March 19, 2025

Monster Hunter Wilds smashes February sales, numbers still in the red | Circana

Monster Hunter Wilds was February’s big success on the sales charts, though by no means the only one, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. Several games launched this month have broken onto the U.S. bestsellers chart, with Monster Hunter Wilds taking the top spot. However, it wasn’t enough to offset the continued decline of sales on the sales charts, which continue to be in the negatives — particularly the hardware sales. February 2025 Dollar Sales, Millions

Rachel Kaser March 19, 2025

AR/VR

Hugging Face submits open-source blueprint, challenging Big Tech in White House AI policy fight

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More In a Washington policy landscape increasingly dominated by calls for minimal AI regulation, Hugging Face is making a distinctly different case to the Trump administration: open-source and collaborative AI development may be America’s strongest competitive advantage. The AI platform company, which hosts more than 1.5 million public models across diverse domains, has submitted its recommendations for

Michael Nuñez March 19, 2025

Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data, According to Congressional Report | HackerNoon

Update, November 1: Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan responded in writing to the report led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and triggered by The Markup’s investigation into tax preparation companies’ use of the Meta Pixel. Khan’s letter acknowledged Warren’s request for FTC action and said that, “in response to public reporting on this issue,” the FTC recently warned the companies involved that they could face financial penalties for mishandling customers’ tax data. The letter also

The Markup March 19, 2025

Why Are the New AI Agents Choosing Markdown Over HTML? | HackerNoon

AI agents are taking over the world, marking the next big step in AI evolution 🦖. So, what do all these agents have in common? They use Markdown instead of raw HTML when processing content on web pages ⛓️. Curious to know why? This blog post will show you how this simple trick can save you up to 99% in tokens and money! AI Agents and Data Processing: An Introduction AI agents are software systems

Bright Data March 19, 2025

Software

Apache Kafka’s New Tiered Storage: What Developers Need to Know | HackerNoon

Open source Apache Kafka has long been the backbone of real-time data streaming, but it’s traditionally come with a trade-off: keep expanding expensive broker storage or sacrifice historical data retention. With Kafka’s Tiered Storage, it’s a dilemma that’s finally fading (if you know what you’re doing). By offloading older data to cheaper cloud object storage while keeping recent data local for speed, tiered Storage transforms Kafka’s storage economics and unlocks new possibilities for developers. But

Thomas Beadle March 19, 2025

Software

Answer to Win from 15,000 USDT: How does Gluwa Facilitate Global Financial Inclusion? | HackerNoon

Too Long; Didn’t Read The Spacecoin Writing Contest offers a 15,000 USDT prize pool for ideas on how blockchain can enable a decentralized internet. Writers, space enthusiasts, and blockchain advocates can explore topics like privacy, accessibility, and censorship resistance. Round 1 submissions close on April 7, 2025! Coin Mentioned

HackerNoon Writing Contests Announcements March 19, 2025

Nvidia reportedly acquires synthetic data startup Gretel | TechCrunch

Nvidia has reportedly acquired Gretel, a San Diego-based startup that’s developed a platform to generate synthetic AI training data. Terms of the acquisition are unknown. The price tag was said to be nine figures, exceeding Gretel’s most recent valuation of $320 million, according to Wired. Gretel and its team of roughly 80 employees will be folded into Nvidia, where its tech will be deployed as part of the former’s suit of generative AI services for developers,

Kyle Wiggers March 19, 2025

AWS generative AI exec leaves to launch startup | TechCrunch

Raj Aggarwal is leaving AWS after nearly three years as the company’s GM of generative AI and revenue acceleration, according to a LinkedIn post Aggarwal published Wednesday. “I’m proud of the pioneering work our team did in generative AI from its earliest days,” Aggarwal said in his post. “We built what might be the world’s first large-scale generative AI products — launched to tens of thousands of sellers, used hundreds of thousands of times, driving

Rebecca Szkutak March 19, 2025

AR/VR

Nvidia’s Cosmos-Transfer1 makes robot training freakishly realistic—and that changes everything

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Nvidia has released Cosmos-Transfer1, an innovative AI model that enables developers to create highly realistic simulations for training robots and autonomous vehicles. Available now on Hugging Face, the model addresses a persistent challenge in physical AI development: bridging the gap between simulated training environments and real-world applications. “We introduce Cosmos-Transfer1, a conditional world generation model that

Michael Nuñez March 19, 2025

Robotics

NVIDIA’s GTC 2025: Here’s the top medtech AI news – The Robot Report

NVIDIA used its GTC 2025 event this week to announce Isaac for Healthcare, a developer framework for AI healthcare robotics. | Source: NVIDIA NVIDIA’s “Super Bowl of AI” is seeing excitement around autonomous cars and robots — but there is plenty of medtech AI innovation work to discuss, too. GTC 2025 — running March 17–21, 2025 in San Jose, California — has seen news about using artificial intelligence to advance autonomous imaging, surgical robotics, brain-computer interfaces,

Chris Newmarker March 19, 2025