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The TechCrunch article discusses Reddit's plans for its initial public offering (IPO). Reddit's proposed share price, ranging from $31 to $34, might appear high, but its revenue from artificial intelligence (AI) could justify this valuation. At the top end of the price range, Reddit's valuation could reach approximately $5.4 billion. The company's revenue for 2023 was $804 million, indicating it could trade at a multiple of 6.9x to 8x its revenue, depending on the valuation used. Reddit's AI revenue comes from selling contracts to AI companies for access to its data, which is used for training large language models. Earlier in the year, Reddit sold contracts worth $203 million for data access, with terms ranging from two to three years. The platform's continuous user interaction and data growth make it an excellent resource for AI training. Despite some user concerns about Reddit's collaboration with AI companies, the potential revenue from data sales could be substantial. The article suggests that investing in Reddit could be seen as a side bet on AI itself.

This image is a humorous take on the subject of topology, a branch of mathematics that studies properties of space that are preserved under continuous transformations, such as stretching or bending, but not tearing or gluing. The joke involves a "topologist's morning routine" and shows morning items (cup of coffee, pants, shirt, and socks) represented in terms of the number and arrangement of their holes: 1. **Cup of Coffee**: Illustrated as a green torus (or donut shape) with one hole. 2. **Pants**: Shown as a shape with three holes. This might represent belt loops or the idea of pants having multiple openings. 3. **Shirt**: Depicted as having two holes, like a typical shirt might have for arms. 4. **Socks**: Illustrated as two disks, which in topology can be seen as objects with no holes. The joke plays on how a topologist might see everyday objects according to their topological properties—essentially how many holes they have—rather than their everyday use or appearance. The humorous aspect comes from the idea that someone would describe their mundane morning routine items in such an abstract and mathematically rigorous way, hence suggesting mathematicians (or specifically, topologists) as "absolutely deranged."

This New York Times article discusses the competitive dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI) development between China and the U.S. Despite China's rush to dominate AI, the technology relies heavily on U.S. systems. The article talks about Chinese firms, such as 01.AI, that use technology from U.S. models like Meta's generative AI model, LLaMA, to build their own systems. This reliance exposes a gap in China's AI capabilities, with the country trailing the U.S. by at least a year in generative AI, according to industry insiders. Chinese companies face pressures to keep up with U.S. innovations, but their homegrown AI models are reportedly inferior, often leading to reliance on fine-tuned versions of Western models. The article also mentions the implications of this competition, as breakthroughs in generative AI can shift the global technological balance of power. Despite attempts by the U.S. to slow China's advances by restricting sales of microchips and investments, they haven't restricted the practice of openly releasing software. This situation raises questions about China's innovation model, which has produced world-leading firms like Alibaba and ByteDance. The article also discusses the challenges faced by Chinese companies, including regulatory crackdowns, censorship rules, and restrictions on how AI models can be trained. Despite these challenges, several Chinese companies, including Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, are making efforts to create foundational AI models from scratch. Lastly, the article mentions some successful endeavors in China's AI sector, such as AIsphere's PixVerse, an AI-powered generator that creates videos from text descriptions.