~techmeme | Bookmarks (1013)

Tim Copeland / The Block: A memecoin named Official Barron Trump hit a $460M market cap before falling 95%; a Pump.fun user behind it has debuted other unofficial coins called “official”  —  - A memecoin called Official Barron Trump rose to a $460 million market cap on speculation that it might have been launched by Barron Trump himself.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Metropolis, an AI-powered parking service, acquires Oosto, formerly known as AnyVision, for just $125M in stock, well under the $380M it raised over the years  —  The general hype around all things AI is not lifting all boats, as certain startups continue to struggle and look for exits.

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: Chinese AI lab DeepSeek debuts DeepSeek-R1, an MIT-licensed model that does well with math, code, and reasoning tasks, alongside other open and distilled models  —  DeepSeek are the Chinese AI lab who dropped the best currently available open weights LLM on Christmas day, DeepSeek v3.

Financial Times: Democratic Republic of Congo lawyers say Belgium has started a criminal probe into allegations that Apple has knowingly sourced “blood minerals” from the DRC  —  Lawyers for DRC allege iPhones and other electronics use minerals supplied by armed groups behind atrocities

Richard Lawler / The Verge: Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse, cuts off access for US gamers, as the TikTok divest-or-ban law impacts other ByteDance-linked apps  —  The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap.

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: TikTok is not available for download in the App Store and Play Store in the US, as the app halts service in the country to comply with the divest-or-ban law  —  Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores Saturday night, complying with a law requiring China's ByteDance to divest …

NBC News: ByteDance's TikTok and CapCut suspend service in the US, telling users “Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok”  —  Users reported being unable to access TikTok Saturday after a pop-up message from the company came up on their screens saying “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”

Will Oremus / Washington Post: TikTok bans in countries around the world have played out quite differently; Instagram Reels largely replaced TikTok in India, following TikTok's ban in 2020  —  India's 2020 crackdown helped give rise to Instagram Reels, which has largely replaced it there.  But TikTok has proved more resilient elsewhere.

Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: A close look at some privacy implications of AI interfacing with messaging apps and other E2EE systems, Apple's approach to “Private Cloud Compute”, and more  —  Recently I came across a fantastic new paper by a group of NYU and Cornell researchers entitled “How to think about end-to-end encryption and AI.”

Kevin Roose / New York Times: As the TikTok eulogies pour in from some creators, very few Americans seem concerned that one of the nation's most popular social media apps will disappear  —  So this may be the way TikTok ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.  —  Over the past few weeks, as the Jan. 19 deadline loomed …

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: A whistleblower complaint claims Amazon paid $380M for licensing robot maker Covariant's tech and hiring its staff, and the deal merits antitrust scrutiny  —  Filing details $400 million license for smart robot system and claims retail giant's “reverse acquihire” contract limits competition and merits antitrust scrutiny.

Hayden Field / CNBC: Source: Perplexity AI made a TikTok US bid to ByteDance, proposing a merger that brings video to Perplexity, with ByteDance investors retaining their stakes  —  Perplexity AI officially made a play for TikTok on Saturday, submitting a bid to its parent company, ByteDance …

Financial Times: A profile of Charlwin Mao, founder of Xiaohongshu or “Little Red Book”, who claims the name references the color of his university Stanford and ex-employer Bain  —  A sudden surge of US users on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, could threaten China's Great Firewall

Politico: Congressional leaders seem flummoxed by the growing popularity of Chinese-owned apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, an unintended consequence of the TikTok ban  —  The Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8 have exploded in popularity as TikTok faces an imminent ban and the Supreme Court upheld the law forcing its sale.

NBC News: Trump says he will “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve after he takes office on Monday “because it's appropriate”  —  Trump spoke to NBC News' Kristen Welker in an exclusive phone interview Saturday, discussing his plans on what to do about the popular social media app.

Ana Faguy / BBC: The White House says TikTok's threat to shut down is a “stunt” as there is “no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions” before Trump takes office  —  The White House has said a threat by TikTok to shut down in the US on Sunday unless tech firms get assurances …

Zack Abrams / The Block: Vitalik Buterin outlines “large changes” to Ethereum Foundation leadership structure, after fellow Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin called for new EF leadership  —  - Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in a post on X, said “large changes” to the leadership structure of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) are underway.

Wes Davis / The Verge: Instagram now lets users upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit, as TikTok is set to go dark on Sunday  —  Instagram will now let you upload Reels that are up to 3 minutes long, doubling the 90-second limit the platform had in place before, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced today.

Axios: CoinGecko: $TRUMP rose more than 600% overnight and was trading at just over $32 as of 11AM ET, giving it a fully diluted market capitalization of $32B+  —  - It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.

Andrew Hayward / Decrypt: Donald Trump is promoting a Solana memecoin called TRUMP from his social media accounts, with 200M $TRUMP available now and growing to 1B “over three years”  —  Talk about a Friday night surprise.  President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears …

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters: Filing: Nasdaq-listed Qorvo reveals activist investor Starboard's 7.7% stake, amid stiff competition and slowing orders for the company's smartphone chips  —  Starboard Value has built a 7.7% stake in Qorvo (QRVO.O), the chipmaker revealed in a filing on Friday, as the activist investor looks to boost the company's weak share price.

Jasper Goodman / Politico: Leading crypto firms have given at least $10M to the Trump inaugural fund; Ripple, a major target of SEC enforcement action, donated $5M in digital tokens  —  Crypto executives and their lobbyists are scrambling to gain sway over the incoming administration.

Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review: OpenAI worked with Retro Biosciences to develop GPT-4b micro, an AI model that it says can engineer proteins capable of turning regular cells into stem cells  —  When you think of AI's contributions to science, you probably think of AlphaFold, the Google DeepMind protein-folding program that earned its creator a Nobel Prize last year.

Salvador Rodriguez / CNBC: TikTok says it will go dark in the US on Sunday unless the Biden admin provides a “definitive statement” to critical service providers assuring non-enforcement  —  TikTok said its services will go dark on Sunday unless the Biden administration gives a definitive statement providing assurances …