Gemini Flash Thinking a model making a serious run at “reasoning.” The FAA has had to ban drones in New Jersey cause of all those weird drone sightings. Self Driving technology continues to prove it is safer. An open source generative physics engine for robots.

Sponsors:

• WashingtonPost.com/ride

Links:

• Google reveals AI ‘reasoning’ model that ‘explicitly shows its thoughts’ (The Verge)
• FAA Bans Drone Flights in Parts of New Jersey (Bloomberg)
• Instagram teases AI editing tools that will completely reimagine your videos (The Verge)
• Waymo still doing better than humans at preventing injuries and property damage (The Verge)
• New physics sim trains robots 430,000 times faster than reality (ArsTechnica)

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Apple says Meta is getting annoying. You can now call 1800CHATGPT to, you know, talk to ChatGPT. Apple scraps plans for a hardware subscription package. Oura’s big new raise also indicates how well its smart-ring business is going. And has Bengaluru grown to quickly for its own good?

Links:

• Apple hits out at Meta's numerous interoperability requests (Reuters)
• OpenAI makes ChatGPT available for phone calls and texts (CNBC)
• Apple Halts Effort to Build iPhone Hardware Subscription Service (Bloomberg)
• Smart ring start-up Ōura raises $200mn as valuation leaps to $5.2bn (Financial Times)
• Oura closes $200M round, bringing its valuation to $5.2B (TechCrunch)
• 3 Changes That Would Make Samsung's Galaxy Ring So Much Better (CNET)
• PS5 Pro deep dive reaction: GPU and RT improvements, PSSR and Sony's new AMD Amethyst partnership (EuroGamer)
• Inside India's 'Silicon Valley' (BusinessInsider)

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Is your home internet router about to be banned? The US has a new Chinese tech target. An AI dev kit from Nvidia. Who actually buys the most chips from Nvidia? Hollywood has flip-flopped on the whole theatrical release strategy. And why Instagram is officially king of the hill at Meta.

Sponsors:

• Lumen.me/ride

Links:

• U.S. Weighs Ban on Chinese-Made Router in Millions of American Homes (WSJ)
• Nvidia's new $249 AI development board promises 67 TOPS at half the price of the previous 40 TOPS model (TomsHardware)
• Nvidia’s $249 dev kit promises cheap, small AI power (The Verge)
• Microsoft acquires twice as many Nvidia AI chips as tech rivals (Financial Times)
• Grubhub to pay $25 million for misleading customers, restaurants, drivers (Reuters)
• ‘Red One’ Becomes Most-Watched Prime Video Film Debut Ever With 50 Million Viewers After Modest Theatrical Run (Variety)
• Here’s a Hollywood Twist: Streaming Success Runs Through Theaters (NYTimes)
• Instagram Expected to Generate 50% of Meta’s US Ad Sales in 2025 (Bloomberg)

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On the same day that ByteDance asks the US Supreme Court to intervene, the TikTok CEO meets with Donald Trump. DeepMind’s big new competitor to Sora called Veo 2. The FTC comes down against so called “junk fees.” And on their historic raise, a deep dive look at Databricks, one of the biggest private companies in the world.

Sponsors:

• Miro.com

Links:

• Trump meets with TikTok CEO as video app challenges potential ban (NBCNews)
• TikTok Asks Supreme Court to Block Law Banning Its U.S. Operations (NYTimes)
• Google DeepMind unveils a new video model to rival Sora (TechCrunch)
• FTC issues rules requiring hotels, ticket sellers to reveal ‘junk fees’ (WashingtonPost)
• Waymo to begin testing in Tokyo, its first international destination (CNBC)
• His Startup Is Now Worth $62 Billion. It Gave Away Its First Product Free. (WSJ)
• Google’s Whisk AI generator will ‘remix’ the pictures you plug in (The Verge)

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I break down the coming battle of the titans that is going to likely play out in 2025 between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Mark Gurman says Apple is finally going foldable. Oh, and that Magic Mouse is finally that sin against God charger design. Every country wants a Starlink. And the big legal battle happening this week.

Links:

• Meta Urges California Attorney General to Stop OpenAI From Becoming For-Profit (WSJ)
• OpenAI hits back at Elon Musk's lawsuit in court filing (Axios)
• Sam Altman reckons with a growing threat to OpenAI: Elon Musk (Financial Times)
• Apple’s New Vision for Computing Is a Giant Foldable iPad (Bloomberg)
• Europe signs €10.6bn Iris² satellite deal in bid to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink (Financial Times)
• Chip groups Arm and Qualcomm square off in high-stakes US trial (Financial Times)

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Brian on The Newsworthy podcast with Erica Mandy. Find out more about the show here.

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Ok, what if AI models are really the new OS for… everything. But also: smartglasses and a Vision Pro competitor. I’ll explain. Could NotebookLM become a fully fledged product? Seemingly the leader in the clubhouse in the race to create the next AI paradigm beyond the transformer model. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions.

Links:

• I saw Google’s plan to put Android on your face (The Verge)
• Google’s NotebookLM AI podcast hosts can now talk to you, too (The Verge)
• Google says its breakthrough quantum chip can’t break modern cryptography (The Verge)
• Liquid Set to Raise $250 Million to Build AI Inspired by Tiny Worm Brains (Bloomberg)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

• The Cult of Claude (NYTimes)
• How WhatsApp ate the world (Rest Of World)

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More fallout from the whole Cruise wind-down. What it’s like to use some of the new Gemini 2.0 features. Has Apple, quite belatedly, finally done a feature update that provides the Vision Pro with a “killer app?” An Instagram-like app from China I had never heard of. And one singular, eye-popping datapoint from the CHIPS Act.

Links:

• The end of Cruise is the beginning of a risky new phase for autonomous vehicles (The Verge)
• Gemini 2.0 Flash: An outstanding multi-modal LLM with a sci-fi streaming model (Simon Willison's Blog)
• FCC Opens Entire 6-GHz Band to Very-Low-Power Device Operations (TV Tech)
• The Vision Pro’s ultrawide Mac display is very close to being a killer app (The Verge)
• China’s Instagram-Style Xiaohongshu Crosses $1 Billion in Profit (Bloomberg)
• Harvard Is Releasing a Massive Free AI Training Dataset Funded by OpenAI and Microsoft (Wired)
• US chipmaking boom in doubt after Biden’s defeat (Financial Times)

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GM shocked everybody by shutting down the Cruise robotaxi business. ChatGPT is finally on your iPhone once you update it. Could all Apple watches someday have satellite texting? And then, I guess Google wanted to pre-empt Santa Sam, because they released an absolute slew of AI products today.

Links:

• GM to refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles (GM Investor Relations)
• GM Calls It Quits on Mary Barra’s $50 Billion Robotaxi Dream (Bloomberg)
• Apple’s Next Ultra Smartwatch Will Be Able to Send Texts Via Satellite (Bloomberg)
• Google Rolls Out Faster Gemini AI Model to Power Agents (Bloomberg)
• Google’s new Trillium AI chip delivers 4x speed and powers Gemini 2.0 (VentureBeat)
• Gemini 2.0, Google’s newest flagship AI, can generate text, images, and speech (TechCrunch)
• Google unveils AI coding assistant ‘Jules,’ promising autonomous bug fixes and faster development cycles (VentureBeat)
• Google unveils Project Mariner: AI agents to use the web for you (TechCrunch)

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You can now buy a car on Amazon. A new AI unicorn doing something with AI I hadn’t heard about before. New AI enhanced smartglasses. Microsoft says it has a new datacenter design that uses zero water. And if you were able to use Sora yesterday, what was that like?

Sponsors:

• Shopify.com/ride

Links:

• You Can Buy a Car on Amazon Now (Wired)
• US finalizes $6.1 bln Micron chip-making subsidy (Reuters)
• Memory chip maker Micron’s $6.1 billion grant confirmed by Commerce Dept. (Washington Post)
• OpenAI-Backed Language Tutor Startup Doubles Value to $1 Billion (Bloomberg)
• Solos challenges Meta’s Ray-Bans with $299 ChatGPT smart glasses (The Verge)
• Microsoft Unveils Zero-Water Data Centers to Reduce AI Climate Impact (Bloomberg)
• Bluesky teases paid subscription, Bluesky+, in new mockup (TechCrunch)
• I just went hands-on with Sora — the good, the bad, and the wow (Tom's Guide)

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