Bumble scraps women-first chat rule, Anthropic investors bet on $2tn valuation

Dating app Bumble has divided its users by dropping its famous rule which allowed only women to send the first message to a match. When the app launched 2014, founder and boss Whitney Wolfe Herd said it distinguished itself from rivals like Tinder by allowing women to “make the first move”. But the thing that made Bumble famous will now be ditched following a trial which showed more engagement – and a survey among users which found 66% of women prefer men to send the first message. BBC 

Taiwan says it detected AI-assisted cyber-attacks on government agencies that came from overseas last month, a new kind of threat that has been reported as “first-of-a-kind breach”. The Ministry of Digital Affairs (MDA) said its cybersecurity monitoring units ‌detected the “abnormal attack” targeting government agencies, which began on 20 July. The National Institute of Cyber Security issued a series of warning alerts while it investigated. The Guardian

Anthropic investors expect the AI start-up to float at a valuation of $2tn or more in October, a dizzying figure that would eclipse SpaceX and make the AI lab’s debut the largest ever initial public offering. Half a dozen of the company’s backers told the FT that Anthropic’s rapidly rising revenue would enable it to more than double its current valuation in a planned autumn float. A listing at that level could unlock billions of dollars in gains for the five-year-old company’s early investors but would also test public markets that are growing more nervous about the AI boom. FT.com

Britons could cool their homes with air conditioning almost for free if they also install solar panels, energy analysts have said. The high correlation between sunshine levels and heat in London means that 98pc of the cost of running air con can be covered by the energy from solar panels, according to Thunder Said Energy. Keeping a home at no more than 20C would typically incur an electricity bill of around £300 per year, but using solar panels at the same time would bring that down to just £6, it estimated. Telegraph 

A certification filing confirms Garmin is building a CIRQA Smart Ring. It follows the CIRQA Smart Band, a screen-free wrist tracker Garmin launched in July. This page tracks what’s known and will update as more evidence comes in. The ring would likely do much the same job as the band: track sleep, heart rate variability and Body Battery, then send the data to Garmin Connect to be merged alongside data from any other Garmin device. The main benefit is that you could leave your watch off at night. 5K Runner 

Research Gold, a site that advertises services for medical researchers, including drafting peer-review ready manuscripts, systemic reviews and meta-analyses, claims that it’s “100% human-written, never AI,” and lists a number of PhD reviewers and professional methodologists on staff that carry out this meticulous, difficult work. The problem: The PhD reviewers Research Gold lists on its site are AI-generated and don’t exist. Other methodologists it lists are real, but are not aware their identity is being used by Research Gold. 404 Media