Transforming Financial Services in Africa Through Strategic Collaboration Ecobank, a leading pan-African financial services group, has entered into a groundbreaking partnership with Google Cloud to revolutionize the way financial services are delivered across the continent. This collaboration is focused on harnessing advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive digital empowerment and transform the financial landscape in Africa. The initiative …
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Meta held talks to buy Thinking Machines, Perplexity, and Safe Superintelligence
At this point, it’s becoming easier to say which AI startups Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t looked at acquiring. In addition to Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (SSI), sources tell me the Meta CEO recently discussed buying ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab and Perplexity, the AI-native Google rival. None of these talks progressed to the formal offer stage for various reasons, …
Read More »Google Maps to show Gulf of America and Mount McKinley
Google said today that it plans to update Google Maps to reflect President Trump’s January 20th executive order to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali to the Gulf of America and Mount McKinley, respectively. The company noted on X the updated nomenclature will appear once the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. “We have a …
Read More »Trump says he’ll put tariffs on imported chips ‘in the near future’
Without going into detail about what might happen to the $52 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act under his administration, Donald Trump said tariffs on foreign computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals are coming “in the near future.” He also namechecked DeepSeek’s AI releases, saying, “…coming up with a faster method of AI and less expensive, that’s good. I view …
Read More »The Pebble smartwatch is making a comeback, with some help from Google
Eric Migicovsky still wears his Pebble. Thirteen years after he founded the wearables company and found huge success on Kickstarter, and more than eight years after he sold the company to Fitbit, which was then acquired by Google, Migicovsky’s watch still works. (In case you’re wondering: when I saw him at CES a few weeks ago, he appeared to be …
Read More »FBI’s warrantless ‘backdoor’ searches ruled unconstitutional
Following years of litigation, a federal court has finally ruled it unconstitutional for the FBI to search communications of US citizens collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In a ruling unsealed last week, US District Court Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall decided that these “backdoor” searches violate the Fourth Amendment. This particular decision stems from a …
Read More »Now Apple tells us how to update AirPods
Apple updated its AirPods firmware support page today with a more detailed step-by-step guide on how to upgrade the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max with their latest firmware, according to MacRumors. While most Apple devices, like the iPhone or Apple Watch, can start updates in the settings, with the AirPods you have to wait for the update process to …
Read More »Sony reduces OLED burn-in fears with a three-year warranty on InZone monitors
Sony is upping the limited warranty on some InZone gaming monitors to three years and is tossing in OLED burn-in coverage for the 27-inch M10S. The company announced the additional coverage today after launching both the InZone M10S OLED and M9 II LED in September with only one-year limited warranties out of the box. Sony says other than that, the …
Read More »DeepSeek: all the news about the startup that’s shaking up AI stocks
A chatbot made by Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has rocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in the US this week, dethroning OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app. The eponymous AI assistant is powered by DeepSeek’s open-source models, which the company says can be trained at a fraction of the cost using far fewer chips …
Read More »Apple’s Sports app now tells you where you can watch nationally broadcast games
Apple updated its iOS Sports app today with several new features, including a faster way to navigate the app, support for a handful of additional soccer tournaments, and information about where you can watch games that are being nationally broadcast in the US. According to the release notes for the update, you can now quickly “swipe left or right to …
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