~techmeme | Bookmarks (985)

Reporters Without Borders: Investigation: how hack-for-hire Appin tried silencing 15+ outlets since 2022 over articles, newsletters, and podcasts covering Appin's “ethical hacking”  —  Whether based in the US, Switzerland, France or India, any media outlet investigating the “ethical hacking” of Appin …

David Pan / Bloomberg: A profile of Chris Maurice, the CEO of US stablecoin startup Yellow Card, which operates in 20 African countries and has traded $3B+ worth of crypto in 2024  —  Cryptocurrencies that track the dollar are becoming a popular workaround for companies stymied by currency shortages on the continent.

Steven Overly / Politico: Q&A with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on what happens to the $50B CHIPS program under the Trump administration, the future of AI safety, China, and more  —  With a massive legacy program hanging in the balance, the Commerce secretary wants to get billions in microchip money out the door in the next two months.

Bloomberg: Sources: Cantor Fitzgerald plans a $2B+ program to lend USD to clients who put up BTC as collateral and is talking with Tether about supporting the program  —  - Lutnick set to be next commerce secretary under Trump  —  Howard Lutnick is moving to strengthen his alliance with one of the most important …

Benedict Evans: An overview of macro tech trends for 2025, focusing on generative AI, LLMs, scaling challenges with training ever bigger AI models, the capex surge, and more  —  Presentations Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry.  For 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.

Wall Street Journal: How Tim Cook developed a personal relationship with Donald Trump, in part by zeroing in on areas of mutual interest between Apple and Trump's agenda  —  The election is leading to a return of personal lobbying by CEOs, hoping to develop ties with the new administration; Cook's one-topic meals

Wall Street Journal: Sources: in the past year, Cantor Fitzgerald agreed to invest as much as $600M in Tether for about a 5% stake; Cantor holds most of Tether's $134B in assets  —  Before becoming Trump's commerce secretary pick, Lutnick deepened Cantor's ties with a stablecoin firm under investigation

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Thoughts on Apple TV's history and future; sources: Apple postponed a larger-than-usual number of iOS 19 features to spring 2026, when iOS 19.4 is set to debut  —  Apple doesn't need its own TV set.  But it should make a low-cost TV streaming stick to bring its content, apps and smart home features to more households.

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Profiles of Teresa Ribera, Henna Virkkunen, and Ekaterina Zaharieva, the three incoming EU commissioners in charge of key tech policy areas into 2029  —  The European Union looks to have clinched political agreement on the team of 26 commissioners who will be implementing President Ursula …

Franz Lidz / New York Times: How researchers used AI and drones to find 303 previously uncharted Nazca Lines in Peru in six months, almost doubling the number that had been mapped by 2020  —  With drones and A.I., researchers managed to double the number of mysterious geoglyphs in a matter of months.

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Deckmatch research of ~5,000 YC-backed startups finds YC commonly accepts startups that are building similar or nearly identical products to previous YC grads  —  The Silicon Valley dream is to build a tech startup that is such a unique idea it alters the commercial universe and turns its founders into billionaires.

Reuters: Huawei is targeting 100,000 applications for HarmonyOS over the next 6-12 months and currently has over 15,000 applications that can meet consumers' basic needs  —  China's Huawei, blacklisted by the U.S., said on Saturday it is targeting 100,000 applications for its Harmony operating system …

James Allen / Financial Times: How AI is reshaping the data-intensive field of Grand Prix racing, including helping design cars, setting F1's technical regulations, and shaping race strategy  —  The world's most technically advanced sport is so data-intensive that humans can no longer manage alone

Hugh Son / CNBC: Customers of banking startups like Yotta describe losing savings ranging from $7,000 to $200,000+ due to Synapse's collapse, after US regulators refused to help  —  For 15 years, former Texas schoolteacher Kayla Morris put every dollar she could save into a home for her growing family.

Sam McKeith / Reuters: Australia drops plans to fine internet platforms up to 5% of their global revenue for failing to prevent the spread of misinformation online  —  Australia's government said on Sunday it had dropped plans to fine internet platforms up to 5% of their global revenue for failing to prevent the spread of misinformation online.

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: Six months into a deal with OpenAI, Spanish bank BBVA says staff created 2,900+ GPTs and reported productivity gains, but questions ChatGPT's scalability  —  The bank is evaluating its next steps after seeing early productivity gains from OpenAI's enterprise tool

Shawn Musgrave / The Intercept: A federal court allows a claim by The Intercept that DMCA prevents OpenAI from stripping a story's title or byline but throws out its claims against Microsoft  —  The Intercept's lawsuit argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prevents OpenAI from stripping a story's title or byline.

Financial Times: Similarweb: Bluesky app usage in the US and UK grew ~300% to 3.5M DAUs after Nov. 5; Threads now has 1.5x Bluesky's DAUs in the US, down from 5x before Nov. 5  —  Social media giant's Threads app makes changes as smaller competitor to X surges  —  Meta's Threads is losing ground …

Christine Lemmer-Webber / Dustycloud Brainstorms: ActivityPub co-author on Bluesky and ATProto being neither decentralized nor federated, and how Bluesky is building a good X replacement with a “credible exit”  —  Recently due to various events (namely a lot of people getting off of X-Twitter), Bluesky has become a lot more popular …

New York Times: Sources: the US government launched an investigation into the Salt Typhoon hack after Microsoft alerted it and telecom companies about anomalies  —  Leaders of the big telecommunications companies were summoned to the White House to discuss strategies for overhauling the security …

Nicola M. White / Bloomberg: Around 56% of the $8.2B in financial remedies that the US SEC obtained in FY 2024 is attributable to a monetary judgment against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon  —  The agency's enforcement actions led to $8.2 billion in penalties and reimbursement to investors, though the number …

Wall Street Journal: Sources: TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who has known Elon Musk for several years, has sought Musk's counsel in recent weeks on the incoming Trump administration  —  Popular video app and Chinese parent ByteDance view rival social-media owner as conduit to the president-elect

Victoria Song / The Verge: Strava's new API rules for third parties will make it harder for users across dozens of fitness apps and wearables to integrate their fitness data in one place  —  It might seem odd for one app's users to fume over an API, but at the heart of the matter is the inherent messiness of fitness data.

Financial Times: A look at challenges facing Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, including the company falling behind in the AI chip race and discontent from employees  —  Chip woes and labour unrest test the mettle of third-generation leader of South Korea's most valuable company