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What's driving Wall Street stablecoin interest? Trillions up for grabs in the future and banks getting ready for it

After a brief pullback this week, shares of stablecoin issuer and recent IPO darling Circle were in rally mode again, soaring double-digits on a percentage basis during trading on Thursday and ending the day up close to 8%, after having moved up by more than 600% percent since its debut on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month. Bitcoin and ether have led a recent crypto rise, as digital assets joined the resumption of the risk-on rally, with additional factors such as the potential for

Meta wins AI copyright case filed by Sarah Silverman and other authors

Federal Judge Vince Chhabria has ruled in favor of Meta over the 13 book authors, including Sarah Silverman, who sued the company for training its large language model on their published work without obtaining consent. His court has granted summary judgment to Meta, which means the case didn't reach full trial. Chhabria said that Meta didn't violate copyright law after the plaintiffs had failed to show sufficient evidence that the company's use of the authors' work would hurt them financially.

Meta Wins Blockbuster AI Copyright Case—but There’s a Catch

Meta scored a major victory in a copyright lawsuit on Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that the company did not violate the law when it trained its AI tools on 13 authors' books without permission. “The Court has no choice but to grant summary judgment to Meta on the plaintiffs’ claim that the company violated copyright law by training its models with their books,” wrote US District Court judge Vince Chhabria. He concluded that the plaintiffs did not present sufficient evidence that Meta’s

US senators reintroduce bill to open Apple and Google's app stores

Senators Marsha Blacburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have reintroduced a bill that would force app store owners like Apple and Google to allow third-party payment systems and sideloading apps, among a collection of other developer-friendly changes. The bill, called the Open App Markets App, was originally introduced in 2021, but it never came up for a vote after passing through the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2022. T

Kalshi closes $185M round as rival Polymarket reportedly seeks $200M

Kalshi just raised a $185 million round, led by crypto-focused VC firm Paradigm, bringing the company’s valuation to $2 billion post-money, representatives from Paradigm and Kalshi confirmed to TechCrunch. “Prediction markets remind me of crypto 15 years ago: a new asset class on a path to trillions,” Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm, told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. “There’s no better team than Kalshi to scale prediction markets and reshape how people think about

Sony faces another class-action lawsuit over PlayStation Store prices and monopolistic practices

In brief: Sony is facing another class-action lawsuit over the price of games and DLC on its PlayStation Store. The suit has been filed in the Netherlands and claims that the company has been exploiting its dominant position in the console market for at least ten years. According to the legal representatives of the 'Fair PlayStation' campaign, at least 1.7 million Dutch PlayStation owners pay too much for their digital downloads. Economic research shows consumers pay an average of 47% more for

Google could face changes to search in the UK as regulators crack down

Google could face changes to its online search services in the U.K. after regulators raised concerns over the tech giant's dominance. The Competition and Markets Authority on Tuesday said it is consulting on a proposal to give Google "strategic market status," a designation under new competition rules for tech firms that hold entrenched power in a certain market. The watchdog was granted expanded competition and merger control powers this year as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers

Can we fix AI’s evaluation crisis?

However, there are a growing number of teams around the world trying to address the AI evaluation crisis. One result is a new benchmark called LiveCodeBench Pro. It draws problems from international algorithmic olympiads—competitions for elite high school and university programmers where participants solve challenging problems without external tools. The top AI models currently manage only about 53% at first pass on medium-difficulty problems and 0% on the hardest ones. These are tasks where hu

Mortgage Rate Predictions: Is This Week the Calm Before the Storm?

Tharon Green/CNET Though the housing market is never immune to political and economic volatility, mortgage rates have been eerily calm. Over the last month, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage has moved in a narrow range between 6.8% and 7%. An escalating war in the Middle East could spark fresh volatility across global markets, significantly affecting oil prices and the US dollar. That would have a ripple effect on long-term Treasury yields and mortgage rates. Mortgage rates had be

CoinMarketCap briefly hacked to drain crypto wallets via fake Web3 popup

CoinMarketCap, the popular cryptocurrency price tracking site, suffered a website supply chain attack that exposed site visitors to a wallet drainer campaign to steal visitors' crypto. On Friday evening, January 20, CoinMarketCap visitors began seeing Web3 popups asking them to connect their wallets to the site. However, when visitors connected their wallets, a malicious script drained cryptocurrency from them. The company later confirmed threat actors utilized a vulnerability in the site's ho

Intel to outsource marketing to Accenture and AI, cutting in-house staff

What just happened? Intel is preparing for a major transformation of its marketing operations, marking a significant shift in how the company approaches customer engagement and internal organization. Under the direction of newly appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the technology giant will outsource a substantial portion of its marketing work to Accenture, a global consulting firm, with artificial intelligence playing a central role in the transition. This move is expected to result in significant layoff

Denmark's Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and Knowledge

Ole Ginnerup Schytz, an engineer in Denmark’s sleepy Vindelev agricultural area, had used a metal detector only a handful of times when he found a bent clump of metal in a friend’s barley field. He figured it was the lid from a container of tinned fish and tossed it in his junk bag with the other bits of farm trash that had set his metal detector beeping: rusty nails, screws, scrap iron. A few paces away he dug up another shiny circle. Someone had clearly enjoyed a lot of tinned fish here—into t

Zuckerberg's Employees Have a Wild New Nickname for Him

Half a year in, it seems like Mark Zuckerberg's right-wing turn — which came complete with a woo-woo midlife rebrand — is still going strong. Faced with the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office, Zuckerberg conveniently molted out of his pseudo-progressive skin and into a darling of the manosphere. He's since appeared on shows like Joe Rogan to complain that US business culture needs to "regrow its manhood," because American capitalism is "culturally neutered." "A culture that celebrates t

Mistral just updated its open source Small model from 3.1 to 3.2: here’s why

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more French AI darling Mistral is keeping the new releases coming this summer. Just days after announcing its own domestic AI-optimized cloud service Mistral Compute, the well-funded company has released an update to its 24B parameter open source model Mistral Small, jumping from a 3.1 release to 3.2-24B Instruct-2506. The new version builds

Everything we know about Tesla's robotaxi launch in Austin

Tesla 's long-overdue robotaxi is finally hitting the streets this weekend, but the rollout may face some roadblocks. The Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company is expected to roll out robotaxis in Austin, Texas, on June 22, with the first driverless trip from the factory to a customer house expected on his birthday, June 28. Musk shared news of the tentative debut in a post to social media platform X last week. Here's what we know about the Tesla event so far. When and where The launch wil

Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Review: Great Value Gaming

It's AMD's turn. After months of $2,000+ GPUs and long discussions of DLSS, we're finally on the red team's turf. AMD's strength historically lies at the budget end of the spectrum, where the majority of gamers are playing at 1080p, and spending $1,000 or less for their entire system. Even though we really recommend splurging on a GPU, that's just not the reality for most folks. An $800 GPU needs $1,200 in other parts, and at that point most people who aren't into PC gaming will start shopping

Samsung aims to catch up to Chinese rivals for thin foldable phones as Apple said to enter the fray

Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Fold6 at its Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris. The tech giant said the foldable device is thinner and lighter than its predecessor. Samsung will unveil a thinner version of its flagship foldable smartphone at a launch likely set to take place next month, as it battles Chinese rivals to deliver the slimmest devices to the market. Folding phones, which have a single screen that can fold in half, came in focus when Samsung first launched such a device in 2019. But Chin

Attimet (YC F24) – Quant Trading Research Lab – Is Hiring Founding Engineer

You’ll be given the autonomy to do some of the best work of your life. We’re building a research lab that puts its ideas to the test in one of the most complex, information-rich environments in the world: the financial markets. Much of trading still depends on hand-crafted signals and intuition. We’re approaching it differently - from first principles. We design systems that learn, adapt, and improve with data. Our infrastructure is built to accelerate research: fast iteration loops, real-time

Reddit to Turn Positive Posts Into Ads for Brands

The next time you recommend a product or service to someone in conversation on Reddit, it might turn into an advertisement for the company. A new feature announced by the social media site at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will allow brands to take positive comments posted on Reddit and display them right under advertisements on the platform. The feature, called Reddit Community Intelligence, will integrate conversations happening on Reddit into a company’s marketing effo

Meta's All In on AI Creating the Ads You See on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp

Meta is working toward a future where many of the ads you see on Facebook or Instagram are created from scratch by artificial intelligence, and thus more easily targeted specifically to you. Its goal is fully automated AI-powered ad generation by the end of 2026, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Following this initial news, TikTok also announced it's launching AI-powered advertising features on its platform and Meta unveiled that ads are now coming to WhatsApp -- further strengthening the

How Reddit's new AI ad tools help brands join the conversation

Bloomberg/Getty Images Reddit wants to make it easier for brands to keep up with -- and tap into -- the cultural dialogue. On Monday, the social media platform introduced Reddit Community Intelligence, an AI-powered product aimed at helping marketers leverage the billions of conversations taking place across its platform. The announcement, made at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity -- the ad industry's biggest annual event -- coincides with Reddit's 20th anniversary. Also: Adobe Firefly

Mortgage Rates and the Fed: Everything to Know Before Tomorrow's Decision

The Fed's interest rate decisions impact mortgages, but the relationship isn't straightforward. Tharon Green/CNET On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve is expected to extend a pause on interest rate cuts for a fourth consecutive time this year. Though mortgage rates could see some volatility, many economists expect them to stay somewhat flat until the economic picture drastically changes. Rates will stay in the 6.75% to 7.25% range unless the Fed signals multiple cuts soon and backs it up with dat

Prominent global VC Endeavor Catalyst is raising $300M, sources say

Endeavor Catalyst, the co-investment fund affiliated with global entrepreneurial network Endeavor Global, is raising a new $300 million fund, its fifth and largest fund yet, as it looks to deepen its bet on high-growth startups across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, TechCrunch has learned. The new fund, according to sources, is still in early fundraising stages. It’s previous fund was its $292 million Fund IV closed in 2022. The firm has already begun early conversat

Denmark tests unmanned robotic sailboat fleet

KOGE MARINA, Denmark (AP) — From a distance they look almost like ordinary sailboats, their sails emblazoned with the red-and-white flag of Denmark. But these 10-meter (30-foot) -long vessels carry no crew and are designed for surveillance. Four uncrewed robotic sailboats, known as “Voyagers,” have been put into service by Denmark’s armed forces for a three-month operational trial. Built by Alameda, California-based company Saildrone, the vessels will patrol Danish and NATO waters in the Balt

Mortgage Rates and the Fed: Everything to Know Before This Week's Meeting

The Fed's interest rate decisions impact mortgages, but the relationship isn't straightforward. Tharon Green/CNET On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve is expected to extend a pause on interest rate cuts for a fourth consecutive time this year. Though mortgage rates could see some volatility, many economists expect them to stay somewhat flat until the economic picture drastically changes. Rates will stay in the 6.75% to 7.25% range unless the Fed signals multiple cuts soon and backs it up with dat

Police seizes Archetyp Market drug marketplace, arrests admin

Law enforcement authorities from six countries took down the Archetyp Market, an infamous darknet drug marketplace that has been operating since May 2020. Archetyp Market sellers provided the market's customers with access to high volumes of drugs, including cocaine, amphetamines, heroin, cannabis, MDMA, and synthetic opioids like fentanyl through more than 3,200 registered vendors and over 17,000 listings. Over its five years of activity, the marketplace amassed over 612,000 users with a tota

iPad Air vs reMarkable Paper Pro: Which tablet is best for note taking? [Updated]

Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of testing out the reMarkable Paper Pro. You can read my full review here, but in short, it gets everything right about the note taking experience. Despite being an e-ink tablet, it does get quite pricey. However, there are certainly some fantastic parts of the experience that make it worth comparing to an iPad Air, depending on what you’re looking for in a note taking device for school, work, or whatever else. Updated June 15th to reflect reMark