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset — the first U.S. public company to do so. It’s a grandstanding way of telling everyone that the company operates on the Bitcoin standard. The…