Alibaba’s Qwen team has launched Qwen3-Coder, which it calls its “most agentic code model to date.” While it will be made available in multiple sizes, the most powerful variant — Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct — is being released first. The 480 billion parameter mixture-of-experts model has 35 billion active parameters supporting a context length of 256,000 tokens natively and 1 million tokens with extrapolation methods for “exceptional performance in both coding and agentic tasks,” explains the group, which claims the quasi-open source model has agentic coding, agentic browser use, and agentic tool use comparable to Anthropic’s proprietary Claude Sonnet 4. Continue reading Alibaba Is Rolling Out Its ‘Most Agentic Code Model to Date’

Alphabet has recalibrated its strategy with autonomous vehicle division Waymo. After spinning it off into a separate company, Alphabet is now focusing on Waymo’s ability to provide a complete hardware/software technological platform to manufacturers making self-driving cars. This new goal is in line with company CFO Ruth Porat’s directive that its moonshot initiatives actually meet specific financial targets. By doing so, Waymo becomes a direct competitor with companies such as Mobileye and Delphi. Continue reading Waymo Shifts Gears to Become a Supplier, GM Releases SDK

Although both Google and Facebook have declared they will fight fake news, the two companies are still in the early stages of acting on that pledge. Google says that, as of the end of 2016, it had permanently banned almost 200 publishers from its AdSense advertising network. Facebook took aim at its Trending Topics feature, blamed by some for spreading fake news, introducing changes intended to showcase only reliable news articles. But these actions are miniscule in context of the immense problem at hand. Continue reading Google, Facebook in Earliest Stages of Combatting Fake News

Google’s parent Alphabet finally sailed past Apple as the world’s most valuable company, as shares rose 4.2 percent, to a market capitalization of about $560 billion, compared to Apple’s $539.7 billion. Alphabet posted 14 percent revenue growth in its core Internet businesses, including search, YouTube and Android, rising to $74.54 billion from 2014’s $65.67 billion. Revenue from its “Other Bets,” or moonshots, rose 37 percent to $448 million, up dramatically from the $12 million in revenue reported in 2013. Continue reading Alphabet Tops Apple, Still Growing Core Business, Other Bets