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February 2, 2026, 9:45 AM
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memeorandum
WeSmirchTop News
| Wall Street Journal: |
AI companies are outbidding Apple, long dominant in the electronics supply chain, for chips, memory, glass fiber, and more, as suppliers gain leverage on prices — Parts for iPhones to cost more owing to surging demand from AI companies — Apple has dominated the electronics supply chain for years.
More: 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Tom's Guide, The Mac Observer, SupplyChainBrain, MacRumors, Digital Trends, and Philip Elmer‑DeWitt. Forums: MacRumors Forums
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple's executives question if it has the right ingredients to win the AI era, new MacBook Pros are coming, and Apple mulls a clamshell foldable iPhone — Apple's blockbuster holiday quarter was impressive — but it shouldn't give cover to avoid an AI reckoning.
More: Macworld, AppleInsider, T3, PCMag, iPhone in Canada, Tom's Guide, 9to5Mac, 9to5Mac, GameRevolution, The Mac Observer, Moneycontrol, Digital Trends, 9to5Mac, Phandroid, iLounge, Trusted Reviews, Sam Lover, Cult of Mac, The Indian Express, Appleosophy, Hypebeast, Business Standard, SamMobile, The Hans India, Digit, Android Authority, Mashable, SammyGuru, Livemint, MacDailyNews, GSMArena.com, iClarified, iClarified, Wccftech, WiFi Planet, Digital Trends, Engadget, Gizmodo, iPhone in Canada, MacRumors, The Mac Observer, iClarified, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, Spyglass, Forbes, AppleInsider, and MacRumors
X: @lanceulanoff, @samsheffer, @samsheffer, @markgurman, @markgurman, and @markgurman. LinkedIn: Neal Riley
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
| Washington Post: |
Inside Elon Musk's bet to hook X users that turned Grok into a porn generator; sources say xAI's AI safety team was just two or three people for most of 2025 — Under pressure to boost its popularity, Elon Musk's xAI loosened its guardrails and relaxed controls on sexual content, setting off internal concern.
Bluesky: @metacurity.com, @mistyksnow, and @justinhendrix
| Jin Yu Young / New York Times: |
More: Engadget, TechCrunch, Associated Press, Business Today, Social Media Today, Livemint, Nairametrics, Reuters, and Bloomberg
| Bloomberg: |
Sources: SpaceX is in advanced talks to combine with xAI and they have informed some of their investors, as Elon Musk moves quickly to consolidate his empire — Elon Musk is in advanced talks to combine SpaceX with xAI, according to people familiar with the matter, as the billionaire moves quickly to consolidate his empire.
More: Crypto Briefing and DigiTimes
X: @highyieldharry, @stevehou, @compound248, and @junkbondanalyst
| Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post: |
SEC complaint: a whistleblower alleges Google broke its ethics rules in 2024 to help an Israeli military contractor use AI to analyze drone surveillance video — A whistleblower complaint filed with the SEC claims that Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor apply AI to drone surveillance video.
More: Wall Street Journal and Jerusalem Post
X: @william_fitz, @assalrad, @leloveluck, @dropsitenews, and @john_hudson. Bluesky: @justinhendrix. Forums: Hacker News
| Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter: |
TikTok US says it has resolved technical issues caused by an Oracle data center outage; features like posting and view counts were impacted over the past week — The outage happened just days after U.S. companies, including Oracle, assumed control of the domestic operations of the video platform.
More: TikTok USDS JV, Fox News, DatacenterDynamics, The Register, Engadget, PCMag, TechRadar, PetaPixel, Forbes, and Tech in Asia. X: @tiktokusdsjv
| Luke James / Tom's Hardware: |
OpenSourceMalware: 230+ malicious OpenClaw extensions, posing as crypto trading automation tools to steal user info, were uploaded to ClawHub since January 27 — Or is that Moltbot, or Clawdbot? I can't keep up. … Security researchers are warning that the growing ecosystem around 'OpenClaw …
More: OpenSourceMalware.com, CNBC, Koi, and CyberInsider
| Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: |
Anthropic researchers detail “disempowerment patterns” in AI assistant interactions where AI potentially distorts a user's reality, beliefs, or actions — At this point, we've all heard plenty of stories about AI chatbots leading users to harmful actions, harmful beliefs, or simply incorrect information.
More: arXiv.org, Digit, The Indian Express, Futurism, and Anthropic
X: @mrinanksharma, @chaos2cured, @ryan_t_lowe, @fu_joehudson, @maxsloef, @alexhillman, @gailcweiner, @saffronhuang, @thedataroom, @russellbrandom, @genai_is_real, @cryptopunk7213, @jankulveit, @moleh1ll, @danshipper, @1a3orn, @jonnym1ller, @macbrennan_cc, @ai_for_success, @mattbeane, @roanoke_gal, @infinitereign88, @missmi1973, @ellgood, @barthazian, @dave_bernardi, @m47429m, @justenmichel, @kahntweets, @kindkristin, and @anthropicai. Forums: Ars OpenForum
| Reuters: |
Alibaba plans to spend ~$431M in a Lunar New Year campaign starting February 6 to attract users to its Qwen AI app, above Tencent's ~$143.7M and Baidu's ~$71.8M — Alibaba (9988.HK) said on Monday it will spend 3 billion yuan ($431 million) to attract users to its Qwen AI app during the Lunar … | @xai: |
xAI rolls out Grok Imagine 1.0, which it says can generate 720p 10-second videos with better audio, and says Imagine generated 1.245B videos in the past 30 days — Introducing Grok Imagine 1.0, our biggest leap yet. 1.0 unlocks 10-second videos, 720p resolution, and dramatically better audio. Imagine has generated 1.245 billion videos in the last 30 days alone. Try it now: https://grok.com/imagine [video]
More: Livemint and TestingCatalog
X: @x, @rafsoh, @ninzo121, @xai, @andrewcurran_, @premiumbusiness, @xai, and @elonmusk
| New York Times: |
China's desire to lead in cutting-edge AI is bumping against its aim to control it; Zhipu warned IPO investors about the burden of complying with 6+ AI rules — Beijing wants to lead the world in developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence, but it also wants companies to adhere to an increasingly complex set of rules.| Choi Jeong-yoon / The Korea Herald: |
Seoul plans to integrate AI chatbot Maeumi into its suicide prevention hotline, offering immediate emotional support before a human counselor connects — AI chatbot, community-based counselors to bolster access to mental health support — Seoul is confronting persistent suicide pressures … | Sybille de La Hamaide / Reuters: |
French IT company Capgemini plans to sell its US subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions, after French lawmakers asked about its contract with US agency ICE — French IT company Capgemini (CAPP.PA) will sell its U.S. subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions, it said on Sunday …
More: Capgemini, BBC, Le Monde, The Register, Verdict, Agence France-Presse, Gizmodo, France 24, Associated Press, Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance
| Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: |
AI conferences have rushed to restrict the use of LLMs for writing and reviewing research papers in recent months after being flooded with AI-generated slop — Conferences restrict use of LLMs after surge of low-quality AI-generated papers and reviews — Artificial intelligence researchers … Sponsor Posts
Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work — Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work — Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 14th and 15th November 2026 from 06.00 AM to 07:00 AM IST for Zoho Payments — Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled …
Planned India Data Center Maintenance on 14th and 15th November 2026 from 06.00 AM to 07:00 AM IST for Zoho Payments — Dear customers,Our bi-annual infrastructure maintenance for our India Data Center is scheduled …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser — Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox. Use local models or your preferred AI provider. Get started free.
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser — Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox. Use local models or your preferred AI provider. Get started free.Featured Podcasts
The Upstarts Podcast:
The $1.4B Startup Deciding What You See When You Shop Online | Sequen's Zoë Weil
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Great Chat:
Too soon to call it a vibe shift?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Big Technology Podcast:
Storm Clouds Ahead For Apple?, Debating Amazon's Bee Frontier, AI as UI
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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Machine Gods:
Jensen Huang's Nvidiotic Spy Scandal + Can Dems Pass AI Regulation?
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
Encore: Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won't Forever)
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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Invest Like the Best:
Zach Reitano - Building Ro and Why Healthcare Should Be 50% of GDP
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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