Musk says Twitter will start manually authenticating accounts starting next week, with blue check marks for people, gold for companies, and gray for governments (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Musk says Twitter will start manually authenticating accounts starting next week, with blue check marks for people, gold for companies, and gray for governments  —  Elon Musk says that Twitter’s check mark program could return on Friday, December 2nd, with a new procedure to verify individual identities …

IMF calls for more crypto regulation in Africa, says 25% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa have regulated crypto and two-thirds have imposed some restrictions (Ana Paula Pereira/Cointelegraph)

Ana Paula Pereira / Cointelegraph: IMF calls for more crypto regulation in Africa, says 25% of countries in sub-Saharan Africa have regulated crypto and two-thirds have imposed some restrictions  —  FTX’s collapse is one of the reasons why countries in the region should adopt regulation, noted the monetary fund.  —  120 Total views

Germany-based Temedica, which offers a health data insight service to pharma companies, raised a €25M Series B extension, bringing its total Series B to €42M (Dan Taylor/Tech.eu)

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu: Germany-based Temedica, which offers a health data insight service to pharma companies, raised a €25M Series B extension, bringing its total Series B to €42M  —  Aimed at offering a complete and total understanding of medical patient care realities, Munich-based Temedica …

Twitter plans to restore next week suspended accounts that haven’t “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”, after 72.4% of 3M+ voted yes in Musk’s poll (Taylor Lorenz/Washington Post)

Taylor Lorenz / Washington Post: Twitter plans to restore next week suspended accounts that haven’t “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”, after 72.4% of 3M+ voted yes in Musk’s poll  —  The Twitter chief says he will reinstate accounts suspended for harassment, abuse and misinformation beginning next week.

Google’s Project Zero reported five security flaws in devices with Mali GPUs in the summer, but Samsung, Xiaomi, Google, and others are yet to release patches (Kris Holt/Engadget)

Kris Holt / Engadget: Google’s Project Zero reported five security flaws in devices with Mali GPUs in the summer, but Samsung, Xiaomi, Google, and others are yet to release patches  —  Google has disclosed several security flaws for phones that have Mali GPUs, such as those with Exynos chipsets.

Mercedes plans to charge $1,200 per year for “Acceleration Increase” in its EVs; Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM have all trialed similar subscription-based features (Luke Plunkett/Kotaku)

Luke Plunkett / Kotaku: Mercedes plans to charge $1,200 per year for “Acceleration Increase” in its EVs; Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM have all trialed similar subscription-based features  —  Mercedes are charging $1200 a year for an “Acceleration Increase”  —  For a few years now some car companies …

ConsenSys says it collects user data related to its on-chain wallet service MetaMask, following a similar announcement by decentralized exchange Uniswap (Parikshit Mishra/CoinDesk)

Parikshit Mishra / CoinDesk: ConsenSys says it collects user data related to its on-chain wallet service MetaMask, following a similar announcement by decentralized exchange Uniswap  —  The firm said when using Infura as an RPC on MetaMask, a user’s IP address and wallet address information would also be collected.

Sources: Elon Musk disbands Twitter’s Brussels team, sparking compliance concern among EU officials after policy executives departed the small but vital office (Financial Times)

Financial Times: Sources: Elon Musk disbands Twitter’s Brussels team, sparking compliance concern among EU officials after policy executives departed the small but vital office  —  Digital policy executives’ departure elicits unease over adherence to EU rules on disinformation and hate speech

Elon Musk says Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta is now available on request to anyone in North America who has paid for the $15,000 feature (Jon Porter/The Verge)

Jon Porter / The Verge: Elon Musk says Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta is now available on request to anyone in North America who has paid for the $15,000 feature  —  Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” Beta, which has been gradually rolling out over the past couple of years, is now available to anyone who’s paid for the […]

Mark Cuban’s interactive streaming app Fireside acquires streaming platform Stremium and plans to launch on smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and other devices (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Mark Cuban’s interactive streaming app Fireside acquires streaming platform Stremium and plans to launch on smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and other devices  —  Mark Cuban-backed streaming app Fireside, which today offers podcasters and other creators a way to host interactive …

Microsoft says hackers used vulnerabilities in Boa web server, discontinued in 2005 but pervasive across IoT devices, to target the Indian power sector (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Microsoft says hackers used vulnerabilities in Boa web server, discontinued in 2005 but pervasive across IoT devices, to target the Indian power sector  —  Microsoft said today that security vulnerabilities found to impact a web server discontinued since 2005 have been used to target and compromise organizations in the energy sector.

Sources: Amazon plans to spend $1B+ per year to produce and release movies for theaters, starting with a few releases in 2023, and eventually 12 to 15 annually (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Sources: Amazon plans to spend $1B+ per year to produce and release movies for theaters, starting with a few releases in 2023, and eventually 12 to 15 annually  —  Amazon.com Inc. plans to spend more than $1 billion a year to produce movies that it will release in theaters …

Teresa Gao named 2024 Mitchell Scholar

MIT senior Teresa Gao has been named one of the 12 winners of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship’s Class of 2024. After graduating next spring with a double major in computer science and engineering as well as brain and cognitive sciences, she will study augmented and virtual reality at Trinity College Dublin. Gao is the […]

The UK’s National Audit Office says a 2% digital services tax on the gross revenue of Amazon, Apple, and other US giants reaped almost £360M in its first year (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)

Mark Sweney / The Guardian: The UK’s National Audit Office says a 2% digital services tax on the gross revenue of Amazon, Apple, and other US giants reaped almost £360M in its first year  —  Figure raised exceeds what most of the digital businesses have been paying in UK corporation tax

Amazon’s Twitch makes changes to address child predation concerns, including mandatory phone verification and improving account termination for users under 13 (Cecilia D’Anastasio/Bloomberg)

Cecilia D’Anastasio / Bloomberg: Amazon’s Twitch makes changes to address child predation concerns, including mandatory phone verification and improving account termination for users under 13  —  Twitch, the video game livestreaming site popular with teens and kids, announced changes it’s making on the platform to increase safety …

Baidu EVP Dou Shen downplays the impact of US semiconductor restrictions, after the company stockpiled parts, and says its AI business would benefit long term (Shen Lu/Wall Street Journal)

Shen Lu / Wall Street Journal: Baidu EVP Dou Shen downplays the impact of US semiconductor restrictions, after the company stockpiled parts, and says its AI business would benefit long term  —  Executive says the search-engine giant’s AI and cloud businesses don’t rely heavily on chips restricted by the U.S.

A simpler path to better computer vision

Before a machine-learning model can complete a task, such as identifying cancer in medical images, the model must be trained. Training image classification models typically involves showing the model millions of example images gathered into a massive dataset. However, using real image data can raise practical and ethical concerns: The images could run afoul of […]

A far-sighted approach to machine learning

Picture two teams squaring off on a football field. The players can cooperate to achieve an objective, and compete against other players with conflicting interests. That’s how the game works. Creating artificial intelligence agents that can learn to compete and cooperate as effectively as humans remains a thorny problem. A key challenge is enabling AI […]

Interviews and messages show how SBF used PACs, nonprofits, and consulting firms to woo politicians, regulators, and others to support his crypto goals (New York Times)

New York Times: Interviews and messages show how SBF used PACs, nonprofits, and consulting firms to woo politicians, regulators, and others to support his crypto goals  —  In just three years, the FTX co-founder built a massive operation to woo politicians, regulators and nonprofits to support his crypto goals.

Sources: Sequoia apologized to its fund investors for the $150M it lost on FTX and told them it would improve its due diligence process on future investments (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)

Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Sequoia apologized to its fund investors for the $150M it lost on FTX and told them it would improve its due diligence process on future investments  —  Venture-capital firm tells fund investors that it will improve due diligence on future investments after $150 million loss on crypto exchange

US Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Durbin, and Tina Smith ask Fidelity to reconsider its upcoming Bitcoin 401(k) offerings announced in April 2022 (Camomile Shumba/CoinDesk)

Camomile Shumba / CoinDesk: US Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Durbin, and Tina Smith ask Fidelity to reconsider its upcoming Bitcoin 401(k) offerings announced in April 2022  —  The asset management giant said in April it would offer retail investors the option to put bitcoin in their 401(k) accounts at some point this year.