The new model however attracted criticism for using Kimi 2.5 – an open source model by the Chinese company Moonshot AI with just additional reinforcement learning according to the X user Fynn. They said:

“[A]t least rename the model ID,”

At first, the company did not mention Moonshot AI or Kimi in its announcement, which quickly raised questions about the role of the AI “arms race” between the United States and China in the situation.

Lee Robinson, Cursor’s vice president of developer education, responded by saying, that Cursor’s use of Kimi was consistent with the terms of its license. He also clarified

“Only ~1/4 of the compute spent on the final model came from the base, the rest is from our training.”

As a result, he said Composer 2’s performance on various benchmarks is “very different” from Kimi’s.

The company Kimi also joined the conversations posting:

“We are proud to see Kimi-k2.5 provide the foundation. Seeing our model integrated effectively through Cursor’s continued pretraining & high-compute RL training is the open model ecosystem we love to support.”

Cursor co-founder Aman Sanger said in a post,

“It was a miss to not mention the Kimi base in our blog from the start. We’ll fix that for the next model.”

Trump began by expressing his admiration for the Bitcoin community, acknowledging its rapid growth and technological achievements.

“I stand before you today filled with respect and admiration for what the Bitcoin community has achieved. It’s incredible,” he said.

He drew parallels between the early days of Bitcoin and the steel industry a century ago, suggesting that cryptocurrency is still in its infancy and has vast potential for growth.

One of Trump’s main arguments for embracing Bitcoin is its position as a leader in the global financial system. He noted Bitcoin’s remarkable rise in value and its current status as one of the most valuable assets in the world.

“In just 15 years, Bitcoin has gone from merely an idea posted anonymously on an internet message board to being the ninth most valuable asset anywhere in the world. Can you believe that?” Trump stated.

This perspective underscores his belief in the strategic importance of Bitcoin in maintaining America’s economic leadership.

Trump also emphasized the need for America to stay ahead in the global race for technological supremacy.

“If we don’t embrace crypto and Bitcoin technology, China will, other countries will, they’ll dominate, and we cannot let China dominate,” he asserted.

This competitive edge, according to Trump, requires massive investments in infrastructure, including a significant increase in electricity production to support Bitcoin mining and other technological advancements.

One of the most striking aspects of Trump’s speech was his commitment to creating a favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrency. He pledged to dismantle what he described as the Biden administration’s “war on crypto.” Trump criticized the current administration for targeting the crypto industry through regulatory measures and financial restrictions.

“For three and a half years, the current administration has waged a war on crypto and Bitcoin like nobody’s ever seen before,” he said, vowing to end this approach if re-elected.

In a significant policy announcement, Trump declared his intention to accept campaign donations in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, making him the first major party nominee to do so. This move not only signals his support for the crypto community but also highlights his willingness to integrate digital currencies into mainstream political and economic activities.

Moreover, Trump outlined a comprehensive plan to support the crypto industry, including the creation of a Presidential Advisory Council for Bitcoin and Crypto to establish transparent regulatory guidance.

“Their task will be to design transparent regulatory guidance for the benefit of the entire industry, and they will get it done in 100 days,” he promised.

This approach aims to provide clarity and stability for the crypto industry, fostering an environment where innovation can thrive.

Trump also addressed the issue of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), explicitly stating his opposition to their development under his administration.

“There will never be a CBDC while I’m president of the United States,” he declared, emphasizing his commitment to preserving the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies and protecting individual financial sovereignty.

In a move to boost Bitcoin mining in the United States, Trump proposed transforming the country into a global Bitcoin mining powerhouse. He highlighted the federal government’s significant holdings of Bitcoin and pledged to maintain and grow this stockpile as a strategic national asset.

“As the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, United States of America, to keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” he announced.

Trump’s speech also touched on the broader economic implications of embracing cryptocurrency. He argued that supporting the crypto industry would lead to economic growth, job creation, and technological innovation.

“As Bitcoin and crypto will grow our economy, cement American financial dominance and strengthen our entire country, long into the future,” he said,

envisioning a future where America leads the world in crypto and blockchain technology.

*Note: This article is based on excerpts from former President Donald Trump’s speech published on YouTube – Firstpost Channel 

Photo: Screenshot from the video

The decision is part of the new Digital Marketplaces Act (DMA), which will come into force in March. The changes will allow users in the EU, European Economic Area and Switzerland to use many of Meta’s services without their data being shared between the different platforms.

Users will be able to use Facebook Messenger as a standalone service without having a Facebook account. Users whose Instagram and Facebook accounts are linked will be able to separate them and function as two separate social platforms.

Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming users will also be able to access these services without the information from their main Facebook accounts.

However, Meta stresses that this choice will result in a reduction in functionality.

The company says that users will be notified of the coming changes in the next few weeks.

The DMA pertains to six prominent technology firms, mainly based in the United States, including Meta, which are identified as “gatekeepers.”

Beyond overseeing the sharing of data among gatekeepers’ services, the DMA involves a comprehensive set of regulations designed to promote competition and establish a fair business environment for those reliant on gatekeepers for service provision.

Anticipated significant alterations in the European Union due to the DMA involve fostering interoperability among messaging services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with competitors, as well as requiring Apple to allow sideloading on iOS – Bernama.

The FTC reached a settlement with the company that includes enhanced protections for child gamers. Additionally, the tech giant was found to have failed to inform parents of its data collection policies.

Will misuse of personal data and breach of privacy become a new trend? Just a few days ago, the same US commission fined Amazon $25 million for violating children’s privacy with its voice assistant Alexa.

The FTC said Microsoft violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by failing to obtain proper parental consent and retaining personal data of children under 13 for longer than unreasonable.
for accounts created before 2021.

The law requires online services and websites targeting children to obtain parental consent and inform them of the personal data being collected about their child.

To access certain services Xbox users must create an account, with information such as full name, email address and date of birth collected.

Only after obtaining personal information, such as the child’s phone number, does Microsoft ask the parent for permission.

“Regrettably, we did not meet customer expectations and are committed to complying with the order to continue improving upon our safety measures,”

Microsoft’s Dave McCarthy, CVP of Xbox Player Services, wrote in an Xbox blog post.

As part of the settlement, Microsoft must also institute new safety protections for children. That includes maintaining a system to delete all personal data after two weeks if no parental consent is obtained.

In a statement, the European Data Protection Board announced the fine, commenting that it was imposed after an investigation into Facebook by the Irish Data Protection Commission, the main regulator that oversees Meta’s activities in Europe. Such action highlights uncertainty over how global businesses can legally transfer EU users’ data to servers abroad.

But that’s not all. Meta has been ordered to stop processing personal data of European users in the US within six months.

“Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred is huge. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizations that serious breaches have far-reaching consequences.”

commented Andrea Jelinek, Chair of the European Data Protection Board.

In her view, the company’s breach is very serious as it relates to transmissions that are systematic, repetitive and continuous.

The EU regulatory body said the processing and storage of personal data in the United States violates a signed European data protection law known as the General Data Protection Regulation.

This is the largest fine ever imposed under the GDPR. The previous record of €746 million ($805.7 million) was imposed on Amazon (AMZN) in 2021.

The VMware University Research Fund has committed to awarding a U.S. $1.5 million grant to attract top researchers and scientists to the faculty, in support of the 10-year plan signed by ETH Zurich, EPFL, and the Bulgarian government. This founding grant aims to establish and develop the INSAIT faculty, as well as attract Ph.D. & MSc students for research in in diverse areas of computer science and systems engineering, including AI, security, storage and networking.

The strategic partnership aims to attract high calibre talent to the world-class faculty and train the next generation of technology researchers and engineers

Diana Stefanova, VMware VP of Regional Site Strategy says:

“For VMware, this is an investment in new technologies research, consistent with our innovation strategy. It is also a unique opportunity to increase the pool of key talent in Central and Eastern Europe.”

In addition to the financial support, VMware’s more than 1800 engineers in Bulgaria are uniquely positioned to help support the institute with hands-on experience in cloud, networking, computing, and security. The collaboration of renowned scientists with PhD and Masters students, supported by big tech capabilities, has the potential to lead to groundbreaking findings in critical areas, such as private trustworthy AI, programmable networks and the data economy.

Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMware, commented:

“There is an intrinsic link between innovation and talent. As an organization that has a culture of innovation, we have seen first-hand how important it is to invest and nurture great minds and ideas. This relationship with INSAIT is another example of our global commitment to developing tech talent. It is especially relevant to VMware in Bulgaria given our world-class R&D operations there, which we are keen to keep well supplied with the best minds in technology.”

The focus of the relationship is to invest in developing world-class talent. Establishing unique technological facilities helps contribute to new collaborative research, for the benefit of the entire technology ecosystem.

Prof. Martin Vechev, Chair of INSAIT Supervisory Board said:

“As a global technological leader VMware understands the importance of investing in talent and promoting inclusive economic growth and recovery. Attracting and nurturing the top minds in turn helps with the democratization of science and solving some of the hardest challenges.”

For more than 15 years the VMware Academic Program has been supporting the advancement of academic research and teaching in universities and institutions in the United States and around the world. This extension of close collaboration with institutes such as INSAIT aims to increase the diversity of systems research people, ideas, and advances across the globe.

In this latest endeavour, VMware and INSAIT will continue to drive the program’s goals of attracting high-quality and diverse talent and creating state of the art educational programs. In this way, providing attractive career perspectives and globally competitive salaries in a flourishing industry encourages top young talent and improves local economic and social opportunities.

This information was shared with the U.S. government in recent months, who have shared the information with foreign partners, said a U.S. official. On Monday Symantec, a division of chipmaker Broadcom published its research about the tool, which it calls Daxin. Clayton Romans, associate director with the U.S. Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said:

“It’s something we haven’t seen before. This is the exact type of information we’re hoping to receive.”

What CISA highlighted was Symantec’s membership in a joint public-private cybersecurity information sharing partnership, known as the JCDC, alongside the new research paper. The Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative includes the FBI and National Security Agency, and several U.S. technology companies that share intelligence about active cyberattacks with one another.

Chinese officials have previously said China is also a victim of hacking and opposes all forms of cyberattacks. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. Neil Jenkins, chief analytics officer at the Cyber Threat Alliance, said:

“The capabilities of this malware are remarkable and would be extremely difficult to detect without this public research.”

Moreover, according to Vikram Thakur, a technical director at Symantec, the company’s attribution to China is based on instances where components of Daxin were combined with other known, Chinese-linked computer hacker infrastructure or cyberattacks.

Symantec researchers commented the discovery of Daxin was noteworthy because of the scale of the intrusions and the advanced nature of the tool. The research report reads:

“The most recent known attacks involving Daxin occurred in November 2021. Daxin’s capabilities suggest the attackers invested significant effort into developing communication techniques that can blend in unseen with normal network traffic.”

Daxin’s victims included high-level, non-Western government agencies in Asia and Africa, including Ministries of Justice, Thakur added.

“Daxin can be controlled from anywhere in the world once a computer is actually infected. That’s what raises the bar from malware that we see coming out of groups operating from China.”

Romans said he did not know of affected organizations in the United States, but there were infections all around the globe, which the U.S. government was aiming to notify, concluded Reuters.

Aleph said Twitter’s stake buy would help the company expand its educational tech platform. The company did not reveal any financial terms of the investment.

Aleph counts Meta Platforms Inc, Spotify Technology SA and Microsoft Corp-owned LinkedIn among its customers.

Brands have continued to advertise online, despite wide-ranging supply chain disruptions that delayed products from reaching shelves and a user privacy clampdown by Apple Inc

Aleph was valued at $2 billion last year after private equity firm CVC Capital Partners bought a stake worth $470 million.

Aleph had confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering in October.

On December 9 Meta opened access to its virtual reality (VR) platform Horizon Worlds for users in the United States and Canada.

This is the first attempt at releasing a product since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta in October and is in line with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the “metaverse,” a VR world where you can meet others in avatar form. The tester posted in the official Horizon Worlds group on Facebook earlier this month, as quoted by The Verge:

“Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense. Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behaviour which made me feel isolated.”

In an interview with The Verge, Vivek Sharma, Meta’s Vice President of Horizon, told the publication the incident was “absolutely unfortunate”.

Sharma added that after Meta reviewed the incident, the company determined that the beta tester did not use the safety features built into Horizon Worlds, which include the ability to block someone from interacting with you.

What is more, the bill also concerns all political advertising which social media companies perform, such as how widely ads are displayed, targeting with third parties, and other criteria used to determine who will display them.

All companies which do not comply can be fined as much as 5% of the world’s annual revenue which is higher than the EU fine for privacy disturbance.

As reported by EU policymakers, the new rule is supposed to invalidate what they describe as a negative impact on free elections and political debate due to targeted advertising. According to them, such advertisements can polarize the political debate. Researchers, however, say that they have been used to target specific voter groups to discourage them from turning out to vote. Bella Jouroba, who is a Vice-President of the European Commission, stated:

“Confidential data that people decide to share with friends on social media cannot be used to target friends for political purposes, especially online.”

The beginning of the EU proposal may take months or even years over its content. In order to become a law, it must be affirmed by both the European Council, which represents the 27 governments of the block, and the European Parliament, which is directly elected.

This announcement is in the midst of a new wave of the biggest technological regulations of a generation.

Both EU member states and MPs are currently working on separate legislation that will impose strict new content moderation and preemptive competition rules on large tech companies, with the goal of completing and passing them early next year. Similar rules are being considered in the United Kingdom, and other proposals aimed at curbing major tech companies are being considered in the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

A cache of Facebook internal documents, published by The Wall Street Journal, was cited by Jourova on Thursday. The aim was to serve as an example  of all the risks that the bill is trying to address. In the United States, legislation is already trying to reduce the power of major tech companies and is starting to gain momentum in Congress.

The actual subject of a debate is online political advertising. It became a really powerful tool that makes reaching hard-to-find voters in the United States, EU and elsewhere easier.  Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, foreign groups, including some with the support of the Russian government, have used social media ads to upset voters and disrupt political debates. Has also been criticized.

For last year’s elections, tech companies took different kinds of actions. Google at Alphabet Inc., for example, has banned advertisers from targeting political messages based on user interests inferred from browsing or search history. Twitter Inc. completely stopped accepting most political ads because “I think political reach should be earned, not purchased.” The company also said it has restricted and removed micro-targeting from cause-based advertising.

Facebook of Meta Platforms Inc. decided to suspend political advertising on US platforms during the period before and after the election. The bill was supported by some tech activists. Howeverm they said that they hope the bill will be expanded to outlaw more forms of microtargeting ads for political purposes.