Adam Mosseri says "maybe we'll need" premium longform video for Instagram, and that TikTok's US sale turmoil has given Meta time to retune algorithms (Max Tani/Semafor)
Exclusive: Instagram’s Adam Mosseri on how to beat TikTok β€” on your phone and in your living room
Mosseri laid out Instagram’s vision for its role on television and the path for its next several years of growth.
Techmeme
Adam Mosseri says “maybe we
By Max Tani / Semafor. View the full context on Techmeme.
Waymo resumes robotaxi service in San Francisco after a blackout, and says most active trips were completed before vehicles returned to depots or pulled over (CNBC)
CNBC
Waymo resumes robotaxi service in San Francisco after blackout chaos β€” Musk says Tesla car service unaffected
As power outages spread Saturday, videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in different parts of S...
Techmeme
Waymo resumes its robotaxi service in SF after suspending it during a blackout, and says most trips finished before vehicles returned to depots or pulled over
From CNBC. View the full context on Techmeme.
Uber plans to trial driverless taxis in London using Baidu's Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis, starting in H1 2026 with services available by the end of 2026 (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
Uber Teams Up With Baidu to Start Robotaxi Trials in UK
Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. are each teaming up with Baidu Inc. to trial driverless taxis in the UK, as ride-sharing companies race to dep...
Techmeme
Uber and Lyft partner with Baidu to trial driverless taxis in the UK in 2026; both companies plan to use Baidu
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Some experts in the human-computer interaction field say making AI chatbots act humanlike creates cognitive dissonance for users over how much to trust them (Kashmir Hill/New York Times)
Why Do A.I. Chatbots Use β€˜I’?
A.I. chatbots have been designed to behave in a humanlike way. Some experts think that’s a terrible idea.
Techmeme
Some experts in the human-computer interaction field say making AI chatbots act humanlike creates cognitive dissonance for users over how much to trust them
By Kashmir Hill / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
Pirate activist group Anna's Archive says it scraped 86M music files and 256M rows of track metadata from Spotify, and releases them in ~300TB of torrent files (Mitchell Peters/Billboard)
Spotify Music Library Scraped by Pirate Activist Group
A pirate activist group has reportedly scraped and released metadata from Spotify, and intends to release 86 million audio files.
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Pirate activist group Anna
By Mitchell Peters / Billboard. View the full context on Techmeme.
A look at military tech startup Shield AI, recently valued at $5.6B, and its new CEO Gary Steele, who aims to grow annual revenue from $300M to $1B by 2028 (Jessica Mathews/Fortune)
Fortune
Shield AI’s new CEO says the $5.6B defense tech startup is at an inflection point | Fortune
Demand for Shield AI’s V-BAT is ramping up in Europe and Asia.
Techmeme
A look at military tech startup Shield AI, recently valued at $5.6B, and its new CEO Gary Steele, who aims to grow annual revenue from $300M to $1B by 2028
By Jessica Mathews / Fortune. View the full context on Techmeme.
A group of PE firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus agrees to buy Clearwater Analytics, in a deal valuing the financial software maker at $8.4B including debt (Ryan Gould/Bloomberg)
Bloomberg.com
Permira, Warburg Agree to Buy Clearwater Analytics for $8.4 Billion
A group of private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus has agreed to acquire Clearwater Analytics Holdings Inc. in a deal valuing the in...
Techmeme
Private equity firms led by Permira and Warburg Pincus agree to buy Clearwater Analytics, in a deal valuing the financial software maker at $8.4B including debt
By Ryan Gould / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Echo, which uses AI agents to build Docker images that eliminate vulnerabilities at the source, raised a $35M Series A, bringing its total funding to $50M (Ionut Arghire/SecurityWeek)
SecurityWeek
Echo Raises $35 Million in Series A Funding
The fresh investment comes less than six months after the startup’s seed funding announcement.
Techmeme
Echo, which uses AI agents to build Docker images that eliminate vulnerabilities at the source, raised a $35M Series A, bringing its total funding to $50M
By Ionut Arghire / SecurityWeek. View the full context on Techmeme.
Sources: The US DHS is investigating whether 6 CISA staffers who were suspended in July misled CISA's acting director into taking a polygraph, which he failed (John Sakellariadis/Politico) https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/21/cisa-acting-director-madhu-gottumukkala-polygraph-investigation-00701996
Techmeme
Sources: DHS is investigating whether six staffers misled CISA
By John Sakellariadis / Politico. View the full context on Techmeme.
Source: OpenAI's compute margin has jumped to about 70% in October from about 52% at the end of 2024 and roughly 35% in January 2024 (Sri Muppidi/The Information) https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-getting-efficient-running-ai-internal-financials-show
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Source: OpenAI
By Sri Muppidi / The Information. View the full context on Techmeme.