Tootfinder

"Wertheimer argues that the famous Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act--which protects companies from liability for content posted by users to their websites--needs to be reinterpreted to exclude “platforms that actively promote content using reinforcement learning-based recommendation algorithms.”"
(Original title: Platform Temperance)

Platform Temperance
Notes on a new wave of the Techlash

🖭 VIRE: A global data platform to better understand viruses
#virus

VIRE: A global data platform to better understand viruses
Researchers have developed VIRE, a database that integrates approximately 1.7 million viral genomes derived from more than 100,000 metagenomes worldwide. Metagenomic data is obtained by comprehensively sequencing all DNA present in an environment. This approach enables the recovery of genomic information from microorganisms and viruses that cannot be cultured in the laboratory.

One does not simply parse IFWI.
https://github.com/platform-system-interface/intel_fw/issues/80

IFWI · Issue #80 · platform-system-interface/intel_fw
Integrated Firmware Image see https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/software-security-guidance/resources/key-usage-in-integrated-firmware-images.html document and sup...

Lettuce Financial, which offers an accounting, payroll, benefits, and tax compliance service for one-person businesses, raised $28M led by Zeev (Elaine Pofeldt/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepo…

Lettuce Financial, A Fin-Tech Platform Targeting Solopreneurs, Raises $28 Million And Acquires A Benefits Startup
Lettuce is expanding its AI-powered operating system and expects to offer improved health benefits through the acquisition of Besolo.

From the neoclassical station entrance
— with its massive emerald-green sliding steel doors, pyramid-like roof and domed ceiling
— to the wide concrete staircases leading down to the cool, musty underground platform and tracks, the station exudes a peculiar mix of mystery and urban decay.
“Be careful, there’s iron dust, mud and oil everywhere,” says Mamoru Iwai,
Keisei Ueno Station’s stationmaster and my guide inside Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station,

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
A sealed 1930s subway platform beneath Shimbashi Station still holds traces of what the capital looked like before the war.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Dilated Peoples:
🎵 The Platform
#DilatedPeoples
https://djdime.bandcamp.com/track/dilated-peoples-the-platform-remix-alchemist
https://open.spotify.com/track/1BbYPTXP9VwBWm44MqLyHK

Canva launches a foundational design model that generates editable layered designs, expands Canva AI, makes Affinity free for all users, and more (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/30/canva-launches-its-own-desig…

Canva launches its own design model, adds new AI features to the platform | TechCrunch
Canva is launching new features like Forms and email design, and it makes Affinity free for all users.

Laat de feiten regeren. Word nu Vriend van Investico.
https://donaties.platform-investico.nl/?p=NAV
> Antidemocratische krachten en cynische politici zijn in opkomst. Feitenvrije politiek bedreigt onze vrijheid. Steun onafhankelijke onderzoeksjournalistiek en laat de feiten…

I think I made this shitpost in 2018 and it still true today.
When a closed, limited, explorative App Store is on an open platform it can’t compete. For some reason.

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-11-30/national/socialAffairs/Coupang-data-breach-affecting-virtually-every-user-draws-apology-from-CEO/2466421
Korea continue…

Coupang data breach affecting virtually every user draws apology from CEO
A major vulnerability in the database of popular online shopping platform Coupang allowed an intruder to access the personal information of more than 30 million users without a valid login, with CEO Park Dae-joon offering an apology to the public.

from my link log —
Turning an old Amazon Kindle into a eink development platform.
https://blog.lidskialf.net/2021/02/08/turning-an-old-kindle-into-a-eink-development-platform/
saved 2021-02-09

Turning an old Amazon Kindle into a eink development platform
I fancied getting an eink screen to use for future projects. I bought a wee one with a raspberry pi “hat” attached. However, I realised later that I could maybe just re-purpose an old A…

I saw a person with a huge hook in their hand on the platform. Then I realized it's an umbrella handle.

Omar Fateh,
the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist,
is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis
and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey.
Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate.
Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization,
raising the minimum wage
and reforming how the city handles public safety.
“…

“Mamdani of the Midwest”: Meet Omar Fateh. Could He Be the Next Mayor of Minneapolis?
Omar Fateh, the son of Somali immigrants and a democratic socialist, is a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Minneapolis and seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey. Fateh made history in 2020 by becoming the first Muslim and first Somali American to be elected to Minnesota’s state Senate. Fateh has run for mayor on a platform advocating for rent stabilization, raising the minimum wage and reforming how the city handles public safety. “Minneapolis can have a different kind of politics,…

inploid: Inploid: an online social Q&A platform
Inploid is a social question & answer website in Turkish. Users can follow others and see their questions and answers on the main page. Each user is associated with a reputability score which is influenced by feedback of others about questions and answers of the user. Each user can also specify interest in topics. The data is crawled in June 2017 and consist of 39,749 nodes and 57,276 directed links between them. In addition, for …

Human Interest, a 401(k) platform for SMBs that aims to cut down on administrative work, raised $100M at a $3B post-money valuation, up from $1.3B in 2024 (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/31/401k-human-interest

Scoop: 401(k) platform Human Interest now worth $3 billion
The $100 million raise comes just days after HI sued rival Guideline.

Lachlan Murdoch says Tubi hit profitability for the first time during the past quarter, its revenue grew 27% YoY, and viewing time rose 18% YoY (Max Goldbart/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/10/fox-results-tubi-profitability-lachlan-murdoch-12366026…

Fox Streamer Tubi Turns Profit Earlier Than Expected, Lachlan Murdoch Reveals On First Results Call Since Family Settlement Drama
Today's Fox Q1 Results saw Tubi hit profit, Lachlan Murdoch reveals, which came earlier than expected for the AVoD platform.

Hat jemand von euch Erfahrung mit https://app.transkribus.org/ ? lohnt sich das? meine wenigen Kostenlosen Tests sagen eher nicht.
Andere KIs die gut alte Kirchenbücher analysieren können?

Transkribus
AI-powered platform for text recognition and document analysis

A slice of London?

#China 's government takes up to 35% of small #business prepaid revenue:
"At a fitness center...Mr. Liu was paying for an annual gym membership by scanning a QR code...prominently marked with 'Trusted Consumption Code of Prepaid Consumption Credit Supervision Platform'.
.…

Am I supposed to feel sympathy when someone keeps all their data on a single platform's "free" services & then loses access arbitrarily and has no access to "their" data?
I can certainly join them in anger again the #platform but, there really needs to be more awareness of the risks of becoming so dependent on companies and the need to keep control of your

Free Software and Platform Regulation
The impact of the Digital Market Act on Free Software
https://media.ccc.de/v/2025-11-15-free-software-and-platform-regulation

As announced, I have tagged a prerelease yesterday that oofers the basic me_cleaner capabilities.
Today, I have documented some architecture and design considerations:
https://github.com/platform-system-interface/intel_fw/pull/77
Testers welcome. If you ru…

document architecture and design considerations by orangecms · Pull Request #77 · platform-system-interface/intel_fw

On my way from Ansbach to #39c3. See you soon!
After 15 years of Chaos events, I've forgotten my DECT phone for the first time 🙈
So this year I'm trying out @… SIP and can be reached at 2120.

2026 Web Engines Hackfest
https://webengineshackfest.org/

Electron-Nerv: App zeigt, welche Programme mit macOS Tahoe Probleme machen
Slack, Discord und viele andere Cross-Platform-Apps nutzen das Electron-Framework. Das Problem: Ein Bug macht sie zu macOS 26 inkompatibel. Ein Prüftool hilft.

Headed to Vienna via train. We were unsure where on the platform for our carriage. To the horror a of my 27 & 29 year olds, I asked an OBB agent. Now we are waiting in the approximate correct place on the platform.
A) this info should be more accessible/ prominent
B) I worry a bit about my kids. Like it’s worth bothering someone to get it right.

I often disagree with Carville, but I think he nails it here. 🎯https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/opinion/democrats-platform-economic-rage.html?unlocked_article_code=1.308.pyNw.LEIZRTDElS_g&smid=u…

Opinion | James Carville: Out With Woke. In With Rage.
Democrats also have to shed the last vestiges of woke.

I do love hanging around on a social platform where there simply isn’t any value in all this shit
https://www.theverge.com/news/809349/meta-mark-zuckerberg-ai-social-feeds-q3-2025-earnings

Mark Zuckerberg is excited to add more AI content to all your social feeds
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says AI will add a “huge corpus of content” to social media as the technology makes content easier to create and edit.

inploid: Inploid: an online social Q&A platform
Inploid is a social question & answer website in Turkish. Users can follow others and see their questions and answers on the main page. Each user is associated with a reputability score which is influenced by feedback of others about questions and answers of the user. Each user can also specify interest in topics. The data is crawled in June 2017 and consist of 39,749 nodes and 57,276 directed links between them. In addition, for …

Das US-Unternehmen #Zanskar hat mit „Big Blind“ in Nevada das erste kommerziell nutzbare, "blinde" #Geothermie-System seit über 30 Jahren entdeckt.
Die KI-gestützte Erkundung ermöglichte Bohrungen, die bereits in 2.700 Metern Tiefe ein heißes, durchlässiges Reservoir aufzeigten. D…

Zanskar Reveals ‘Big Blind’ - The Discovery of the First Blind Geothermal System in the U.S. by Industry in Over 30 Years
Located in the western Nevada desert, ‘Big Blind’ is Zanskar’s third geothermal discovery in the past year alone, demonstrating the speed and repeatability of its AI-native platform

not on my list of expected developments: Ex-Intel boss Gelsinger now leads a #Christian #AI company
"We’re not trying to take a theological position: we’re building a technology platform. 🧐"

MISP core format has been updated with a new field to track first-time publication, and a new IETF Internet-Draft has been published.
This minor, fully backward-compatible addition reinforces the long-term stability and extensibility of the MISP standard format.
#cti #opensource

https://keepandroidopen.org/

After a fun weekend and way too little sleep for whatever reason (lolsiez), I've already pushed out a bunch more PRs for https://github.com/platform-system-interface/intel_fw including docs.
I will probably get initial ME cleaning done and tag a new prerelease today. All…

GitHub - platform-system-interface/intel_fw: Modern Intel Firmware Tool and Library
Modern Intel Firmware Tool and Library. Contribute to platform-system-interface/intel_fw development by creating an account on GitHub.

I would love for #neato to turn this into a hackable platform. Open source the firmware. Make it possible for me to sidelode my own. Let the community build something positive out of this.

🌞 Tiny engine runs hotter than the sun to probe the frontiers of thermodynamics
#physics

Tiny engine runs hotter than the sun to probe the frontiers of thermodynamics
Scientists have created the world's hottest engine running at temperatures hotter than those reached in the sun's core. The team from King's College London and collaborators believe their platform could provide an unparalleled understanding of the laws of thermodynamics on a small scale, and provide the foundation for a new, efficient way to compute how proteins fold—the subject of last year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

There are a lot of trade-offs with fossil fuel use that we definitely don't discuss enough. #PiperAlpha was the really big one I recall as a kid, but it was just the latest in a whole succession of oil platform accidents that cost a lot of lives and suffering in the North Sea. And then there was #DeepWaterHorizon.
And that's quite apart from the climate costs.
You wonder how many of these happen that we don't hear about too.
This is a good reminder.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/28/the-piper-alpha-oil-rig-exploded-and-collapsed-and-i-made-a-desperate-175ft-jump-into-the-sea

„Nicole“ by Prowler
Platform: Amiga
Released: 7 February 2010
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 1st in the Datastorm 2010 Amiga Graphics competition
#GFX_Prowler #YR_2010 #PF_Amiga

Starting in a few minutes: It’s :qgis: QGIS Open Day today! 🎉 Don’t miss our two awesome talks. Grab all links and info on the wiki: #QGIS

QOD November 2025
QGIS is a free, open source, cross platform (lin/win/mac) geographical information system (GIS) - qgis/QGIS

Is it#DNS?
Microsoft Azure outage: Heathrow, Xbox and Minecraft among sites down
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3rj45n4x5eo

Microsoft Azure outage: Websites come back online
Microsoft 365 and its Azure cloud computing platform were hit with DNS issues, similar to the recent AWS outage.

For railway enthusiasts and ruin hunters alike,
these so-called "phantom stations" that have ceased service
offer a glimpse into Tokyo’s past.
Hidden from daily view and often closed to the public, they mark moments of transition in the capital’s transit history
— from the early years of railway and subway construction to the rapid postwar rebuild.
More than curiosities, they stand as weathered industrial records of how Tokyo has expanded, reconfigur…

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
A sealed 1930s subway platform beneath Shimbashi Station still holds traces of what the capital looked like before the war.

From ⁨⁨⁨⁨⁨#AnnafromUkraine⁩⁩⁩⁩⁩ @AnnafromUkraine@youtube.com
🧵 👇
BLACK SEA ON FIRE: RUSSIA’S SHADOW FLEET EXPLODED Vlog 1242: War in #Ukraine
Damage of the launch platform on #Russia`s <…

Sources: bids for GroqCloud, Groq's AI inference platform, are expected to exceed $1B after Nvidia's $20B non-exclusive licensing agreement with Groq (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/nvidia-

STM32MP2 update: I have logging on the A35 cores via the UART on the M33!
It took a bit of work to get the IPC channels up and running (using the IPCC to handshake a buffer in SRAM2) but now you can just log by invoking g_log("foo") like you could anywhere else in my platform and it a) goes to the right place and b) is tagged with the core ID.

WPP rolls out WPP Open Pro, a self-serve version of WPP Open, its AI-powered marketing platform that helps marketers build campaigns and develop creative assets (Kendra Barnett/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/agencies/wpp-launch…

WPP Launches a Self-Serve Version of Its AI Platform To Court Small Biz Dollars
British advertising titan WPP is rolling out a self-serve version of WPP Open, its AI marketing platform. 

There is a website now inforning about upcoming changes in #Android developer policies.
You know what to do.
https://keepandroidopen.org/
Read, act, and boost! 🔁

Westbound Railway Platform, 9:58am
Late autumn gusts, a
Long strand of floating toilet
Paper, and sunlight.
#haiku

Monumental 🪦
纪念 🪦
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

The US CBP signs a two-year deal with AI logistics company Altana, and will use its platform for real-time trade enforcement, forced labor detection, and more (Mackenzie Weinger/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/31/cbp-altana-ai-trade

Exclusive: CBP taps Altana's AI for trade enforcement
Private firms and federal agencies are looking for ways to navigate supply-chain uncertainty.

Even before Microsoft Azure had a global failure this week,
Austria's Ministry of Economy had taken a decisive step toward digital sovereignty.
The Ministry is migrating 1,200 employees to a Nextcloud-based cloud and collaboration platform hosted on Austrian-based infrastructure
It's the latest move in a European trend to shift away from Big Tech.

European governments and agencies want to control sensitive data.

Another European agency shifts off Big Tech, as digital sovereignty movement gains steam
European Union states are increasingly shifting toward European-based companies that offer open-source solutions. Here's why.

One of the interesting articles that came after #KubeCon is touching the problem of the platform engineering anti-patterns. Is there anything in particular that bothers you and you want to discuss it at #DevOpsDays #Prague

8 platform engineering anti-patterns
Golden paths gone gray? Avoid these common mistakes that sink platform engineering initiatives.

Twilio reports Q3 revenue up 15% YoY to $1.3B vs. $1.25B est., forecasts Q4 sales above est., agrees to buy identity platform Stytch; TWLO jumps 8% after hours (Chris Ciaccia/Seeking Alpha)
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4511471-tw…

Twilio pops as it raises full-year forecast, aided by strong Q3 results
Understood. Please provide the article text for processing.

A look at Journalist.net, a global marketplace that connects 10K freelance journalists with clients, from major newsbrands to creators (Freddy Mayhew/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishing-se…

Journalist.net: The platform enabling any publisher to draw on global newsroom
Journalist.net provides a simple way to find and pay freelance journalists.

The Lazarus group stands accused of stealing approximately 45 billion won ($30.6 million) from Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency platform.
https://en.yenisafak.com/world/north-koreas-lazarus-hackers-steal-30-million…

North Korea's Lazarus hackers steal $30 million from South Korean exchange
North Korea's Lazarus hacking group is suspected of stealing approximately $30.6 million in cryptocurrency from South Korea's largest digital asset exchange, Upbit.

Archy, which offers AI-powered dental practice management software, raised a $20M Series B led by TCV, bringing its total funding to $47M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/dental-saas-provider-archy-raises-seriesb/

Exclusive: Founded By Uber Alumni, Archy Raises $20M To Put Dental Practices ‘On Autopilot’
San Jose, California-based Archy, which is building AI agents into its software platform to handle the busywork at dental offices, will use the new funding to bulk up its engineering, AI and go-to-market teams.

academia_edu: Academica.edu (2011)
Snapshot of the follower relationships among users of academia.edu, a platform for academics to share research papers, scraped in 2011. Nodes are users and a directed edge (i,j) denotes that user i follows j.
This network has 200169 nodes and 1398063 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted
https://

🕶️ Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
#vr

Community Analysis of Social Virtual Reality Based on Large-Scale Log Data of a Commercial Metaverse Platform
This study quantitatively analyzes the structural characteristics of user communities within Social Virtual Reality (Social VR) platforms supporting head-mounted displays (HMDs), based on large-scale log data. By detecting and evaluating community structures from data on substantial interactions (defined as prolonged co-presence in the same virtual space), we found that Social VR platforms tend to host numerous, relatively small communities characterized by strong internal cohesion and limited …

„Polyman“ by Facet
Platform: Amiga
Released: 25 May 2024
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 3rd in the 68k Inside 2024 Graphics competition
#GFX_Facet #YR_2024 #PF_Amiga

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 150M DAUs, up from 100M in December 2024, and Meta has rolled out ads globally in the Threads feed with plans to add video ads (Karissa Bell/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/thre

Threads reaches 150 million daily users and is ramping up ads
Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users and is ramping up ads on the text-based platform.

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird as it prepares to launch its mobile platform DraftKings Predictions in the coming months (Contessa Brewer/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/21/draftkings-railbird-predictions-platform-acquisition.htm…

DraftKings acquires predictions platform Railbird
The sports betting giant is preparing to launch a new platform in the coming months called DraftKings Predictions.

A rare report in a Chinese state publication of a cyberattack on a Chinese internet platform.
“Short-video platform Kuaishou was hit by a wave of sexually explicit livestreams that temporarily overwhelmed its content moderation systems on Monday evening”
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/2025…

Kuaishou reports cyberattack as explicit content flood livestreams

Sources: Bengaluru-based quick grocery delivery startup Zepto confidentially files for a ~$1.3B India IPO; Zepto raised $450M at a $7B valuation in October 2025 (Pranav Mukul/The Economic Times)
https://economi…

Zepto makes confidential filing with Sebi for $1.3 billion IPO: sources
The listing is planned for the July-September quarter of 2026. In October, the quick commerce major had closed a $450 million round, valuing it at $7 billion. As of late November, Zepto had around Rs 7,000 crore in cash, while competitors Eternal and Swiggy each have around Rs 17,000-18,000 crore on their books currently.

Eros Innovation, an AI and IP company which owns 12K film titles and 100K AI-ready characters, closed ~$150M in capital and acquisitions at a $2B valuation (Naman Ramachandran/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/eros-innovation-150…

Eros Innovation Secures $150 Million, Expands AI-Media Platform
Eros Innovation has closed $150 million in capital and strategic acquisitions as the company continues its transformation into an AI-driven platform.

EV maker Lucid partners with Nvidia to develop a fully autonomous vehicle platform, starting with building more ADAS tech for Lucid's existing Gravity SUV (Kara Carlson/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

Mastodon announced fiscal sponsorship via WE AID,
a German nonprofit organisation that supports charitable projects within an established legal framework.
This partnership offers donors
tax-deductible contributions in Germany
and ensures verified integrity through WE AID’s oversight.
It also enables Mastodon to operate as a nonprofit entity,
strengthening the commitment to a user-first,
community-driven platform,
free from algorithmic manipul…

Mastodon Joins Forces with WE AID
We're partnering with WE AID as our fiscal sponsor for donations in Europe.

The UK's Observer signs a commercial partnership deal with AI-powered news reader Particle News, joining Time, the LAT, Fortune, and The Atlantic (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/the-observer-signs-deal-to-ap…

The Observer signs deal to appear on AI news platform Particle
The Observer described as first UK partner for Particle News as it expands outside US.

Coverbase, an AI procurement and risk platform provider, raised a $16.5M Series A led by Canapi Ventures, bringing its total funding to $20M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/coverbase-raise-ai-powered-procurement/

Exclusive: With Customers Like Okta And Coinbase, Coverbase Raises $16M To Grow AI-Powered Procurement...
Coverbase, an AI-powered procurement platform, has raised $16 million in a Series A round led by Canapi Ventures, the startup tells Crunchbase News exclusively.

IBM launches Digital Asset Haven, a digital assets platform built with crypto wallet provider Dfns for financial institutions, governments, and companies (Anna Irrera/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-2…

Grammarly rebrands as Superhuman after its acquisitions of Superhuman Mail in June and Coda in December 2024; the standalone writing tool Grammarly still exists (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/808472/grammarly-superhuman-ai-rebrand-rel…

Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman
Grammarly is rebranding to become Superhuman, an AI agent-powered work platform that combines its writing tool with Coda and Superhuman Mail.

Newsletter platform Beehiiv announces new features, including for AI website creation, podcast hosting, digital product sales, and real-time analytics (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/13/news

Newsletter platform beehiiv adds AI website building, creator tools in major expansion | TechCrunch
Newsletter platform beehiiv announced a massive expansion to its platform on Thursday, including offering real-time analytics and AI website creation.

Some ad buyers say brands are increasingly spending on Reddit due to the site's prominence in AI-powered search results and its growing audience (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/reddit-advertisers-ai-search-visibility-deck/

Brands Rush to Reddit, Boosting Ad Spend and Gaming AI Search
A leaked deck shows paid ads on Reddit can boost AI search visibility as the platform becomes more relevant than ever.

Many of the most influential personalities in the
“Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X
💥are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India,
a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.
The new tool, called “about this account,” became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform.
It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, …

Sublime Security, which uses AI agents to protect against phishing and other email threats, raised a $150M Series C, bringing its total funding to $240M (Eduard Kovacs/SecurityWeek)
https://www.securityweek.com/sublime-security-raises-150-millio…

ActBlue, a payment platform for online donations, is increasing its investments in left-leaning media and content creators through grant-like sponsorships (Max Tani/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/12/21/2025/actblue-quietly-sponsors-p…

Exclusive: ActBlue quietly sponsors progressive content creators
The Democratic fundraising platform has offered its support to a major podcaster as he seeks to build a podcast network.

Thoma Bravo acquires a majority stake in Java platform Azul, which received a $340M majority investment from Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital in 2020 (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/11/18/tho…

Exclusive: Thoma Bravo buys Java platform Azul
Azul battles Oracle in the Java marketplace.

Mastodon announced fiscal sponsorship via WE AID,
a German nonprofit organisation that supports charitable projects within an established legal framework.
This partnership offers donors
tax-deductible contributions in Germany
and ensures verified integrity through WE AID’s oversight.
It also enables Mastodon to operate as a nonprofit entity,
strengthening the commitment to a user-first, community-driven platform,
free from algorithmic manipulation an…

Mastodon Joins Forces with WE AID
We're partnering with WE AID as our fiscal sponsor for donations in Europe.

How a focus on video helped News UK's Talksport transform from a radio station to a multi-platform sports brand, with 35M to 45M YouTube views per month (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/

How Youtube revenue is fuelling Talksport's transformation into video brand
News UK's director of digital for broadcasting shared how Talksport's new studio has helped it progress in becoming a more video-based brand.

Federato, which provides AI-powered insurance lifecycle software, raised a $100M Series D led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, taking its total funding to $180M (InsurTech Analyst)
https://insurtechanalyst.com/2025/11/18/federato-launches-ai-n…

Indian e-commerce platform Meesho is set to launch an India IPO, seeking to raise $606M, targeting a post-issue valuation of ~$5.60B (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/28/softbank-stays-in-as-meesho-…

SoftBank stays in as Meesho $606M IPO becomes India's first major e-commerce listing | TechCrunch
Meesho heads for India's first big e-commerce IPO next week.

AI video startup Luma AI raised a $900M Series C led by Humain, sources say at a ~$4B valuation (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/funding/vide…

Video generation platform Luma AI raises $900 million, valued at $4 billion
The firm’s Indian-American CEO Amit Jain, an IITian who was formerly with Apple, told ET that the domain the company operated in is capital-intensive and requires sizable investments to scale. Sources close to the company pegged its valuation at around $4 billion.

Truth Social launches Truth Predict, a prediction market platform in partnership with Crypto.com to let users trade on major current events like elections (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/485594b3-5a72-4ae1-aa93-8ee987be1569

Adobe unveils Project Moonlight, an AI agent on its Firefly platform designed to act as a creative director for social media campaigns via text prompts (The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/807457/adobe-ai-agent-project-moonlight

Adobe’s AI social media admin is here with ‘Project Moonlight’
Adobe announced Project Moonlight, an AI agent that uses other Adobe AI tools to create social media posts that match your tone and style.

The National Association of Broadcasters launches a campaign to support live sports on free broadcast channels as more big games move to streaming services (George Winslow/TV Tech)
https://www.tvtechnology.com/platform/broadcast/n…

NAB Launches Effort to Keep Live Sports on Broadcast Channels
The campaign comes at a time when fans are increasingly complaining about the cost of accessing games behind paywalls and the complexity of accessing the games

Global hotel groups are intensifying efforts to get customers to book directly, as they seek to save on online platform commissions and prepare for AI agents (Stephanie Stacey/Financial Times)

Crypto infrastructure provider Fireblocks acquires Dynamic, which streamlines crypto wallet setup, authentication, and onboarding for 50M accounts, for ~$90M (CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1zemqprel

Fireblocks acquires Dynamic, a16z-backed wallet platform, for $90 million
The Israeli digital asset firm, valued at $8 billion, broadens its platform amid industry-wide stablecoin momentum. 

GitHub plans to launch Agent HQ, a hub to let developers access third-party AI coding agents, including Claude and OpenAI's Codex, in the coming months (David Gewirtz/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/githubs-huge-agent-hq-…

GitHub's huge 'Agent HQ' upgrade brings Codex, Claude, and Jules together - here's how
The new agentic development platform integrates the most popular AI coding agents directly into GitHub.

Nirvana, which uses real-time driving telematics to build insurance policies for truckers, raised a $100M Series D at a $1.5B valuation, up from $830M in March (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/insurance-platform-nirvana-val…

Exclusive: AI Insurance Startup Nirvana Nearly Doubles Valuation To $1.5B with $100M Series D
Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round at a $1.5 billion valuation, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The raise comes just over nine months after the startup raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding at an $830 million valuation.

Sources: Forge Global, a leading platform for trading stakes in private startups, is exploring a sale, after its stock fell 90% since its 2021 IPO (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/9e865858-c0eb-4c73-9185-db9f49ea9978

Japanese fintech JPYC launches a yen-pegged stablecoin, the country's first, and its issuance platform JPYC EX, targeting $65.4B in circulation in three years (Timmy Shen/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/376199/japan-jpyc-launches-yen-stablecoin

AI video startup Luma AI raised a $900M Series C led by Humain, sources say at a ~$4B valuation, and partners with Humain on a 2GW AI cluster in Saudi Arabia (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.i…

Video generation platform Luma AI raises $900 million, valued at $4 billion
The firm’s Indian-American CEO Amit Jain, an IITian who was formerly with Apple, told ET that the domain the company operated in is capital-intensive and requires sizable investments to scale. Sources close to the company pegged its valuation at around $4 billion.

Paris-based Upciti, which offers city operations software and hardware to over 150 municipalities in 17 countries, raised a $20M Series A led by Notion Capital (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/10/16/upciti-closes-20m-to-dr…

UPCITI closes $20M to drive global growth of its urban operating platform
UPCITI, a Paris-based company building an operating system for cities, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from Point Nine and Chalfen Ventures.UPCITI combines proprietary software with purpose-built hardware to help municipalities run critical operations, such as traffic flow, street management, and public safety, more efficiently and securely, with a clear ROI that simplifies adoption. By owning both the software an…

Q&A with Bill Ready, who became Pinterest's CEO in 2022, about changes during his tenure, winning over Gen Z, Pinterest's business model, AI content, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/business/pinterest-s…

How Pinterest Is Courting Gen Z With ‘Safer’ Social Media
Bill Ready, the company’s chief executive, is shifting the virtual pinboard platform toward shopping and things that “make you feel better.”

Sources: Microsoft's next Xbox will run Windows, letting users play PlayStation titles on Steam and the full Xbox console library, without a multiplayer paywall (Jez Corden/Windows Central)
https://www.windowscentral.com/…

Microsoft's ambitious new Xbox: Your entire Xbox console library, the full power of Windows PC gaming, and no multiplayer paywall
The new Xbox platform is said to be a "premium" experience, and now we have some details on what it'll look like.

SuperCircle, which offers an AI-powered reverse logistics and recycling management service for retail brands, raised a $24M Series A led by Foundry Group (Duncan Riley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/12/10/supercircle-raises-24m…

SuperCircle raises $24M+ to scale AI-driven textile waste platform - SiliconANGLE
SuperCircle raises $24M+ to scale AI-driven textile waste platform - SiliconANGLE

WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/whatssapp-…

WhatssApp changes its terms to bar general purpose chatbots from its platform | TechCrunch
WhatsApp is banning general purpose chatbots from using its Business API

Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus raised $70M , bringing its total funding to $130M , and says the new capital will boost its AI advisory tools (Katrina Bianca Cuaresma/DealStreetAsia)
https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/endowus-70-m-round-460635/…

Endowus closes $70m round to deepen AI, regional expansion
The funding round was led by Illuminate Financial.

At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce unveils Agentforce 360, a unified agentic AI stack to connect humans, AI agents, and more, and positions Slack as an "agentic OS" (Larry Dignan/Constellation Research)
https://www.constellationr.com/blog-news/i

Salesforce makes its Agentforce 360 case to be your AI agent platform
Salesforce announced a series of product updates, a process intelligence acquisition and an Agentforce 360 architecture designed to make the case that it should orchestrate first and third party AI agents. At Dreamforce 2025, Salesforce looked to differentiate itself from what's becoming a crowded agentic AI platform space. The cloud giants are looking to go horizontal with stacks to build, deploy and optimize AI agents. SaaS vendors are expanding into managing AI agents beyond their verticals.…

Q&A with Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz on the patient scheduling platform's telehealth expansion, its policy of not providing medical advice through AI, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/podcast/801767/zocdoc-ceo-oli…

Zocdoc CEO: ‘Dr. Google is going to be replaced by Dr. AI’
Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz joins Decoder to discuss where AI really belongs in healthcare.

Coinbase agrees to acquire Echo, a blockchain platform to let crypto companies quickly raise capital, for ~$375M, marking Coinbase's 8th acquisition in 2025 (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/coin…