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    • Sources: SoftBank Group has lined up commitments for a ~$9B loan for its Vision Fund from banks including the arrangers of its Japanese wireless business' IPO (Bloomberg)

    Bloomberg: Sources: SoftBank Group has lined up commitments for a ~$9B loan for its Vision Fund from banks including the arrangers of its Japanese wireless business’ IPO  —  – Top underwriters of wireless IPO agree to provide financing  — Banks finalizing terms of loan backed by Vision Fund holdings Sources: SoftBank Group has lined up

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    • Hitman 2 announces the oft-killed Sean Bean as a contract target

    IO Interactive, the developers behind the Hitman series, today announced the first post-release content for the upcoming Hitman 2, including the subject of the first contract. Soon you — yes, you — will join the long, long list of individuals who can boast they’ve killed Sean Bean. The new Hitman games are bolstered after release with missions called Elusive Targets,

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    • Twilio debuts Autopilot, to help developers deploy bots across text, message, and voice assistants, and Pay, an API to securely process payments over the phone (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)

    Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Twilio debuts Autopilot, to help developers deploy bots across text, message, and voice assistants, and Pay, an API to securely process payments over the phone  —  Twilio wants to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to contact call centers.  During its annual Signal developer conference in San Francisco … Twilio debuts Autopilot, to

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    • Microsoft begins testing a major redesign of the iOS and Android Cortana apps, with a focus on conversational experiences and more (Dan Thorp-Lancaster/Windows Central)

    Dan Thorp-Lancaster / Windows Central: Microsoft begins testing a major redesign of the iOS and Android Cortana apps, with a focus on conversational experiences and more  —  Microsoft is gearing up to release a major update to Cortana on Android and iOS, and beta testers are getting the first shot at it. Microsoft begins testing

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    • Interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on free speech, filter bubbles, the chronological feed, and more (Nicholas Thompson/Wired)

    Nicholas Thompson / Wired: Interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on free speech, filter bubbles, the chronological feed, and more  —  ON MONDAY, AT Wired’s 25th anniversary summit, I spoke with Jack Dorsey about some of the biggest questions he confronts running Twitter and Square.  How has his position on free speech evolved? Interview with

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    • Web-based visual design platform Lucid Software raises $72M from Meritech Capital and others, bringing total funding to $112M, and says it has 15M users (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

    Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Web-based visual design platform Lucid Software raises $72M from Meritech Capital and others, bringing total funding to $112M, and says it has 15M users  —  Web-based visual design platform Lucid Software has raised $72 million in a round of fund of funding from Meritech Capital, Iconiq Capital, and Spectrum Equity. Web-based

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    Friday Hack Chat: Visual Synthesis

    For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be discussing generating analog video for visual synthesis. What’s on the front porch? Our guest for this week’s Hack Chat will be Jonas Bers, an audiovisual artist and performer. For their work they used hacked video mixers, a hand-built video synthesizer, and various pieces of restored/modded lab

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    • Binance adopts surveillance tech to appease cryptocurrency regulators

    It seems the compliance bug has finally bitten Binance. The world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange is looking to appease government regulators worldwide with some fancy new tech built to detect suspicious trading activity. In a press release, Binance confirmed it has integrated its systems with proprietary compliance software built by blockchain tech firm Chainalysis, named Know Your Transaction (KYT).

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    • Baidu joins the Partnership on AI, led by US companies like Apple and Google, becoming the first Chinese company to join an AI ethics group (Cate Cadell/Reuters)

    Cate Cadell / Reuters: Baidu joins the Partnership on AI, led by US companies like Apple and Google, becoming the first Chinese company to join an AI ethics group  —  BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese search engine Baidu Inc (BIDU.O) has become the first Chinese company to join an artificial intelligence (AI) … Baidu joins the

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